A brave new world built on lies

JD Vance will float a lie to get your attention, and your vote.

The Republican senator from Ohio, and Donald Trump’s running mate, acknowledged it during an interview last week with Dana Bash on CNN. He said he would create a story — like Haitians eating cats — to break through the din.

This was it: They had jumped the shark. They are admitting that they will lie to fool you. This story about Haitians in Springfield, Ohio, is so crazy surely this will help Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown retain his seat. People will reject the lies. Right?

Wrong again, country editor.

Trump is reading his own polls and likes it. He won’t let go. He upped the ante by vowing to deport the Haitians.

Iowans sure are lapping it up.

A Des Moines Register/ Mediacom Iowa Poll reported Friday that 71% of Iowans surveyed think that mass deportation of undocumented immigrants is “critical” or “important.”

Trump wants to deport the Haitians, who are here legally like so many of our friends in Storm Lake. The City Beautiful also has many undocumented immigrants who work hard, pay taxes and cause nobody harm.

It’s hard to digest and understand. To be clear, do we want to ship out every Cuban from Storm Lake who enjoys Temporary Protected Status? Is that what we mean?

Do you realize it will shut down food processing? We will not be able to milk the cows. It implies that everyone must prove they are here, with papers, on demand. Can old White people just opt out? It suggests that we will have to somehow detain millions of people until we find a place to land them? Do we think we can dump millions of people in Juarez? Can anyone imagine gulags again, like the ones we had for Japanese during World War II?

This is what Trump and Vance are selling. We keep knocking it into people’s heads that immigrants are a fright, marauders out to get you. Gov. Reynolds went to Texas in cowboy boots and sporting a big shiny belt buckle to patrol the Rio Grande, to help keep them south of the border. Gimme another can of that high-octane whompass.

Reynolds has built her persona around it.

Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine, a Republican, wrote a column in The New York Times lamenting the attacks on Haitian refugees and Springfield. He supports a Catholic school in Haiti. He talked about his Catholic faith. He said he supports Trump, although he is disappointed. He sounded like he is running for bishop.

Welcome the stranger? Might as well flick a Bic at the New Testament. Love your neighbor is for saps. The pope can talk about tearing down walls while JD Vance is laying block.

We’re all mixed up. We express our sympathy for the Dreamers, who were brought here as toddlers without papers and know only Storm Lake as home. Eight-five percent of us think that protecting Dreamers is important. How do you square that with 71% thinking that mass deportation is a reasonable proposition? Is it practical to deport the parents but leave the Dreamer here?

Most Iowans also think that there should be a pathway to citizenship.

Yet we want to deport them.

We want to love our neighbor. White people feel threatened by Black people. Most Iowans do not know a Mexican or they would not be so keen on penning them up. The Register talked to a man in Decorah who thinks border security is of utmost concern. Few places are so exclusively White or as isolated as Decorah. It’s an idea planted in his head by the spin machine. It’s the fentanyl. Except, the fentanyl comes mainly through legal ports of entry. Border crossings are way down, so why such mania about security? It’s Fox News all the time. Garbage flows in the ears and out the mouth.

When they get you believing the lies, anything is possible.

If you can deport a Haitian, you can deport a Mexican or an Englishman. Who’s to say that you belong here? Trump is not kidding. Storm Lake should be prepared if he gets elected. Iowans may get what they’re after, a brave new world that is not at all like the one we have known in the land of plenty.