Free Ride

I must say that the latest stunt out of MAGA-dom is inspired, though not in a good way.  Busing and flying immigrants from Florida and Texas to blue states has the optics of a raised middle finger liberals.  Fox and other right-wing news outlets are portraying it that way. Less unhinged sources highlighted the outpouring of kindness toward the new arrivals in communities like Martha’s Vineyard. 

No story is that simple, notwithstanding one’s ideological lens.  We know that the migrants were promised jobs, housing, and gifts at their destination.  Some were misled about these destinations; the Cape Cod contingent thought they were going to Boston.  Others seemed to have known their itinerary in advance and saw an opportunity to travel someplace they wanted to be; one man got off his bus in Chicago and was met by family.

I’m sure each family or individual concerned had their motives for going along.  It does appear that many were deceived.  Outside the MAGA-verse, there have been comparisons to the “reverse Freedom Rides” of the early 1960s.  I thought I knew my Civil Rights Movement history, but I was unaware of them until now.  This bit of near-forgotten right-wing ratfuckery was orchestrated by the New Orleans White Citizens Council as retaliation for the SNCC- and CORE-organized Freedom Rides against racial segregation in the South.  Black families were bused to northern states with the promise of housing and jobs only to discover upon arrival that they had been had.  The campaign subsequently spread to other southern states. 

The idea was to overload social welfare systems up north, point out the imputed hypocrisy of civil rights advocates, and demonstrate to the displaced Black people that they were better off in the segregated South.  Similarly, the ongoing drive to offload Latino migrants onto blue states and sanctuary cities is intended to punish those who have the temerity to view these people as human beings possessing human dignity.  (The immigrants seem to have been indiscriminately targeted; El Paso bused 223 migrants to New York City many of whom were Venezuelan refugees.  Venezuelan-Americans, like Cuban-Americans, tend to favor Republican candidates.  Looks like the GOP successfully alienated a bunch of future voters.)

One key difference between then and now is that the Louisiana legislature refused to fund the 1960 campaign while the Florida legislature appropriated $12 million in support of the current effort.  (Governor Ron DeSantis has pledged to spend every last dollar.)  I am unsure of the cost to Texas taxpayers of Greg Abbott’s mischief, though indications point to private donations. 

One wrinkle is that this caper could actually benefit the receiving communities.  Many of the immigrants may be eligible for Temporary Protected Status.  If granted, those with TPS will be legally able to work.  While I’m not familiar with the labor economics of the various destinations, let’s assume that they are having the same hiring troubles as the rest of the country.  The arrival of the migrants may help alleviate labor shortages in at least some places.

Like all the other wingnut shenanigans of the last six-plus years, the bus-off will be superseded by even barmier escapades.  I’m not sure what they are meant to accomplish.  They’re not “triggering” or “owning” the libs.  All they’re doing is jerking each other off as they become less relevant over time, a development that cannot happen soon enough.

  

© 2022 The Unassuming Scholar 

Monarchy at the Crossroads: A Brief Assessment

Queen Elizabeth II has finally passed away.  Ninety-six years is a good run for any individual.  And as with so many of us, she was the sole British monarch of my lifetime up to this point.

Our fascination with the British monarchy has had a life of its own; a perennial feature of American pop culture for decades.  In my memory, it didn’t become a thing until the marriage of Charles and Diana.  It wasn’t so much him—then and now his bland persona made him easy to ignore.  It was the sudden glamour bestowed upon this mild-mannered nursery school teacher thrust suddenly into the limelight which caught the popular imagination.  Her divorce from her Prince, her sudden and tragic death, and the lives of her sons have kept the royals in the forefront of our collective consciousness.

But it is not my intention to dissect the royal family as cultural phenomenon.  The monarchy, for all its recently acquired media friendliness, possesses a fraught legacy.   While hardly at the fore of the media coverage, there has been a steady commentary in online media particularly concerning the larger implications of British imperialism.

Much has been written of the rapid decline of the British Empire since the Second World War.  Ensuring the survival of the metropole took precedence over preserving the overseas colonies, and rapid decolonization was a collateral effect once the guns fell silent in Europe.  Not that this was entirely a smooth process; one need only reference the Malayan Emergency, Mau Mau, and the Aden Emergency to recognize that Britain sought to maintain its possessions across the globe even as the anticolonial tide washed upon them. 

The vestiges of the Empire survive in the form of the Commonwealth, which is an institution in flux.  For much of its history, the Commonwealth served as a means for Britain to exert soft power over its former subjects.  However, one can also make the argument that principled actions such as the opposition to UDI in Rhodesia and apartheid in South Africa were as much the product of its recently independent members exerting influence over British policy in the court of public opinion.

The nature of the Commonwealth is changing, with countries without a history of British colonialism such as Mozambique and Rwanda coming into the fold.  Similarly, the stance of members toward the monarchy is changing.  Barbados was the latest to break with the Crown and became a republic last year. 

A discussion of the Empire’s decline and fall too often sidestep its origins.  England, and later Britain was arguably the originator of the Western settler state.  Medieval and early modern Ireland was the prototype.  Even though Ireland was the first Commonwealth country to withdraw, the Anglicization of its culture is permanent.  (Gaelic is an official language, but just about everyone speaks English exclusively.  Although there are identifiable cultural differences, the country, at least in the cities, is rather like Britain albeit with a different accent.) 

Consider the rest of the Anglosphere.  Indigenous peoples were displaced and subjected to genocide in North America, Australia, and New Zealand.  English-speaking Europeans form a substantial demographic in South Africa almost thirty years after majority rule.  In other places, they are a minority as they had been during the colonial era.  The only former colony to have achieved a near-purge of European settlers has been Zimbabwe, where one-fifth of one percent of the population is white.

So, the Queen’s passing does mark the end of an era.  It will probably also feed the fascination surrounding the royal-watching pastime.  Whether the new king and the surviving royals can maintain the future relevance of the monarchy is a separate question.  Britain’s future relevance post-Brexit is one as well.

 

© 2022 The Unassuming Scholar