For some people, no matter how idyllic or remote their hometown, there are never enough gunships deployed:
Here in Washington, the immigration debate is in a stalemate. But in Kansas, there has been a breakthrough.
This striking achievement came about last week during a meeting of the Kansas House Appropriations Committee on efforts to shoot feral swine from helicopters. Republican State Rep. Virgil Peck suddenly had an idea.“Looks like to me if shooting these immigrating feral hogs works,” he commented, according to a recording posted by the Lawrence Journal-World, “maybe we have found a [solution] to our illegal-immigration problem.”
Brilliant! Shooting immigrants from helicopter gunships! Why didn’t they think of that in Congress?
There are a few logistical problems with Peck’s idea, including the fact that Kansas isn’t a border state. But maybe Oklahoma and Texas will grant overflight rights for immigrant-hunting sorties.
Peck, the Republican caucus chairman for the state House, later suggested his brainstorm was a joke, although he also defended himself: “I was just speaking like a southeast Kansas person.”
Kansans may be surprised to learn that the immigrant-shooting idea was offered in their names. But they wouldn’t be the only Americans getting unwelcome news from their state legislators now that many tea party types have come to power.
One wonders why we should wait until people cross our borders to gun them down. How about a little preemption? Let’s take it to Mexico. Let’s treat them like the feral swine that they are.
This tendency on the right to advocate hate and violence is only growing. I can’t see more than a small handful of Republicans who have voiced any concern about it. It may be the single biggest problem facing our country. It isn’t just the hate and violence, it’s the aggressive and unapologetic stupidity, and the warped ideology that goes along with it, that makes gridlock the likely outcome in legislatures great and small, all across our country.
