Can you spot the missing word in this section of GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump’s immigration “reform” plan?
Did you miss it?
“…we need to companies to hire from the domestic pool of the unemployed.”
The missing word is force, and it’s the only word that fits, as in: We need to force companies to hire from the domestic pool of the unemployed.
Encourage? C’mon. Gently cajole? No way; this is Trump we’re talking about. Not his style.
It’s no surprise that the campaign never bothered to fill in the blank, and let a benignly unspecified “requirement” stand as placeholder until another day. In the meantime, there are other, quite forceful parts of the plan to distract Trump supporters’ attention from the slippery omission: Trump pledges to force Mexico to build a wall along the border. He’s going to force 11 million undocumented Mexicans to leave this country.
Read on, and he’s going to [DON’T GO THERE!] American employers to hire unemployed Americans.
Can you imagine the Trump campaign hovering over that sentence as it tried to figure out how to phrase it so it didn’t sound so…dictatorial? So…bullying? I can.
Because, really, who are these companies that Trump speaks of? I’d venture that it’s the less-tolerant wing of small business America, tradesmen and men in construction, those sorts of professions. The Iran-irate Joe the Plumbers in red-blooded American hypocrite trucks, cruising the “Real America” of Sarah Palin in search of the nearest Home Depot of cheap Mexican labor. Paleface forty-somethings with a resentful mortgage payment that’s due and an open-carry hostility to those shifting electoral demographics, along those lines.
Does Trump believe he’s really going to force that voting bloc to hire unemployed Americans after what they’ve been through these past six years?
I think it’s fair to say there’s a lot of touchiness regarding the use of force under President Barack Obama coming from the president’s detractors out there in the “Real America.” To wit: Why should I be forced to buy health insurance, if my preference is to stand in line at the emergency room with a don’t Tread on Me flag wrapped around my gaping wound of victimization?
Or, why should I be forced to send my children to a Michelle Obama fat camp, where they will be forced to eat granola bars and recite the Internationale at top volume?
Force is a loaded word—so loaded that it’s just about to go off in my hand—and we know who the real dictator is here. Hint: Trump smirks that he was born in Kenya, and that he’s a stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid man.
The omission is part and parcel of the overarch that defines Trump’s entire campaign: Elect me, and we’ll fill in the blanks later as we strive to make America hate again.
Why force the issue if nobody notices in the meantime?
