Yesterday, a bunch of hate experts had a “conversation” about hate in Phoenix.
The hate experts sat at a long table covered with a white tablecloth and looked out at an audience of about one hundred people. They didn’t say anything new. That’s because there’s nothing new to say.
Hate, said representatives from the Southern Poverty Law Center and the City of Phoenix and the Phoenix Police and the Anti-Defamation League, is on the rise in Arizona. I knew that already. Anyone covering immigration in Arizona knows that. I didn’t know, however, that Arizona now harbors nineteen creepy hate groups, most of whom creepily hate undocumented immigrants. This number astonished me, until I saw that several states in the South surpassed Arizona, and California had eighty-four hate groups.
The hate people (as opposed to hate experts) blame immigrants for unemployment and the recession and everything else that’s wrong in America. (Of course, it goes without saying undocumented immigrants from Mexico didn’t have anything to do with the skullduggery that caused the nation’s financial woes.) Every armchair pop psychologist knows good and well the hate people really hate themselves most of all.
I sat on the floor and listened to the hate experts talk about the hate people and practiced twittering about hate from my iPhone.
Outside, the broiling white sidewalks were empty. This was weird. Hate people weren’t anywhere to be seen. Usually, they protest such events. They wear masks because they say “illegal aliens” carry Swine Flu. They are generally white and middle aged and scared. They don’t like to see America change, even though it’s abundantly clear America never did much for them. They extol the virtues of Sheriff Joe and waddle around with video cameras. Sometimes, this baby Nazi shows up. He’s nineteen years old, and he hates Mexicans. He stomps on the Mexican flag to provoke pro-immigrant marchers, but they know he’s a nut case and ignore him. That makes him furious. I always wonder what happened to him. I always think, Where is this boy’s mother?
This is his picture. I took it with a video camera.
Anyway, back to the empty sidewalks and the forum on hate. Why did the hate people stay away? Why weren’t they out on the sidewalk with their video cameras and surgical masks? Had they planned something really really bad and warned each other to stay away? Was the building going to be bombed?
The experts on hate conversed about hate for an hour, then left. If the hate people had planned anything, they failed. Nothing happened.
Even so, I’ll always wonder why they stayed away.
Type your comment here
“They don’t like to see America change, even though it’s abundantly clear America never did much for them.”
My FAVORITE line.
The 15-year-old baby racist is a scary image. I loved your line about, Where is his mother? Truly.
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