I guess it will never go away. I’m a member of a forum about football and figure now I’ll have to join a forum about baseball.

1. “But, as I say, most opponents of reform are not labor activists! There is undoubtedly a racist undercurrent at work in much of the anti-immigrant sentiment we are hearing these days.”

Are we to understand that there are only two possibilities here? With tacit venom toward the vast center, the author summarily dismisses any possibility that there are other dynamics at play, to wit, people who are neither racists nor labor activists, people who love the many Mexican (and other nationals) immigrants who enrich our nation’s life and culture but who have exhausted their patience with the wink-wink, nudge-nudge, we’ll-fix-it-later-after-the-mushroom-cloud indifference toward border security. Someone who sees merit in at least exerting some control over the border so as to ensure we know who is here and where we can find them is not by definition a racist, as Draper (and those who agree with him) surely imply - in fact, that’s too generous: the racism charge is explicit! - by statements such as #1. It is uncharitable and slanderous to stake out that position.

2. “Draper makes it very clear that we are all implicated in the ‘illegalities’ of the current situation, just as was the case with his grandfather. Turning all of the fury, the rhetoric and the animosity against the undocumented worker demonstrates the worst sort of our nation’s hypocritical denial.”

Emphatically no. This is a classic, political dodge. If we are all responsible, then as a practical matter noone is responsible at all. There is plenty of cynicism to be found across the political spectrum, to be sure, but what is also clear is that we elect representatives on the basis of what they tell us they will do, and when they don’t do it (for the sake of ensuring their political futures), we are left holding the bag; and then we replace them with someone who does the same thing.

This “we are all guilty” nonsense is tiresome and loathsome. Our so-called “leaders” simply do not have the political will to do what needs to be done. There is no shortage of creative ideas on the table to solve these problems incrementally but rigorously and with compassion for the vulnerable. In the meantime, certain “activists” need to quit preaching their self-righteousness at us under the well-worn rhetorical guise, pretending to lump themselves in with the “all of us” who are “guilty” but inwardly affirming their innocence because they write tear-jerking articles in some rag.

BTW, the “fury” is not directed primarily at the workers, but at the incestuous economic, political and bureaucratic realities that invite - and reward, make no mistake about it - some immigrants’ illegal behavior. Draper oughta measure his words more carefully. Anger and frustration are not hate, even though it is convenient to equate them with it.

qb