Laura Ingraham pretends her words have no meaning

So Fox News’ Laura Ingraham went on a long rant about how “in some parts of the country it does seem like the America that we know and love doesn’t exist anymore. Massive demographic changes have been foisted on the American people and they’re changes that none of us ever voted for and most of us don’t like. From Virginia to California, we see stark examples of how radically in some ways the country has changed. Now, much of this is related to both illegal and in some cases legal immigration that of course progressives love.”

In a strange way, she’s right, just not the way she thinks. The America I know and love doesn’t exist in some parts of the country. The parts where they hate and fear Hispanics, adore Trump and desperately fear equality for non-whites. Sure, those parts have always been there, but at least when I was a teen we were lurching, in awkward baby steps, toward greater equality for all, back before the right-wing began pushing back in favor of white supremacy in the 1980s. Back then, while immigration had a lot of opposition, there was also pride that someone from a “shithole country” would want to come here and start fresh. When the Statue of Liberty was still “the mother of exiles.”

Ingraham’s anti-immigrant screed (which also included bashing Ocasio-Cortez) got a thumbs-up from David Duke. Apparently being so blatantly racist didn’t suit whatever Ingraham’s target demographic is, so she promptly announced it had “nothing to do with race.” Nope, she was upset because “the rule of law, meaning secure borders, is something that used to bind our country together …, I made explicitly clear that my commentary had nothing to do with race or ethnicity, but rather a shared goal of keeping America safe and her citizens safe and prosperous.”

Um, no, talking about demographic change is about race. It’s nothing to do with secure borders, particularly when she cites legal immigration as part of the problem. This is a standard racist dog whistle, pretending they’re concerned about legal immigration rather than America having more Hispanics than they want. It’s why even though I don’t like illegal immigration I’ll never sign on with anti-immigrant groups. I’d be fine if we had the same number of people coming in legally; most of them wouldn’t. Likewise, I suspect the stuff about keeping America safe references the constant alt.right theme that white people need safe spaces, by which they mean anyone who isn’t them should be excluded from everywhere white people want to be.

Even if she wasn’t dog-whistling in her apology (“See, alt.righties, I’m still one of you!”) her apology is bullshit. What she said simply doesn’t mean what she claims it does. It’s roughly as convincing as Jordan Peterson explaining when he calls for enforced monogamy to solve the incel problem, he obviously didn’t mean we should enforce monogamy. Like Ingraham, I guess his career still depends on not being caught crossing certains lines.