Trump Regime Questions Citizenship of Latinx Citizens

In March of last year, I flagged that the Trump administration was signalling they would soon come after documented immigrants. As you may recall, it was something Steve Bannon said that raised the hairs on the back of my neck: "Don't we have a problem with legal immigration? Twenty percent of this country is immigrants. Is that not the beating heart of this problem?"

In the intervening year, Trump has empowered and institutionalized a nativist, white supremacist, anti-immigrant agenda that I have long been warning will underwrite a targeting of U.S. citizens.

And here we are.

Kevin Sieff at the Washington Post: U.S. Is Denying Passports to Americans Along the Border, Throwing Their Citizenship into Question.

On paper, he's a devoted U.S. citizen.

His official American birth certificate shows he was delivered by a midwife in Brownsville, at the southern tip of Texas. He spent his life wearing American uniforms: three years as a private in the Army, then as a cadet in the Border Patrol, and now as a state prison guard.

But when Juan, 40, applied to renew his U.S. passport this year, the government's response floored him. In a letter, the State Department said it didn't believe he was an American citizen.

As he would later learn, Juan is one of a growing number of people whose official birth records show they were born in the United States but who are now being denied passports — their citizenship suddenly thrown into question. The Trump administration is accusing hundreds, and possibly thousands, of Hispanics along the border of using fraudulent birth certificates since they were babies, and it is undertaking a widespread crackdown.

In a statement, the State Department said that it "has not changed policy or practice regarding the adjudication of passport applications," adding that "the U.S.-Mexico border region happens to be an area of the country where there has been a significant incidence of citizenship fraud."

"Significant incidence" is a relative term. It is a significant incidence compared to other parts of the country, where citizenship fraud is vanishly rare. But it is not objectively significant, meaning that it is not so widespread that it justifies universal suspicion.

The burden of this suspicion is placed on the person whose citizenship is being questioned to prove their citizenship — which isn't an easy task.

When Juan, the former soldier, received a letter from the State Department telling him it wasn't convinced that he was a U.S. citizen, it requested a range of obscure documents — evidence of his mother's prenatal care, his baptismal certificate, rental agreements from when he was a baby.

He managed to find some of those documents but weeks later received another denial. In a letter, the government said the information "did not establish your birth in the United States."

There are, of course, countless people who do not have access to any such documentation; who could not possibly prove that they were born in the United States, except for their birth certificate. If the government can challenge the veracity of a birth certificate without evidence of its falsification, lots of people are going to be left in a legal limbo which could eventually result in their legal citizenship being stripped from them, simply because they are unable to establish it to satisfy a government whose explicit objective is to challenge it.

At the moment, this nativist trash is being directed at Latinx people born along the southern border at a time in which midwives sometimes created fake birth certificates to credential babies as U.S. citizens. We have no earthly reason to believe that the Trump Regime won't expand this sickening campaign to any population they don't like.

We have every reason to believe that this nativist authoritarian president will come after anyone he feels doesn't belong here — like athletes who protest during the national anthem — and demand "proof" of one's citizenship, with the adequacy of that proof determined by the very people who are demanding it for sinister reasons.

This is deeply frightening. Most of all because this march of vile Othering continues apace, with most of this nation's citizens totally unaware of what's happening now — and what's coming, swelling in the nurturing incubator of their inattention.

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Two Ominous Signs of the Trump Regime's Expanding Authoritarianism

[Content Note: Nativism.]

In March of last year, I flagged that the Trump administration was signalling they would soon come after documented immigrants. As you may recall, it was something Steve Bannon said that raised the hairs on the back of my neck: "Don't we have a problem with legal immigration? Twenty percent of this country is immigrants. Is that not the beating heart of this problem?"

In the intervening year, Trump has empowered and institutionalized a nativist, white supremacist, anti-immigrant agenda that I have long been warning will underwrite a targeting of U.S. citizens.

In January, the administration did the previously unthinkable: Revoked a naturalized citizen's citizenship, reverting him to a lawful permanent resident and potentially making him subject to deportation. In May, a border patrol agent detained two women who are citizens and demanded to see ID because they were speaking Spanish in public. Recently, the president suggested that that people who protest state violence (police killings) should be removed from the country. And earlier this month, the Trump administration announced it was establishing a new federal office to strip citizenship from "Americans who are suspected of cheating to get their citizenship."

I have said before and will keep saying: This administration's (mis)treatment of undocumented immigrants is their canary in the coalmine. Their vile nativist campaign is intolerable on its face and must be strenuously resisted for its own reasons, but we must simultaneously understand that whatever they are doing to undocumented immigrants will be used to target others in the same way eventually. We must resist their nativist strategies not only because they are cruel and indecent and unjust, but also because if we fail to resist them, they will proliferate.

Indeed, they already are proliferating — and, as I have been urgently warning, the next target is documented immigrants.

Ronald Brownstein at CNN reports that the GOP increasingly opposes legal immigration (recall the above Bannon quote as you read this next part; emphasis mine):

The firestorm over the separation of children from their undocumented parents at the border has almost completely overshadowed another milestone in the long-running national immigration debate: Opposition to legal, as well as illegal, migration is hardening into a bedrock principle of the Republican Party.

With last week's vote in the House of Representatives on hardline immigration legislation from GOP Rep. Bob Goodlatte of Virginia, about three-fourths of Republicans in both the House and Senate have voted this year to cut legal immigration by about 40%. That would represent, by far, the largest reduction in legal immigration since Congress voted in 1924 to virtually shut off immigration for the next four decades.

And while each of the bills this year to slash legal immigration ultimately fell short of passage, their preponderant support among Republicans marked a telling shift in the GOP's center of gravity: The last time Congress seriously considered cuts in legal immigration during the 1990s, about three-fourths of Senate Republicans, and about one-third of House Republicans, opposed it.

"It tells me that the party is more interested in reducing the number of foreigners in the United States than in reducing illegal immigration," says David Bier, an immigration policy analyst at the libertarian Cato Institute.

...[T]he GOP's geographic center over the next few elections will tilt even more toward the places least affected by immigration. That would further strengthen the party's nativist elements at a time when Trump is already championing them. And that means, even as America inexorably grows more diverse, the party is likely to hurtle further away from the support for legal immigration championed by Republican presidents from Ronald Reagan through George W. Bush.

"I don't see any way to get back to it now that Republicans know where their base is on their issue," says Bier. "I would be surprised if you didn't see a more restrictive legal immigration plank than you already have in the GOP platform in 2020."

That is one ominous sign that Trump's authoritarianism, centered firmly around the violent othering of immigrants, is expanding. Here is the second, reported by Betsy Woodruff at the Daily Beast:

An immigration attorney said an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer broke her foot and locked her in a room early Tuesday morning in Kansas City, Missouri.

Andrea Martinez told The Daily Beast she was dropping off a 3-year-old immigrant at an ICE facility to be reunited with his mother before they are to be deported to Honduras. Martinez said she was accompanying the boy, his pregnant mother, and his father into an ICE field office but Martinez was denied access. That's when Martinez said she was "knocked to the ground and bloodied" by an ICE officer.

...Martinez said the ICE officer detained her and locked her in an office before calling the Federal Protective Service and "continually looked at my phone to make sure I wasn't recording him."

Martinez told The Daily Beast she suffered a fracture to her right foot.

Surely I'm not the only person who understands that government agents physically harming and detaining people who are trying to help the scapegoated population is both very familiar and very dangerous.

Responding to this nightmare with "civility" is not only insufficient; it's to be an accomplice to expanding malice.

I am part of an immigrant family, and I certainly hope you will make noise now. Do not wait.

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WE MUST RESIST: Undocumented Immigrants Are the Canaries in Trump's Despotic Coal Mine

[Content Note: Nativism; white supremacy; eliminationism; child abuse; violence.]

Donald Trump did not invent terrible immigration policy. U.S. immigration policy has been broken for a very long time. But he has empowered and institutionalized a nativist, white supremacist, anti-immigrant agenda that I have long been warning will underwrite a targeting of U.S. citizens.

In January, the administration did the previously unthinkable: Revoked a naturalized citizen's citizenship, reverting him to a lawful permanent resident and potentially making him subject to deportation. Last week, a border patrol agent detained two women who are citizens and demanded to see ID because they were speaking Spanish in public. This week, the president suggested that that people who protest state violence (police killings) should be removed from the country.

I have said before and will keep saying: This administration's (mis)treatment of undocumented immigrants is their canary in the coal mine. The targeting of undocumented immigrants is intolerable on its face, but understand that whatever they are doing to undocumented immigrants, they will target others in the same way eventually. We must resist their nativist strategies not only because they are cruel and indecent and unjust, but also because if we fail to resist them, they will proliferate.

We cannot turn our backs on undocumented immigrants.

A month ago, PBS' Frontline did a major piece about how the Department of Health and Human Services lost track of over a thousand children, with some of the "unaccompanied minors" they "released to family or other sponsors" ending up in the hands of human traffickers. EJ Montini, an AZCentral columnist, picked up the story earlier this week, which subsequently resulted in a month-old piece in the New York Times being recirculated and getting lots of attention today.

This heinous story is notable not only for the depth of depravity the United States government is exhibiting toward undocumented children, but for how we must understand what it means in the context of a nativist agenda that is being used for a practice run for the treatment of any and all "undesirables" in the population under authoritarian leadership.

We are meant to not care about undocumented children, lost in a system. And that is why, in addition to the basic decency of protecting children, we must urgently care for them, and what is being done to them.

On Twitter, Yonatan Zunger has written a chilling but necessary thread on this story, detailing the breathtaking scope of the harm and what history tells us may come next. I encourage you to read the entire thread, which begins at the link, but following is an excerpt:

If anyone was wondering why people have been sounding the alarm so hard about the complete lack of legal accountability of police, "they can disappear children by the thousands and nobody can do anything about it" would be why.

— (((Yonatan Zunger))) (@yonatanzunger) May 25, 2018

So the current run rate is probably around 20,000 children per year. Trump, Kelly (who, remember, headed DHS for Trump before being his chief of staff), and Sessions have all been very clear that they intend to grow and expand the program.

— (((Yonatan Zunger))) (@yonatanzunger) May 25, 2018

Hi. We're going to do some serious fucking analysis of this, making real engineering estimates, the way that I promise you ICE is. This is not going to be pleasant, if you were somehow expecting that.

— (((Yonatan Zunger))) (@yonatanzunger) May 25, 2018

[...]

So you would need to set up some kinds of facilities where large numbers of children could be warehoused, under guard, until ultimately… well, that's an interesting question that we'll come to in a moment. But first, if they wanted to scale, they'd need warehousing. So:

— (((Yonatan Zunger))) (@yonatanzunger) May 25, 2018

[...]

If you want to understand how these things have worked in the past, and feel like not sleeping for the next week or more, look up "Volkswagen baby nursery." I'm not going to link it; even thinking about reading that again makes me feel ill.

— (((Yonatan Zunger))) (@yonatanzunger) May 25, 2018

All of this, against a backdrop of the Attorney General of the United States publicly threatening to forcibly separate undocumented families, to detain children separate from their parents. To make them "unaccompanied minors," even if they are actually not.

And such separations are already happening:

A weeping mother has been forced to wear a yellow insignia (bracelet) as she is ripped away from her children indefinitely.

In the United States. By policy.

Read this story.https://t.co/kUdogZ2B6L pic.twitter.com/vQ7XutNDiR

— Adam Klasfeld (@KlasfeldReports) May 25, 2018

Meanwhile, ICE is destroying records of the abuses, even deaths, that happen to people in their custody:

ICE Plans to Start Destroying Records of Immigrant Abuse, Including Sexual Assault and Deaths in Custody https://t.co/pPVzjHXvxD via @aclu

— Garance Franke-Ruta (@thegarance) May 25, 2018

All of this is documented. It is not conjecture. It is not conspiracy theory. It is what's happening. Undocumented families, some of whom have made lives in this country for decades, are being ripped apart. Children are being separated from their parents. Children are being "lost" by the thousands. Records of mistreatment are being destroyed. The government is exploring larger detention facilities.


That is a photo of children "assigned to living areas separated by tall chain-linked fences and segregated by age and gender" — or, more honestly, children being kept in what looks like fucking dog kennels — in a detention center in Nogales, Arizona, where hundreds of children were being kept. And that photo is from 2014 — two years before Donald Trump assumed control of the presidency.

That's what our treatment of undocumented children looked like already under Obama. And now policy is being set by a president whose base doesn't believe this country should accept refugees, who himself calls undocumented immigrants "animals", and who thinks that demonizing Latinx people is a great joke.

During an Oval Office meeting last February, Trump acted as if he was at a rally, making up Hispanic names and noting crimes they might have committed -- saying the crowd would roar for deportations. Jared Kushner and Stephen Miller laughed. https://t.co/3rLF1J73q4 pic.twitter.com/N9SqiJkg1d

— Josh Dawsey (@jdawsey1) May 25, 2018

As Aphra_Behn noted yesterday, those of us "who are pointing out similarities between what's going on here and other authoritarian, racist regimes are trying to jolt people out of the Dream of American Exceptionalism."

It's not even that it could happen here. It is.

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Trump Opens His Filthy Yapper About the NFL's Terrible New Anthem Policy

[Content Note: Silencing; racism; othering.]

Yesterday, the NFL announced a horrendous new rule targeting player protests during the national anthem, which "allows teams and the league to impose discipline for those who protest publicly during the song. The new policy, announced after a two-day meeting of the league's 32 owners, leaves it to individual teams to discipline players for acts deemed disrespectful during the anthem but also gives the league wide discretion to fine teams for actions taken by players."

The "compromise" is that players can stay in the locker room during the anthem, without punishment.

First, a couple of thoughts about the rule itself:

The NFL's new policy requiring players to stand for the anthem or face a penalty needs to be recognized for what it is: Denying a fundamental right, and the full expression of one's humanity, to employees who are predominantly Black.

— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) May 23, 2018

Organized sports is frequently dehumanizing for the players, but rarely is it so brazenly so. https://t.co/cQyrY6v5jV

— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) May 23, 2018

Truly, don't come at me with some shit about how people don't have a right to stage political protest on the job. Playing the anthem before every game brings politics to their job, because the anthem is political, like it or not. Thus it's unfair to require players to be silent.

— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) May 23, 2018

Look no further for proof that playing the anthem before every game is political than the fact that *not playing the anthem before every game* has never been considered a serious option.

— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) May 23, 2018

Yes, facts do matter — and the fact is that telling people they can *only* be present for the anthem if they are willing to stand or can hide themselves away in the locker room is crap. Visibility of protest during the anthem is the entire point, and it's being denied. https://t.co/ml5RNNDCOY

— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) May 23, 2018

Defenders of this garbage can try to spin it any way they want, but the fact of the matter is that it's a policy designed to silence Black players and their allies who are using their visible platform to protest state-sanctioned violence against Black people.

Last night, Mike Pence weighed in, saying he considered the new policy "winning." And this morning, in an interview that aired on Fox & Friends, Donald Trump turned it up to 11, objecting even to the crappy locker room option and suggesting that players who take a knee during the anthem maybe "shouldn't be in the country."

Trump said he objected to a provision in the new policy that will allow players to stay in the locker room while the song is played, but added: "Still, I think it's good."

"You have to stand proudly for the national anthem [or] you shouldn't be playing, you shouldn't be there, maybe they shouldn't be in the country."

Let's be very clear about what Trump said here: He is suggesting that people who protest state violence (police killings) should be removed from the country; that their citizenships should be revoked.

Defenders will say, as they always do, that he was "joking," or that he was being hyperbolic to make a point, or it's just Trump being Trump, or what he really meant was that maybe people who don't like America should leave and go live somewhere else.

No. No.

It is entirely unacceptable for the President of the United States to suggest, in any fashion, that people exercising their rights risk no longer being part of this country's citizenry.

And it is equally as unacceptable to pretend that Donald Trump could have meant anything less than that, given the context of his nativist and white supremacist and authoritarian agenda.

What he said was a threat. And we cannot Occam's Big Paisley Tie it into anything less. The urgency of this threat demands that we acknowledge it for precisely what it is.

We cannot comfort ourselves by imagining that Trump meant something other than what he did.

Not now, not ever.

The inclination to give Donald Trump the benefit of the doubt, to extend him good will and good faith he doesn't deserve, to make all manner of excuse and explanation for his extremist ideas to convince oneself and others that he couldn't possibly really be saying what he seems to be saying is what has brought us to this point.

No more.

Trump has an exceptionally narrow view of who "belongs" in the United States, and he has now signaled that he does not believe people who engage in visible protest are among those who belong.

Let us discuss that honestly, and respond accordingly.

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Trump Doubles Down on "Animals" Comment; Members of His Administration Amplify the Eliminationism

[Content Note: Dehumanization; eliminationism; nativism.]

Last week, Donald Trump called undocumented immigrants "animals," then claimed he was only talking about members of the gang MS-13, as if dehumanizing, eliminationist language is okay just as long as it's directed at people you don't like.

Today, Trump traveled (back) to Long Island, where he launched into a gross diatribe, doubling down on his vicious rhetoric. He again called MS-13 "animals," lied about their having killed a police officer, and naturally continued to ignore that children are routinely roped into MS-13 and disallowed from leaving.

Further, Trump was joined by:

• ICE Deputy Director Thomas Homan, who defended and reiterated Trump's "animals" comment, saying: "I think you're being kind. Animals kill for survival. MS-13 kills for sport."


• Acting Assistant Attorney General John Cronan, who referred to members of MS-13 as "savages."


• Rep. Pete King, who called MS-13 members "horrible, vicious, rotten murderers."


• Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who reinforced Trump's comment on "alien children" — "They look so innocent. They're not innocent." — with this incoherent mess: "We're letting people in who are creating problems. We're letting people in who are gang members. We're also letting people in who are vulnerable. Many of these alien children who have no parents, no family structure...develop gang ties."

This is utterly vile.

I am genuinely sorry for the people who have been harmed, or whose loved ones have been harmed, by individual members of MS-13 — just as I am genuinely sorry for anyone who has been harmed by violence of any kind.

I couldn't be more filled with grief and anger about school shootings, and yet I do not use eliminationist rhetoric to dehumanize the misogynist and white supremacist groups with which they're frequently affiliated.

The president and members of his administration and members of his party can share those people's agony and rage without engaging in eliminationist rhetoric. (And let us note that they only "share" the agony and rage of people whose loss neatly coincides with their political agenda.)

But even if Trump et. al. are genuinely angry about the victims of MS-13: It is possible to be angry without engaging in othering.

* * *

On a final note, I just want to register my alarm that Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein was echoing Trump's language of "alien children," even if he tried to couch it with some measure of concern — especially given that FBI Director Christopher Wray oversaw the approval of Jared Kushner's security clearance today, too.

What really happened in that meeting Trump had with Wray and Rosenstein on Monday? Kush suddenly gets his security clearance and Rosenstein's out with Trump banging on about "alien children"? https://t.co/LwTVMpS1X3

— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) May 23, 2018

I don't like the optics here. It looks like Rosenstein and Wray went to the White House with heads full of steam and came away cowed and doing Trump's bidding very visibly.

The thing is, as you may recall, just a couple of weeks ago, Rosenstein said that people "have been making threats privately and publicly against me for quite some time, and I think they should understand by now, the Department of Justice is not going to be extorted."

I believed that. I don't think Rosenstein is easily cowed, at all.

So the fact that he said publicly and defiantly that he was being threatened, but wouldn't be deterred, makes me believe that Trump threatened him and Wray with something that wasn't directed at them personally.

That is, I think Trump threatened to do something to the citizenry. I don't know what it could be, but I can imagine him threatening anything from using the military on civilians to dismantling the FBI and Justice Department altogether.

(I mean: Kirstjen Nielsen is a Trumpian placeholder if ever I saw one. He wants Rudy Giuliani in there, running a national militarized law enforcement arm of the executive branch so bad even I can taste it.)

The point is, we often wonder where all the patriots have gone, with good reason. But patriots act on behalf of We the People. And they may be negotiating with a terrorist president who is holding us hostage.

And we don't even know it.

What we do know, however, is that Trump is capable of it. And far worse.

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Border Patrol Agent Detains Spanish-Speaking Citizens

[Content Note: Nativism.]

Donald Trump did not invent terrible immigration policy. U.S. immigration policy has been broken for a very long time. But he has empowered and institutionalized a nativist, white supremacist, anti-immigrant agenda that I have long been warning will underwrite a targeting of U.S. citizens.

I can't even tell you how much I wish I'd been wrong about that.

Amy B Wang at the Washington Post: A Border Patrol Agent Detained Two U.S. Citizens at a Gas Station After Hearing Them Speak Spanish.

A Montana woman said she plans to take legal action after a Border Patrol agent detained and questioned her and a friend — both U.S. citizens — when he overheard them speaking Spanish at a gas station.

The incident occurred early Wednesday morning at a convenience store in Havre, Mont., a town in the northern part of the state, near the border with Canada.

Ana Suda said she and her friend, Mimi Hernandez, were making a midnight run to the store to pick up eggs and milk. Both are Mexican American and speak fluent Spanish, and they had exchanged some words in Spanish while waiting in line to pay when a uniformed Border Patrol agent interrupted them, Suda said.

"We were just talking, and then I was going to pay," Suda told The Washington Post. "I looked up [and saw the agent], and then after that, he just requested my ID. I looked at him like, 'Are you serious?' He's like, 'Yeah, very serious.'"

Suda said she felt uncomfortable and began recording the encounter with her cellphone after they had moved into the parking lot. In the video Suda recorded, she asks the agent why he is detaining them, and he says it is specifically because he heard them speaking Spanish.

"Ma'am, the reason I asked you for your ID is because I came in here, and I saw that you guys are speaking Spanish, which is very unheard of up here," the agent can be heard saying in the video.

Suda asks whether they are being racially profiled; the agent says no.

"It has nothing to do with that," the agent tells her. "It's the fact that it has to do with you guys speaking Spanish in the store, in a state where it's predominantly English-speaking."

Utterly chilling. No one should be made to feel that they cannot speak a language other than English in the United States. But now official policy is apparently the equivalent of a racist shitbird screaming, "THIS IS AMERICA! SPEAK ENGLISH!" at people.

(Which, by the way, has been screamed at my husband, who merely speaks with accented English.)

When questioned about the incident by the WaPo, Border Patrol not only did not condemn their agent's actions, but reasserted his right of authority:

A representative from U.S. Customs and Border Protection told The Post the agency is reviewing the incident to ensure all appropriate policies were followed. Border Patrol agents are trained to decide to question individuals based on a variety of factors, the agency added.

"U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents and officers are committed to treating everyone with professionalism, dignity, and respect while enforcing the laws of the United States," the agency said. "Although most Border Patrol work is conducted in the immediate border area, agents have broad law enforcement authorities and are not limited to a specific geography within the United States. They have the authority to question individuals, make arrests, and take and consider evidence."

Demanding ID from anyone speaking languages other than English in public has fuck-all to do with enforcing U.S. law. That Customs and Border Protection doesn't seem to agree with that is deeply troubling.

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The Only Context to Trump's "Animals" Comment That Matters Is His Vile Nativist Agenda

[Content Note: Dehumanization; eliminationism; nativism; anti-Semitism.]

The apologia for Donald Trump's "animals" comment has begun, and the general shape it's taking is: "He wasn't talking about all undocumented immigrants; just members of MS-13!"

Here is the full context of President Trump’s “animals” comment during the immigration/sanctuary city roundtable, which came as a Sheriff was complaining about restrictions placed on ICE databases, and MS-13 gang members. pic.twitter.com/sI9uWXr1Sc

— Jake Tapper (@jaketapper) May 17, 2018

As you probably guessed, I have some thoughts about that.

"Here is the full context of the President of the United States using vile dehumanizing language against a population he has relentlessly targeted with lies, bigotry, othering, and displacement." Okay, thanks. https://t.co/jtVtAo13yM

— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) May 17, 2018

Here's more relevant context for Trump's eliminationist rhetoric. Just one example of the violent othering happening across the country. https://t.co/2VbqBHiB5m

— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) May 17, 2018

Trump has been narratively conflating undocumented immigrants with violent criminality since his very announcement address (at least). To parse that he's "only" talking about violent criminals ignores that he routinely suggests most undocumented immigrants ARE violent criminals.

— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) May 17, 2018

Exactly this. https://t.co/Jj4n1M9vsM

— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) May 17, 2018

Clearly when Hitler published, "Der Jude Kriminell" he was just speaking of criminal Jews and it wasn't part of a broader campaign to stoke racist fears. #Animals #MS13 pic.twitter.com/YPmOS4ifBH

— David M. Perry (@Lollardfish) May 17, 2018

Even if Trump didn't routinely conflate all undocumented immigrants with violent criminality, and even if his "animals" comment referred only to gang members, dehumanizing language ISN'T OKAY to use against anyone. It's especially dangerous in the mouths of political leaders.

— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) May 17, 2018

If you want to talk about context, let's talk instead about the context that is Trump's heinous, nativist, white supremacist agenda, and how his othering language furthers that agenda and endangers undocumented immigrants by whipping up resentments toward them.

— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) May 17, 2018

I resist this sinister trash with every molecule of my being. This is not okay. This is intolerable. And fuck anyone who tries to make it "acceptable," in any way.

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Trump Calls Undocumented Immigrants "Animals"

[Content Note: Dehumanization; eliminationism.]

During a roundtable on Sanctuary Cities today, Donald Trump said, referring to undocumented immigrants who have been deported, which includes children and refugees seeking asylum from violence: "These aren't people. These are animals."

President Trump during California #SanctuaryCities Roundtable: "These aren't people. These are animals."

Full video here: https://t.co/alyS47LI5V pic.twitter.com/ifXicTHHP0

— CSPAN (@cspan) May 16, 2018

We have people coming into the country — or trying to come in; we're stopping a lot of 'em. But we're taking people out of the country — you wouldn't believe how bad these people are. These aren't people. These are animals. And we're taking them out of the country at a level and at a rate that's never happened before.

And because of the weak laws, they come in fast, we get 'em, we release 'em, we get 'em again, we bring 'em out — it's crazy.

The dumbest laws, as I said before, the dumbest laws on immigration in the world. So we're gonna take care of it, Margaret. We'll get it done.

He speaks about undocumented immigrants as though they are vermin he's trying to keep from entering his house.

Trump's routine dehumanization of undocumented immigrants is what's called eliminationist rhetoric. It's the language that precedes genocides, if decent people don't urgently intervene. https://t.co/M6p3fvyIUz

— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) May 16, 2018

Note: This, too, is something on which Mike Pence is willing to abet in his quest for power.

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Trump Announces Plan to Militarize the Border

This was always going to be the inevitable destination of Donald Trump's white supremacist nativism:

Donald Trump aims to "immediately" send members of the national guard to protect the United States' southern border with Mexico, his administration announced on Wednesday.

Speaking to reporters at the White House, the homeland security secretary, Kirstjen Nielsen, said Trump has directed "the Department of Defense and the Department of Homeland Security to work with governors to deploy the National Guard" to the border.

Nielsen and the White House press secretary, Sarah Sanders, dodged questions about the sudden urgency, and whether the deployment of the national guard was tied to reports Trump had seen on Fox News about "a caravan" from Central America that was headed to the border.

Nielsen was unable to answer questions about the size of the deployment and the cost. She said the number of guardsmen called up "will be as many as needed to fill the gaps today." However, Nielsen told reporters "we do hope the deployment begins immediately."

On a conference call with reporters, a senior administration official told reporters that "we don't have a date" for the national guard to be deployed, saying: "This is the first step in a process."

She said that the function of the national guard on the border would "include everything from aerial surveillance and some of the support functions" for the border patrol.

"Probably." Oh. https://t.co/v4ICj7jYrz pic.twitter.com/2RLokGwRag

— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) April 4, 2018

This is quite obviously a terrible idea, for a dozen or so different reasons, chiefly because someone is going to get killed. Which is another inevitable consequence of the othering and dehumanization central to Trump's white supremacist nativist campaign.

When Sarah Huckabee Sanders was asked about the cost of this dangerous scheme, she gave one of her patented flip retorts: "I don't think you can put a cost on American life."

That's a bullshit answer, because it's a misdirection — transparency demands that American taxpayers know how much of our money is being spent under the auspices of "protecting" us — and it's a reprehensible answer, because embedded is such vile American exceptionalism that values the life of a human who happened to be born within U.S. borders more highly than the life of a human who wants desperately to live here.

As I have written before: Would that it took at least walking across the border to become an American citizen. We'd certainly have fewer citizens who used the gift of their unearned citizenry as a justification to behave like intolerant, isolationist scoundrels.

Donald Trump's dangerous and cruel pursuit of militarized bigotry would be detestable to me no matter what his personal circumstances, but there is an entire additional layer to my rage because he is the son and husband of immigrants.

There is precious little I have in common with Donald Trump, but one of the very few things we share is both being married to immigrants. I understand intellectually how a malicious bigot like Trump can exceptionalize his white European immigrant wife, but, emotionally, I will never be able to relate to someone who is part of an immigrant family and disgorges rank hostility and abject hatred for immigrants, undocumented or otherwise.

It makes me nauseated and outraged even to contemplate how unforgivable Trump's disposition is toward immigrants at our southern border. And Melania can eat shit for abetting this nightmare, too.

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Anti-Muslim Crimes Are Sharply Increasing

[Content Note: Islamophobia.]

I've made no bones about the fact that I hold the Republican candidates responsible for the uptick in Islamophobic attacks on people and property. And I'm glad to see that the New York Times is reporting on the demonstrable connection between their inflammatory rhetoric and the attacks on Muslim people (or people wrongly assumed to be Muslim).

Hate crimes against Muslim Americans and mosques across the United States have tripled in the wake of the terrorist attacks in Paris and San Bernardino, Calif., with dozens occurring within just a month, according to new data.

The spike includes assaults on hijab-wearing students; arsons and vandalism at mosques; and shootings and death threats at Islamic-owned businesses, an analysis by a California State University research group has found.

President Obama and civil rights leaders have warned about anecdotal evidence of a recent Muslim backlash, particularly in California. But the analysis is the first to document the rise, amid a crescendo of anti-Islamic statements from politicians.

...In recent years, there has been an average of 12.6 suspected hate crimes against Muslims in the United States a month, based on F.B.I. data analyzed by the research group.

But the rate of attacks has tripled since the attacks in Paris on Nov. 13 by Islamic State operatives, with 38 attacks regarded as anti-Islamic in nature, according to the analysis, which was based on reports from the news media and civil rights groups.

Eighteen of the episodes have come since the shooting in San Bernardino on Dec. 2 by a Muslim couple who were supporters of the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, which left 14 people dead.

Among the many reasons I'm relieved to see this connection getting wider attention is the fact it centers the harm being done to Muslim people because of this harmful rhetoric. Much of the progressive pushback against the Republicans' Islamophobic alarmism has centered on the argument that their hostile rhetoric makes "us" (which is supposed to mean all USians, but we all know how that works) less safe; that it will play into the hands of terrorists, who will use it as a recruiting tool.

I'm sure it will be used that way, but to imagine that these statements, no matter how outrageously odious they are, are enough on their own to radicalize Muslims into terrorists all by itself doesn't say much for what the people making the suggestion think of Muslims.

The premise that there is some sizable number of Muslims who can be convinced to do harm to civilians in the US just because they hear that Donald Trump said something horrible implicitly suggests "they're all on the precipice of becoming terrorists!"—and that's just as fucking gross as what the Republican candidates are saying. It's just not as overt.

The real danger in what the Republican candidates are saying is not that it will turn Muslims into terrorists who will harm Good White People; it's that it will turn Muslims into targets for white supremacist terrorism.

And that needs to be the center of our objections. Not some hypothetical harm that terrorists may do to "us," but the actual harm already being done to Muslims by "us."

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This Must Stop

[Content Note: Islamophobia; violence; eliminationism.]

At Buzzfeed, Alicia Melville-Smith and David Mack have documented seven acts of of anti-Muslim vandalism and/or threats in the US just since the IS attacks in Paris. This list does not, of course, include the personal assaults and countless acts of microaggressions perpetrated against Muslims—or people wrongly perceived to be Muslim, like Sikhs—in the same period.

This violence and harassment does not exist in a vacuum. It exists in a climate of fearmongering, scapegoating, and horrendous othering, led by the presidential candidates in one of the two major political parties in the country.

[Video may autoplay at link] Republican Ohio Governor John Kasich, the moderate in the group, proposed "creating a new government agency to push Judeo-Christian values around the world."

Which is heinous, and yet is nonetheless one of the least offensive proposals to come out of Republican leaders, whose House caucus last night approved legislation, sure to be vetoed by President Obama if it even makes it through the Senate, "that would make it even more difficult for refugees from Syria and Iraq to enter the United States," despite the fact that Syrian refugees "tend to provide extensive documents involving their day-to-day lives. They often arrive with family histories, military records and other information that can be useful for American authorities investigating them."

[Video may autoplay at first link] On the even more extreme end of the spectrum, Donald Trump said he would "absolutely implement" a database tracking Muslims in the US, and even entertained a proposal to require Muslims to carry a special form of identification.

(Apart from the fact that this is cruel, othering, and profoundly hostile to the ideals of the pluralistic society the US professes to be, what the fuck purpose does Donald Trump et. al. even imagine this would serve? Any human being who commits criminal violence isn't a criminal until the day that they are. Tracking people isn't effective prevention, even if it weren't colossally indecent.)

Ben Carson just went right for the most appalling dehumanization, and compared Syrian refugees to rabid dogs:

"For instance, you know, if there is a rabid dog running around your neighborhood, you're probably not going to assume something good about that dog, and you're probably gonna put your children out of the way," Carson told reporters during a campaign stop in Alabama on Thursday. "Doesn't mean that you hate all dogs by any stretch of the imagination."

"By the same token, we have to have in place screening mechanisms that allow us to determine who the mad dogs are, quite frankly," he continued, according to Politico. "Who are the people who wanna come in here and hurt us and wanna destroy us? Until we know how to do that, just like it would be foolish to put your child out in the neighborhood knowing that that was going on, it's foolish for us to accept people if we cannot have the appropriate type of screening."

I cannot say this any more plainly: Comparing human beings to rabid dogs, which are put down, is eliminationist rhetoric. There is a long history of comparing people to vermin, to insects, to other creatures we "get rid of," and it is rightly recognized as eliminationism. What Carson is saying here is no different.

This inflammatory rhetoric and legislative hostility is fostering a climate of hatred, intolerance, threats, and violence. It is irresponsible, it is gross, and it is harmful.

And it must stop.

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Quote of the Day

[Content Note: White/male/straight/cis supremacy; xenophobia; fearmongering; descriptions of violence.]

"I've been really angry and depressed for the last few months. I've finally pieced together why. I'm afraid. I'm not afraid of teenagers building clocks. I'm not afraid of women having economic empowerment or sexual freedom. I'm not afraid of weddings with two grooms/brides, trans folks using bathrooms, Latinos making a living, or Black people wearing hoodies and playing music. I'm afraid of an angry white dude with a gun who's been told repeatedly that HIS country is dying and HE needs to take it back."—Derrick Lemos, in "What 'Taking the Country back' means for the rest of us."

Yep. Specifically an angry white dude with a gun who believes he has a right to feel safe (as distinct from being safe) and has never had to spend a moment of his life sitting with fear.

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An Observation

[Content Note: Oppression; dehumanization.]

A funny thing happens every time I write something defending Chris Christie against fat hatred, or Sarah Palin against misogyny, or Dr. Ben Carson against racism, or any conservative from a marginalized population against prejudice and mockery on the basis of their identity.

I get a comment from some self-identified progressive, somewhere, telling me I'm wrong to defend them. That I'm hurting the cause. (What is "the cause," then?) That those conservatives wouldn't defend me in return. (As if I didn't know.)

Now, obviously these dispatches are indicative of a fundamental misunderstanding of how oppression works. This is social justice 101 stuff: Marginalizing people based on their identities only works (so to speak) because it monolithizes entire populations.

The reason fat jokes are used against Chris Christie is because they are shorthand that invokes shitty narratives against all fat people. And thus all fat people are harmed by those jokes used against any of us, because they are designed to demean all of us. Demeaning all of us is what gives those jokes their power.

But, additionally, the comments about how I shouldn't waste my time defending conservatives against bias reflect something rather more horrible than failing to understand the most basic tenets of social justice: The reason I defend anyone against bias is because they are people deserving of the dignity that one is afforded by judging them on their actions and policies, rather than judging them based on their identities.

The suggestion that someone does not deserve that defense because they are conservative necessarily rests in robbing them of their humanity.

Othering each other—progressives vs. conservatives, Blue States vs. Red States, Democrats vs. Republicans—is intrinsic to US politics, underwritten by this intractable two-party system. (Even though many of us don't have beliefs that fit neatly, or at all, into either party.) And that othering inevitably leads to dehumanization.

I resist that. I can see my ideological components as human beings, and I can still disagree with them vehemently on just about everything.

I don't know if I share a single political position in common with Chris Christie, but that doesn't prevent me from seeing him as a human being. Even if it prevents him from seeing me as one. Someone respecting my humanity isn't a prerequisite for my respecting theirs.

I expect more. Of myself.

And I can hold these two thoughts in my head at the same time: Chris Christie is a human being, and Chris Christie is a bully who espouses horrendo nightmare policy.

And yeah, I know he would not afford me the same consideration. But I aspire to do better than Chris Christie, not race him to the bottom.

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Other People's Identities Are Not Your Costume

[Content Note: Transphobia; othering.]

Every year, as Halloween approaches, I'm obliged to write a post about how other people's identities are not costumes. We're getting an early start this year, as Halloween retailers are stocking, or promising threatening to stock, Caitlyn Jenner costumes. I won't post a picture of the "unisex" costume being modeled by a man, but there is one at this link, if you are inclined to take a look at how dreadful it really is.

The outrage began earlier this month after we reported Spirit Costumes' intention to sell the costume — though it still hasn't been listed on the company's website.

But Spirit Halloween publicist Trisha Lombardo said she personally didn't see any problem with it.

"Caitlyn Jenner has proven to be the most important real-life superhero of the year, and Spirit Halloween is proud (of) the costume that celebrates her," she said at the time.

This? Is bullshit. The costume is, like most Halloween costumes, meant to be absurd and comical. No cis person will be buying this costume to honor, or "celebrate," Caitlyn Jenner. It's a mockery. And Spirit Halloween publicist Trisha Lombardo knows that, even if she wants to pretend she doesn't.

But the quality and intent of the costume isn't even especially relevant, because even if it were somehow tastefully done (whatever the fuck that means), the issue is treating Caitlyn Jenner's identity as a costume in the first place.

Other people's identities are not your costume. Rinse and repeat as many times as necessary. For fuck's sake.

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"The Other" Among Us

[Content Note: White supremacy; racist apologia.]

Something I'm seeing a lot of in discussions of Dylann Roof's terrorist act is white people expressing a shocked inability to understand him. Which, in some cases, is simply ignorance born of unexamined white privilege, but in lots of cases is the rehearsed expression of a performance all white people know, because we are all taught to do it as part of our indoctrination into white supremacy.

We pretend that we don't understand, in order to create distance from white people like Dylann Roof, to separate ourselves, and to uphold the lie that white supremacy isn't active and proximate in all of our lives.

All white people are intimately connected to white supremacy.

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OFFS

[Content Note: Sexual objectification.]

Halloween season seems to come earlier every year—and so does my annual Inappropriate Halloween Costumes post, whether it's costumes that uphold the rape culture; costumes that are just a shitty ethnic stereotype; costumes that appropriate people's identities; or some other gross manifestation of Othering for which Halloween is used an excuse.

This year's entry? Yet another in an ongoing series about how women's Halloween costumes have to be "sexy" versions of whatever. You can't just be a nurse—you've got to be a sexy nurse! You can't just be a witch—you've got to be a sexy witch! Etc.

(Unless you're fat. Then do not try to be sexy. If you're a fat woman, you're the costume.)

Behold: Sexy Frozen costumes.

While little girls will be trick-or-treating in Disney-trademarked Anna and Elsa costumes this Halloween, adult women now have the option of showing more skin while dressed as adult interpretations of the characters.

...Yes, even Olaf, the snowman voiced by Josh Gad, has been given a sexy makeover, complete with a fake carrot nose, thanks to the "Funny Snowman" costume.

I don't even.

One year, I asked Deeks what I should be for a Halloween party, and he immediately replied, "Sexy chupacabra." Which made me laugh for one million years, because it is the perfect commentary on the absurdity that is Halloween costumes for adult women.

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CNN Is a Disgrace

[Content Note: Racism; othering.]

What in the everloving shit is this, CNN?

Over video of Price William, Duchess Kate, and Prince George deplaning, Jeanne Moos, a middle-aged white female CNN contributor says in voiceover: "These days, it's usually the photo of little Prince George that gets all the attention, but even the new royal baby, arriving on his first official trip abroad, couldn't compete with what we're calling—" cut to still image of Duchess Kate shaking hands with a Māori man who is sporting a tatua (which is essentially a woven belt generally attached to a thong) to reveal traditional tattoos down his buttocks and thighs, accompanied by a disembodied shriek "—the royal bummer!"

As a cropped version of the image zooms in for a close-up, Moos continues: "Though, technically, the only one bumming was the warrior with his decorated buns exposed. Is that any way to welcome a future king and queen?!"

Cut to video of a group of Māori people welcoming Prince William and Duchess Kate with a haka (dance accompanied by chanting). Moos continues: "You betcha! It was a traditional New Zealand welcome by Māori dancers."

Cut to Moos in a studio, speaking directly to the camera and leaning way in so her nose is practically pressed against the lens: "Forget merely rubbing shoulders with the royals!"

Cut to video of Prince William and Duchess Kate greeting dignitaries with a traditional Māori hongi, which is pressing one's nose and forehead against another person's nose and forehead. Moos continues: "First the Prince, and then the Duchess, rubbed noses—" insert audio of a disembodied chant "—in a traditional greeting—" insert cropped image of Duchess Kate touching noses with an older man "—with Māori elders."

More audio of shouts and chants accompanied by no images of the people making the sounds; instead, video of Prince William and Duchess Kate walking on a grassy field with the elders.

Cut to video of Prince William bending over to pick up a dart, while maintaining eye contact with a warrior in a tatua also picking up a spear; the shot is angled for maximum view of the bending warrior's exposed backside. Moos continues: "At one point, Prince William had to meet a challenge by picking up a dart while maintaining eye contact to prove that he was friend, not foe."

Cut to more video of the haka greeting line.

Cut to video of former First Lady Laura Bush being greeted by a Māori soldier in Afghanistan, followed by his unit welcoming her with a haka. "Reminds us of the time Laura Bush was greeted by a soldier in short-shorts—part of a New Zealand contingent in Afghanistan, slapping and thrusting." Cut to Laura Bush smiling and putting on her sunglasses. "It was a welcome we described at the time as a cross between a Chippendales lap dance and—" cut to image of a Māori soldier leaping with a spear, then split-screened with a large bird doing a mating dance "—the mating dance of the emu."

Cut to video of various video clips of former President George W. Bush making an ass out of himself with tribal dancers, including his infamous jackassery on Malaria Awareness Day with Senegalese performers from the West African Dance Company. "We tend to love when leaders go native—" Cut to video of Hillary Clinton dancing with a group of people, most of whom are black women. "—or at least let their hair down."

Cut to video of Prince William and Duchess Kate shaking hands with Māori men and women in a receiving line. "For once, the Duchess' designer red coat by Catherine Walker wasn't the only outfit attracting attention."

Cut to video of the warrior who performed the ceremonial challenge with Prince William standing up and spinning. "What does a Prince do after meeting a guy in a thong?" Cut to video of Prince William adjusting his necktie. "He straightens his tie!" [Note: Prince William was just literally brushing some detritus off his tie. He was not embarrassedly adjusting his tie at all.]

Cut back to Moos in the studio, speaking directly to the camera. "Britain's Daily Mail had the perfect caption for the 'Duchess meets nearly naked warrior' moment." Cut back to still shot of Duchess Kate smiling while meeting the tattooed Māori man. "EYES FRONT, KATE! In response to that cheeky behind!" One more disembodied shout as the camera zooms in on his ass. "Jeanne Moos, CNN, New York."

I don't even have words for this racist, dehumanizing, othering, reprehensible mess.

A petition was set up asking Moos to apologize, which quickly gathered 25,000 signatures. Moos responded to the petition with this "apology":

"Duly noted," she said. "I do humour and satire, and I am truly sorry if the tone of my story offended anyone."

Oh, I see. I didn't realize that this was supposed to funny. Well. That changes everything NOTHING.

[H/T to my friend Ben, who got it from Kerry-anne.]

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Michele Bachmann Continues to Be the Worst

[Content Note: Homophobia.]

This is one of the most remarkable bits of conservative projection I've seen in awhile, which is really saying something:

[Republican Representative from Minnesota Michele Bachmann] told talk show host Lars Larson in an interview at CPAC that the gay community distorted the Arizona bill by making it about gay rights — even though the bill's sponsor himself said it was about same-sex marriage.

"There's nothing about gays in there, but the gay community decided to make this their measure," Bachmann said. "And the thing that I think is getting a little tiresome is the gay community have so bullied the American people and they have so intimidated politicians that politicians fear them and they think they get to dictate the agenda everywhere. Well, not with the Constitution you don't."

She added that gay people and "activist judges" are trying to take away her freedom: "If you want take away my religious liberties, you can advocate for that but you do it through the constitutional process and you don't intimidate and no politician should give away my religious liberties or yours."

Everything about this is obviously amazing—the gay community as the "bullies" who are trying to take away other people's freedoms; marriage equality framed as taking away other people's religious liberties—but my favorite (ahem) part, as always, is the casual othering in this ubiquitous rhetorical flourish: "The gay community have so bullied the American people." As if "gay people" and "American people" are mutually exclusive groups.

Only in the bizarro world of conservative projection is seeking equality "bullying," while telling an entire marginalized population they're not even legit citizens of their own country is Traditional Values.

These fucking people.

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"We"

[Content Note: Class-based othering.]

So, I'm reading this piece at Salon by "card-carrying member of the ACLU" John Haggerty, who recounts his experience spending "the entire month of October [watching] Fox News for approximately three hours every day, while at the same time strictly abstaining from any other sources of information about current events." And Haggerty makes some observations about Fox News that might not totally come as a surprise to anyone who's watching Fox News for 30 minutes or so.

That sounds unreasonably snarky, maybe. But I suspect someone without his privileges, i.e. someone among the kind of people routinely and aggressively targeted by Fox News as the People Who Are Ruining America, has a slightly different perspective on the conservative news outlet. It's a very different thing to audit Fox News on the basis of How It Does News Badly and to audit Fox News on the basis of How It Demonizes People Like Me.

So, okay, Haggerty and I aren't coming from the same place. But even acknowledging that profound difference in perspective, we're both (ostensibly) progressives. Which is why this passage felt particularly shocking to me:

Even in my short time watching Fox I found poverty fading from my mind as a problem. I was surprised one day when, during a discussion of deficit reduction (something that they talk about almost constantly), I found myself nodding in agreement that there was room to cut social programs that had already been radically slashed. Fox couldn't convince me to care about the issues they are obsessed with (Obama's treachery and the deficit, mostly), but by simply failing to mention a topic like income inequality, it managed to make me stop caring about the things it would prefer that I ignore.

I have an optimistic view of Americans. I think we are basically a kind and generous people—that if we are confronted with suffering, we are willing to act, even to sacrifice our own interests, in order to alleviate it. Perhaps, I began to think, we are not becoming progressively crueler and more callous, as it sometimes appears. Perhaps we have simply forgotten about the suffering all around us because we haven't been reminded of it lately.

We have forgotten about the suffering all around us because we haven't been reminded of it lately.

Who is the "we" and the "us" in that construction?

We know certainly that it is not the people who are actually suffering. All around us.

People who are suffering because of our catastrophically underfunded social safety net, because of high unemployment, because of crushing debt, because of lack of access to healthcare, because of predatory loans and bankruptcy and foreclosure, because we can't agree that people are entitled to food—those people haven't "forgotten" and do not need to be "reminded" of their own suffering.

I know that piece was supposed to make me care about the horrors of Fox News playing some terrible game of "Us vs. Them," but I'm frankly more concerned that "card-carrying members of the ACLU" are still mired in elitist philosophical musings about the Haves' disconnection from the Have-Nots, and blaming that disconnection on the goddamned news.

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Neat Headline

[Content Note: Bullying; othering; racism.]

There is a story out of professional football today about one member of the Miami Dolphins, Richie Incognito, a white man, having bullied, harassed, threatened, and racially slurred a fellow teammate, Jonathan Martin, a black man. Incognito sounds like a real fucking asshole, and, among the many other takeaways from this story, there is a moral about the carelessness with which are accepted appealing but unreliable narratives about the racial harmony found in professional locker rooms.

Anyway.

NBC News is featuring an article on Martin's story with this headline: "Big man bullied: Jonathan Martin reminds us that victims aren't always the little guys."

The article itself is quite good, but that headline—yiiiiiiikes. "Reminds us." Who is "us" in that construction? It sure isn't the "big men" who are bullied, who need no reminder that victims come in all sizes.

Thus is the article undermined by its own headline, which others the very victims the article seeks to recognize and include.

It's such an easy mistake to avoid. "Jonathan Martin's case underscores victims come in all sizes." Done. No implication that Martin himself isn't one of "us."

And it's gender-neutral, to boot.

This isn't a "little thing." Othering is the thing about bullying. And any responsible media reporting on bullying should make a modicum of effort to avoid it.

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