The solution

I’m pretty sure Bertolt Brecht was exercising his gift for sarcasm in “The Solution” when he offered a modest proposal to address the people’s loss of confidence in the government. While the government asserted it could regain confidence in the people only by redoubled efforts, Brecht asked:

Would it not be easier
In that case for the government
To dissolve the people
And elect another?

We seem to be living out a variation of “The Solution.” In any event, Brecht’s poem comes to mind in connection with Mexican political scientist Fredo Arias-King’s comments, quoted by Mark Krikorian in “Amnesty is the best revenge.”

While a representative for Vicente Fox’s ultimately successful campaign for presidency of that country, Krikorian recalls, Mexican political scientist Fredo Arias-King met with almost 80 United States senators and representatives, discussing immigration in depth with most of them. Krikorian offer Arias-King’s observation regarding what he calls “today’s amnesty scramble” (with emphases added by Krikorian):

Also curiously, the Republican enthusiasm for increased immigration also was not so much about voting in the end, even with “converted” Latinos. Instead, these legislators seemingly believed that they could weaken the restraining and frustrating straightjacket devised by the Founding Fathers and abetted by American norms. In that idealized “new” United States, political uncertainty, demanding constituents, difficult elections, and accountability in general would “go away” after tinkering with the People, who have given lawmakers their privileges but who, like a Sword of Damocles, can also “unfairly” take them away. Hispanics would acquiesce and assist in the “natural progress” of these legislators to remain in power and increase the scope of that power. In this sense, Republicans and Democrats were similar.

Krikorian has more at the link, but that is a very powerful observation.

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