Let’s play a thought-association game–a thematic Rorschach test of sorts.
I’m going to give you a scenario, and you tell me the first thing that comes to mind.
Ready?
The federal government makes the decision to release a small number of non-criminal illegal immigrants from prisons across the country as a cost-saving measure due to the sequester.
What’s the first thing you think of? Don’t think too hard!
If you’re like Congressman Lou Barletta (R-Hazelton), your first thought was “Fidel Castro’s release of criminals in the Mariel boatlift in 1980.”
That’s right, the Hispanic-Hater from Hazelton is at it again, making meaningless metaphors and beating back brown people.
This one’s just beyond comprehension. First, if you’re not familiar with the Mariel boatlift, go do some background reading on Wikipedia. Then carefully try to draw a cohesive mental connection between the two events.
The only thought proccess that would bring a person to make this analogy is similar to the following:
“Well, Obama is a Marxist communist dictator who threatens capitalism and democracy, just like Fidel Castro. And illegal immigrants are Hispanic, just like Cubans, which are all the same, so… 1980 Mariel boatlift! Yeah!”
The biggest irony, I think, is that most of the Cubans who came over to the United States became Republican voters and conservative supporters. For Barletta, however, Hispanics are monolithic, and we all know that making distinctions is for Communists.
