Marty Robbins sang it true – The white cowboy, wanted for murder, risked returning for love of the Mexican maiden Fellina and died in her arms from the posse’s rifle shots…”one kiss and goodbye.”
That was the city I grew up in, that was the town where Anglos and Hispanics worked together, played together, married each other (my first wife was half Mexican) and generally got along just fine.
But today, the latest scene for mass murder in America.
Why would a stranger to El Paso. a young white man from Allen, Texas travel in a rage to El Paso intent on murdering innocent Hispanic people?
He posted an essay on line an hour before he began pulling the trigger of an AK-47 assault rifle complaining of “The Hispanic Invasion of Texas.” Okay, Texas belonged to Mexico before the Anglo Invasion in the early eighteen hundreds but what’s the deal in believing (and hating) there is a return Hispanic “Invasion” now?
Well, he was told Mexico was sending rapists to the United States. Nonsense.
He was told illegal Hispanic immigrants from Latin America were taking jobs from American citizens who wanted them. The data shows that is not true.
He was told that Hispanic gangs like MS-13 (which originated in Los Angeles not South of the border) were killing a great number of Americans. No, Federal authorities say the gang’s murders (mostly against fellow Hispanics) markedly declined last year and are so few as to be a rounding error in the national crime statistics.
He was told that caravans of Hispanics are “invading” our Country, caravans he says which include Muslim Al-Qaeda terrorists. There is no evidence of such terrorists in these caravans, only people seeking asylum from terrorism in their own countries and from poverty and hardship there, looking to that “shining city on the hill” that America has always been.
He was told four young women of color who are duly elected members of the U S House of Representatives hate America and should go back to the Countries they came from (three of them were born in the United States, the Country they came from, the fourth a naturalized U S citizen).
He was told all of this by the “highest authority” in the land, a man who along with assaults on Muslims and Blacks and “shithole Countries in Africa and other non-whites has relentlessly spread hatred and division on every side.
So, determined to act against “The Hispanic Invasion of Texas” why did this young man drive six hundred miles from his home in Allen, Texas to El Paso to carry out a massacre of Mexicans?
He had been told that El Paso was a “den of violent crime” committed by these illegal aliens who were storming across our border, told that by the same “highest authority” in the land who had come to El Paso to personally argue for his proposal to build a huge wall across the length of our Southern border.
Actually, with an average of 3.79 violent crimes for everyone thousand residents, El Paso was ranked last year as the sixth safest city in the Country but our “highest authority” has never paid attention to facts and those who believe what he says don’t know any better.
El Paso, then, was the perfect bullseye target in which to fight back against “The Hispanic Invasion of Texas.” And our white hot hate filled young man was ready.
Tonight, El Paso, Texas and the rest of the Country are grieving for the victims and the community in which they lived and died. And in the wider sense are grieving for the America with its values and sense of solidarity (E Pluribus Unum) which seems to be slipping away.
The debate over removing from civilian hands these deadly military assault rifles will be given new energy – someday a national consensus will triumph over the cruel and ignorant demands of the National Rifle Association.
And the usual calls for a rejection of hate and division when these violent acts occur are being heard. Let us hope that someday they will be answered.
One of them, eloquent in its words addressing this latest example of violent gun enabled national terrorism read “We must find a way to come together as a country to end this epidemic”
The author of this plea for unity is, believe it, none other than the “highest authority” in the land! This man who has done so much to encourage hatred, bigotry and has fanned the flames of white nationalism has the gall to admonish us to find a way to come together.
I know the way to begin coming together.
The present “highest authority” in the land must be removed from office by an election. He, all that he has stood for and those who have enabled him must be soundly defeated by an overwhelming majority of Americans.
I lay today’s massacre in El Paso at the feet of Donald J Trump. He has sowed the wind and we have reaped the whirlwind.
May God forgive him.
I cannot.