America Invaded by the Gullible

Posted on December 28, 2003 in Folly Watch Immigration

The only thing we have to fear is Fear itself.
-Franklin Delano Roosevelt

From time to time, it’s a good thing to take a look at the greater follies of our time. These usually don’t make it to CNN or even Fox. Most of them have to do with things happening in and around our borders. For example, there’s the tale of black uniformed troops in British Columbia and the Pacific Northwest. These troops apparently cohabitat with Bigfoot in large underground bases staffed by Russians. (Some fashions just don’t go away.)

We’re not safe in the other direction, either. Reports from parts of New Mexico where the peyote cactus is known to grow place thousands of Chinese troops maneuvering inside our territory!:

We have spoken with two (2) local Border Patrol agents who have come into face-to-face contact with Chinese military troops doing maneuvers 15 miles north of the US-Mexican border. This actually puts those troops 15 miles directly south of our home.

These two agents have told us that they have encountered three to four thousand troops numerous times. They stated that they call headquarters who in turn calls a local covert US Marine unit that wanders around the desert along the border in this area.

The Marines meet the Border Patrol agents, talk with the Chinese officers, slap backs and shake hands. Then the Chinese about-face and return south across the border.

Isn’t it nice to know that we can engage the enemy in combat with no bloodshed?

Other sources claim that the troops aren’t Chinese or Cuban or North Korean, but Mexican:

“We are in state of war,” Edward Nelson, chairman of U.S. Border Control, told Soldier of Fortune magazine. “And we are fighting enemies who have brought the battle to our shores. If ever there was a time for the United States to put troops on the border, it is now.”

Let me say that I don’t see these views unquestioningly believed in by the Right. I give even the worst of Fox News credit for not sucking up these lies and disseminating them. The stories appear mostly in the fringe press, in magazines such as Soldier of Fortune.

Those who report Mexican Humvees crossing the border in remote places rarely provide anything other than anecdotal evidence. Do they forget the chain link, barbed wire fence that extends from San Diego to El Paso? Any incursion by something the size of a Humvee would be noticeable — there’d be a massive hole and tracks.

We can laugh off these reports except for two facts: first, so-called “citizens’ militias” have been using them as an excuse to patrol the border and carry out acts of vigilante justice against unarmed Latinos and Latinas coming into the country for no other purpose than to earn a decent living wage. Second, they provide a high benchmark for ridiculous claims made by the Bush Administration and other scoundrels seeking power. It wasn’t so long ago that Californians bought the lie that MECHA — which helps Latino students get a decent education and a sense of ethnic pride — was a terrorist organization. It wasn’t so long ago that we were led into a war on the premise that Iraq had Weapons of Mass Destruction. Where we reject the word of the border vigilantes out of hand, we all too eagerly accept without question the wild stories of those whose authority derives from nothing other than their office stationary and their faces on our television screens.

Think of it this way: if Bush claimed that the Mexican Army was invading us, would we not go to war tomorrow?

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Here’s a compelling theory about the black helicopter phenomenon that mostly makes sense to me.