Kris Kobach is a white man from Kansas.

There.

Enough said, basically, because according to Right-Wing Watch, Kris Kobach says that “Being an Americans means being assimilated.”

First off, sounding like the Borg ought to be a red flag to old Kris, right there. But being an American-Borg is right up Kris’s alley. This is the type of thing that could only be said by a white man from Kansas.

First, you will recall that Kris Kobach is the former Kansas Secretary of State, former candidate for Kansas Governor, and former head of Trump’s committee on election security. He is also running for the senate from Kansas this year, which makes this guy worth watching closely – though he’d likely lose, which is good.

Anyway.

Kris has always been as “anti-immigrant” as one can get. That’s why Trump loved him enough to attempt to put him on an election security committee that failed because they rejected Democrats, back when that still looked bad.

But Kris’s beliefs on “assimilation” do not necessarily align with his words or his actual true beliefs, as is obvious from his recent quote.

Kobach appeared on “Breitbart News Daily” with Alex Marlow Friday to share his criticisms of the New Way Forward Act … Pro-immigration advocates claim the bill will lessen legal injustices for undocumented immigrants and break the prison-to-deportation pipeline. Marlow called the bill one of “the most insane” pieces of legislation he had ever heard about and proof that the Democratic Party “hates the country” and wants to “undo America.”

Kobach said that Democrats believe “America is just a place on a map” and that people become Americans by simply coming to the United States.

No. Wrong.

Democrats right now believe in what the United States actually stands for more than the Republicans.

“That undoes the entire notion of what it is to be an American,” Kobach said. “Being an American means being assimilated and adopting what the scholar Samuel Huntington called the ‘American creed.’ It was a series of values that you are assimilated into, you adopt it, things like the rule of law, constitutionalism, individualism.”

Absolute bullshit.

No, not the part about needing to believe in the rule of law, constitutionalism and … well “individualism” is a Republican value – as defined by Republicans – more so than an American one, but right now we’re talking about buying into the constitution and rule of law.

Kobach is actually offended by Latino communities that retain much of their Latino heritage. He is offended by Muslims that retain much of their Muslim heritage. And he is offended by Indians that retain much of the heritage of India. Kobach is actually talking about cultural heritage, not commitment to the rule of law or the constitution, that’s why he used the word “assimilation,” because otherwise he’d use a word like “commitment.”

Right now, the Republicans are busy destroying the constitution and rule of law. Immigrants and Democrats are the ones desperate to uphold it. Trump is the one screaming about judges throwing out his immigration policies as unconstitutional, he is the one denying people refugee status to which they are entitled (at least to a fair hearing), and he is the one against citizenship for all born in American, which is actually IN the constitution.

The only thing that infuriates Kobach is that many of these people are not white men from Kansas, Kobach’s self-serving definition of “real Americans.” They are Hispanics in a Hispanic area of L.A., they are Pakistanis in and around other Pakistanis in New York, or they are Chinese in San Francisco’s Chinatown. Kobach isn’t concerned about an immigrant like me – a white runt from western Canada.

I believe in all the things Kobach says an immigrant must believe in. I just know that the new immigrants I described came here precisely because of those constitutional guarantees and care more about their application than Kobach.

After all, the constitution and rule of law are values that protect the individual from the power of the state, and state power is not oppressing white men from Kansas. Oppression comes from instruments of the state like Kris Kobach.

****

Peace, y’all

Jason

[email protected] and on Twitter @MiciakZoom