Las Vegas Sun

March 28, 2024

It’s the border with Canada we should fear. Who knew?

I’m having trouble finding an illegal Canadian.

Not for a lack of trying, though. Peering into the trucks carrying work crews and gardeners down the freeways at dawn, I’ve looked. Swinging past the day-laborer gathering points, I’ve looked. Not a single conspicuous Canadian, just the usual Hispanics, or, as Sharron Angle knows them, Asians.

Then again, I’m new to this. I haven’t been too concerned about the Canadian Menace — never thought of it as more than the Canadian Annoyance — until Angle exposed its real importance.

Last week, in the course of telling Rancho High School’s Hispanic Student Union that her anti-immigration ads aren’t race-baiting Hispanics, she dropped some startling knowledge on them.

No, not when she told them, “I don’t know that all of you are Latino. Some of you look a little more Asian to me.” (Her way of explaining that just because some people — say, the kind you might see in a fear-mongering campaign ad — look Latino, doesn’t mean they are Latino.)

No, not when she told them, “I’ve been called the first Asian legislator in our Nevada State Assembly.” (Her way of … aw, hell, I won’t even guess.)

No, I mean when she told them, “What we know is that our northern border is where the terrorists came through. That’s the most porous border that we have.”

Huh. Arizona, you must feel pretty foolish right now.

That her statement contravenes the facts and ignores history shouldn’t surprise anyone, and I don’t mean that solely as a shot at Angle. (Indeed, others, including Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, have made the same mistake.) Reality always takes a heavy beating at election time, from typhoons of spin, brigades of top-shelf liars and a vast floor show of empty spectacle tricked up as meaningful “discussion.” Pretty much every candidate is culpable.

The result is a zero-gravity political environment where facts, counter facts, fictions, exaggerations and slabs of baloney all float around a populace that’s often too stunned (or lazy) or lacking in resources (or lazy) or simply too partisan to wheat/chaff the whole mess down to reliable, truthful, usable information. Just add tea and it gets really crazy.

In that atmosphere, a politician can say almost anything with only a minor risk of consequences. Angle’s series of jaw-droppers, from “Second Amendment remedies” to this, hasn’t cost her much traction in the polling.

Every campaign season I say that the distortion effect is worse than last time. And, well, I’m saying it again. Maybe it’s because the Reid-Angle campaign is right here, in our faces. But no doubt: It’s worse this year.

“This is the most prickly, partisan, toxic atmosphere that I’ve ever served in,” Sen. Barbara Mikulski, D-Md., told Esquire.com. “It’s not constructive for democracy, and certainly not constructive to solving our problems.”

Still, sometimes facts are facts:

• The men in Angle’s ad are Hispanic.

• Angle not only isn’t the first Asian Assembly member, she isn’t Asian. (A reporter once said she looked Asian, her campaign explained later, as if that actually explained anything.)

• The terrorists didn’t come through Canada. Here’s Ambassador Gary Doer, from his tart response to Angle: “The 9/11 Commission Report in 2004 and a report on Canada-U.S. Relations of May 15, 2007, by the Congressional Research Service both confirmed that ‘none of the 19 September 11 hijackers entered (the United States) by Canada.’ ” (Full text available on theatlantic.com).

Until the next ridiculous utterance by a candidate, border-jumping Canadians have supplanted Viagra-gobbling inmates as the personification of manipulated truth, circa 2010. I imagine them, fed up with access to health care and Blue Jays baseball, slipping into Wyoming or North Dakota, bent on taking American jobs.

In his letter, Doer pointed out that agencies on both sides of the border work closely on security issues, and noted that Canadian tourists dump plenty of money in Nevada. He closed with a mix of rebuff and wishful thinking:

“I can assure you that Canada takes border security very seriously and trust you will see fit to set the record straight.”

I’m sure she’ll get right to it, maybe around Nov. 3.

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