We've heard a ton about "optics" from the media and pundits lately. You know, usual blather about how emails don't "look good" for Hillary. Or how Donald Trump had "good stagecraft" that helped his image, with the President of Mexico, yesterday.
The funny/not funny thing about that is that media and pundits think they're being observant.
Yet, their obsession over optics caused them to largely ignore something Donald Trump actually said last night, which is something about as racist and ethnocentrist as we have seen in national party politics in nearly 100 years.
We've admitted 59 million immigrants to the United States between 1965 and 2015. Many of these arrivals have greatly enriched our country. So true. But we now have an obligation to them and to their children to control future immigration as we are following, if you think, previous immigration waves...
To keep immigration levels measured by population share within historical norms. To select immigrants based on their likelihood of success in U.S. society and their ability to be financially self- sufficient.
We take anybody. Come on in, anybody. Just come on in. Not anymore.
What's he mean by 1965? Well, reading most of the news, this morning, you'd never know. But I guarantee you that most KKK members and neo-Nazis know exactly what he is talking about.
In 1965, we passed the Immigration and Nationality Act. That law essentially repealed the crux of a 1920s law called the Emergency Quota Act.
The Emergency Quota Act (and a 1924 bill that slightly amended it) set quotas on immigration that were based on the number of people of a nationality currently in a country. The effect and intent of the law was abundantly clear. America was mostly white and European, and the law was going to keep it that way, by putting low and hard caps on "others," while opening the doors to more white Europeans.
The 1965 law opened up the doors to more immigrants, by bringing in people on the basis of their ability to contribute, and family they had here. It led to larger numbers of Asians, Latin Americans, and Africans immigrating to America.
So, when Donald Trump points to 1965 and says we need to reform that law, "To keep immigration levels measured by population share within historical norms," he means, "We need to keep America from becoming any more less white than it currently is."
That's not all.
In fact, taken with his pledge to deport all undocumented immigrants, overwhelmingly Hispanic, Trump is proposing to increase the share of the population that's represented by whites.
Let that sink in for a moment.
Forget the optics. Forget the shouting. Look at the proposal he laid out.
It is the biggest gift to white nationalists in 100 years. A return to white dominance.
How do I know? Because people like David Duke have been pushing for it, and white nationalists are eating it up.
From the neo-Nazi (aka "alt-right") Daily Stormer:
If Trump is elected, he is going to need someone pushing things further right than he is. When David Duke is saying "we need to completely repeal the 1965 immigration act and issue an executive order stating that all citizenship awarded to non-Whites after 1965 was fraud and needs to be stripped from those awarded it," all of the sudden Trump banning and expelling Moslems becomes normal.
Just to make sure people really understood what he was saying, as a parting shot, Donald Trump said, "We take anybody. Come on in, anybody. Just come on in. Not anymore."
A direct rebuke of, "Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"
A little on the nose, sure.
But, amazingly, apparently not on the nose enough to catch the attention of a media so insanely blinded by the "optics" for which they're looking.