American conservatives are the absolute epitome of performative, meaningless legislation meant only to rile up their base. I don’t really need to prove that statement, since you remember the phrase “Freedom Fries” and that time when French’s mustard had to come out and say “The only thing French about us is our name.”

They sure are selective, though.

I’m old enough to remember when George W. Bush had planes fly around the United States to collect Saudi nationals and fly them to safety after 15 of the 19 9/11 terrorists were Saudis.

Now Republican extremists want to protect their apocalyptic vision of the end of the world (involving Israel, of course) so badly that they have not only conflated ALL Palestinians with Hamas, but they want to kick them out of the U.S.

They learned nothing from FDR’s internment of the Japanese. They clearly don’t pay attention to the FBI statistics that prove most terrorism in the United States is carried out by white Christian males.

Montana Representative Ryan Zinke introduced a bill on Thursday that would not only put a pause on visas for Palestinians, but revoke any visas issued since the beginning of October. Remember the “Muslim ban”? That.

Zinke seems convinced that Palestinians are going to use the immigration system to come here and get revenge for… doing what we’ve been doing for decades in Israel, I guess?

“I don’t trust the Biden Administration any more than I do the Palestinian Authority to screen who is allowed to come into the United States. This is the most anti-Hamas immigration legislation I have seen and it’s well deserved.”

Sure, he said “Hamas” in the press release. Oh, by the way, that press release was entitled “Zinke Introduces Bill to Expel Palestinians from the United States.” So not just Hamas, then.

While Palestinians comprise the biggest stateless community in the world, America has only taken in about 2,000 of them in he last couple of decades. That’s because they face massive immigration hurdles and aren’t even eligible for non-special visas.

Israelis, by contrast, no longer need visas to come to the United States.

The House Freedom Caucus, the logical offshoot of the Tea Party, is as racist as you can imagine. Marjorie Taylor Greene just forced a vote to censure Rep. Rashida Tlaib, the one Palestinian-American in Congress. That failed, just as this legislation will, but it stands as proof that Republicans have absolutely no shame.