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As Goes Arizona, Whither Goes the Nation?
Our sitting governor gets stumped during the "introductions" portion of a televised debate, winds up righting herself with the glorious phrase, "I have did everything I could do," and then proceeds to storm out of a post-debate media session when the questions get too hard. The federal government has sued our swaggering Sheriff Joe Arpaio for failing to comply with information requests pertinent to a wider investigation over his Kafkaesque policies and practices. And State Sen. Russell Pearce, sponsor of the infamous SB 1070, continues to prattle on about "anchor babies" and the need to abolish the 14th Amendment to save the republic.
This might all be funny if it wasn't indicative of a pattern that is being emulated in other states.
Even after her gut-wrenching and now legendary "pregnant pause" during the debate, Jan Brewer still leads her Democratic rival Terry Goddard by double-digits in the polls largely due to the mere fact that she signed SB 1070 into law. No wonder candidates for high office from Florida to California (both states with significant Hispanic populations) are parroting this strategy and explicitly running on an anti-immigrant platform. From the Eastern Seaboard to the Rust Belt, states are looking to imitate Arizona's "zero tolerance" approach to immigration (an apt phrasing if ever there was one). Even on a popular train route across the northern U.S., which doesn't cross any borders, passengers are subjected to routine "where are your papers?" inquiries based largely on their outward appearance.
The truly remarkable thing about this metastasizing xenophobia is that it is based entirely on empirical falsehoods, by most respectable accounts.
Illegal immigration in the U.S. has been sharply declining over the past decade. Violence on the U.S. side of the border with Mexico has likewise been steadily dropping. Crime rates among immigrant communities are on par with or lower than those with similar demographics. Immigrants (legal and illegal alike) put more into the public coffers than they take out through social services. Obviously we can play these sorts of "lies, damn lies, and statistics" games indefinitely, going back and forth citing studies and sources to support divergent positions. But this type of "battle of the experts" bantering gets us nowhere productive, and misses the larger points that most need our attention.
Before speaking to some of those "bigger picture" issues, a few more salient lessons from the desert are in order before they wash up on your local shores.
It turns out that the governor's inner circle of advisors includes a number with various personal and professional stakes in the prison-expanding revenues likely to be generated by the influx of immigrant detainees yielded by SB 1070. The governor is guided by lobbyists and close operatives of the Corrections Corporation of America, which capitalizes to the tune of millions per month on warehousing transferred undocumented individuals. While the racialized nature of "breathing while brown" laws is obvious, equally so is the financially interlocking character of the legislative parties involved and their pecuniary interests. It is likely that similarly dubious connections exist whenever race-baiting politicians fan the flames of ignorance and persecution.
Another intriguing wrinkle from the annals of Arizona is the blatant hijacking of the Green Party ballot line, ostensibly by Republican operatives with a stake in siphoning votes from Democrats in contested districts and generally gumming up the electoral works with more platforms for their narrow ideology. Under a quirk in Arizona law that allows individuals to appear on the general ballot if they receive even a single vote (their own, perhaps) in an open primary without an official minor party nominee, Republicans managed to place stealth candidates on the roster in a number of contests around the state. Knowing that some left-leaning voters will choose the Green candidate without further inspecting their actual views and values, this could be sufficient to tip the balance in close races toward the Republicans. And under the state's Clean Elections law, these calculating efforts even wind up being funded by the taxpayers.
I suspect that some of these tales may resonate with themes prevalent in your area. Or soon will.
The tack of "blaming the victim" and passing the scapegoating buck down to the lower rungs of the social ladder is a tried-and-true political ploy. In a time when powerful interests have been consolidating their reign through various forms of legal chicanery and open financial thievery, we are likely to see (and have in fact seen) a rise in overt xenophobia to deflect our outrage from the robber barons to the huddled masses. Sociologists sometimes call this a "moral panic" when it reaches widespread levels of knee-jerk persecution of "the other" - but it might more aptly be called an "immoral panic" since its architects are happy to advance their entrepreneurial interests at the expense of vulnerable segments of the populations. Most horrifyingly, this tack sometimes comes with bloodshed, hate crimes, and other forms of victimization in its wake.
You may be tempted to buy into the notion that "illegal immigrants" and other "undesirables" are the source of all our social ills and economic woes. Perhaps your fear in these uncertain times motivates a subtle embrace of such notions. The sensationalization of crimes by people of color - while the crimes of the well-to-do go far less reported - contributes to an air of demonization. The power elite are largely hidden from view and immune from direct contestation, whereas the poor migrant worker or "welfare queen" in our midst can be slurred in polite company without much fear of societal repercussions. Political uncertainty and (in particular) economic anxiety need an outlet, and the construction of the dangerous "other" as a lightning rod for these purposes is part and parcel of the Machiavellian playbook.
In this light, it can plausibly be argued that Arizona has stepped to the national fore of the immigration debate precisely because it is also within hailing distance of ground zero for the financial meltdown. Rampant foreclosures, major property devaluations, teeming unemployment, the erosion of public healthcare, a race-to-the-bottom education system, firewall tax increases of last resort - and only the prisons as a tangible growth industry. This, then, is the "Arizona Model" of imposed austerity, public sphere evisceration, scapegoating, and prison profiteering. Is this a trial balloon, on a statewide scale, for a rightwing power grab par excellence? Not to trespass upon another state's image, but: if they can make it here, can they make it anywhere?
Take heed friends, lest you find that as goes Arizona, so goes the rest of the nation.
- Posted in
123 Comments so far
Show AllWouldn't a name change for the Green party be a good start in its rebirth? "Green" immediately brings to mind the environment/treehugger types, and so forth - which is a good thing, something we should all care about. But a political party needs to encompass a national view of all issues, and their name should reflect that.
The Belgian Francophone Greens renamed themselves from 'Vertes' to "Ecolo,' (the Flemish Greens stuck with 'Groen') and few years ago and it has not helped them get beyond 12% of the vote.
The more "pure" and uncompromising liberals and progressives try to become, the more obviously elitist and out of touch they become. The Green party is a good example of this effect. There is a strange paradox there - people think they are moving to the Left, as they keep forming splinter groups and distilling and refining the "belief system" of liberal and progressive politics, and become more and more esoteric and more and more conservative.
My experience with the Greens is this: their biggest problem, even beyond money and ballot access, is they can't agree with each other. In the last election, some Greens wanted to support Nader; others Cynthia McKinney, the official Green candidate for president; consequently, their impact was negligible. In Canada, the Greens wouldn't support the major opposition candidate to conservative idiot Stephen Harper and are partly responsible for splitting the anti-Harper vote so that Harper retained the PM's office with about 35 percent of the the vote and Parliamentary representation. As long as these deep divisions exist, they will never be a serious US political party and will only be used by the major parties for their own ends.
A green who saw his party as a device to get elected would not be seeing much, and that is one major difference between the Greens and Scylla and Charybdis.
Of course the party is an electoral device, as are others. It is also a polemic device, as are others. Why not?
On the other hand, the lack of union ties is serious, and the trouble in the party is similar in some respects to some of the troubles the Dems have: some greens, like many progressive Dems, are one or two issue progressives. Some have a view of change in which economic relationships continue with little alteration, but far fewer than in the D's and R's.
A green who saw his party as a device to get elected would not be seeing much, and that is one major difference between the Greens and Scylla and Charybdis.
Of course the party is an electoral device, as are others. It is also a polemic device, as are others. Why not?
On the other hand, the lack of union ties is serious, and the trouble in the party is similar in some respects to some of the troubles the Dems have: some greens, like many progressive Dems, are one or two issue progressives. Some have a view of change in which economic relationships continue with little alteration, but far fewer than in the D's and R's.
"The more "pure" and uncompromising liberals and progressives try to become, the more obviously elitist and out of touch they become."
Who's elitist? Those who support the class hierarchy or those working to tear it down? You might consider joining the latter group. That act may help you steer your animosity toward the predators who deserve it.
You don't think liberals and progressives and Democrats for the most part defend the ruling class, try to save and preserve the current social arrangements and customs, the hierarchy, all of the assumptions of class and empire? They sure don't side with the working class very often, and are quite reluctant to talk class warfare or apply class analysis - or even to tolerate those who do. They spend as much time and energy red-baiting and attacking the Left as they do the right. The only reason they attack the right is to promote the Democratic party and various liberal organizations and causes and gentrified third party efforts, all of which are thoroughly aristocratic and in opposition to radicalism and to the Left. Were that not true, we would not be in the situation we are in.
This is not a condemnation of all or any individuals identifying with any of the things I mentioned, but rather a condemnation of the general movement, a movement that so many of us have been swept up into over the last 40 years thinking that it is the only "realistic" political alternative to the extreme right wing.
Who's happy in this election?
Whom do you respect in this election?
The antiwar suggestion is good.
What is it going to take for citizens to stand up and say "Hell no, not in our country!" Perhaps when their blonde, blue-eyed relative gets asked for their papers and goes to jail because they forgot their ID at home? I mean seriously, since when are all immigrants 'brown' and for a nation founded on immigrants, how is this all supposed to work anyway? And last but certainly not least, why, in God's name can't we just enforce the laws we have....against the employers who make the extra buck off the low wages paid to immigrant workers in the first place? We took their corn crops thus their livelihood, what were our expectations with that? That they starve? Oh no, that was answered in the article, sorry. It's CCA and their ilk; profits before death.
Eight or nine years ago, John Ashford, the Attorney General suggested that the government create a national ID card. That would make it easier for the storm troopers from Homeland Security to sniff out dangerous elements.
But for some reason, people in the Conservative Rocky Mountain states went berzerk over the idea and Bush/Cheney dropped it.
Regarding penalizing the employers, that won't work because they are mostly Republicans who donate to both political parties. Think about Walmart, which was hiring undocumented aliens from Europe to clean the stores. No one in management was jailed for that. I suspect that a small fine was paid, but is anyone keeping track of who is cleaning the stores now?
Ashford? You mean Ashcroft?
Yes, I meant Ashcroft. Sorry. I was talking to someone today about Ashford spinning wheels and nust have conflated the two names.
"Even Homer nods."
Horace
Ashcroft and (Alan) Simpson -- folk music for Christopublican plutocrats.
I had to do a quick internet search before I posted that comment, SHEEPHERDER, just to make sure you weren't correctly referring to someone else of whom I was unaware.
For what it's worth, John Ashford is a line of clothing, apparently. Yippee skippee, eh?
Immigration before the welfare state was a good thing. It atttracted self reliant, courageous people seeking freedom.
Welfare state immigration attracts a lot more opportunistic sloth looking for accomodation. Not all, of course, but certainly more than enough to make the insanity of our present policies perfectly obvious.
America was a better nation when people were expected to carry their own weight - when it was shameful to have others carry your load for you.
Never been on welfare have you?
Perhaps you could tell me just WHEN anyone was not expected to 'pull their weight'? Even those on welfare have always been expected to be out looking for a way to get off the dole.
Always, in every nation that has a dole, they are always asked 'did you look for work, and where was it you looked'? Not to mention the dozens of other questions that are little more than an attack by the well off on someone who's in a bad place...
The point remains - welfare state immigration attracts a lot more opportunistic sloth looking for accommodation. Not all, of course, but certainly more than enough to make the insanity of our present policies perfectly obvious.
Pure projection, I think.
I agree that he is creating a creature that does not exist. Most, if not all of those who slip across the borders are looking for work, not welfare. And nearly any American who might try to do the jobs they do would not last a day at them.
The "welfare sloth" label reminds me of Ronald Reagan's persistant crying about women driving to the welfare office in Cadillacs, regardless of the fact that noe one ever saw one, and when questioned about it, he dissembled, as he did any time someone asked him for documentation.
yep, he's projecting the long discredited myth of the 'welfare queen driving her caddy'.
I always thought that when raygun first mentioned that tale, why didn't someone in the audience or the media speak up and ask him a simple question. Why on earth did he, as governor, not have that person prosecuted for fraud? Was he admitting dereliction of duty?
No one would move to the usa today for its 'welfare benefits, just like they wouldn't have moved to the usa for the benefits of the 70s. But facts and evidence mean nothing to the right winger, who's got that 'truthieness' in their shrivelled hearts.
"And nearly any American who might try to do the jobs they do would not last a day at them"
Here you are falling for the rhetoric of the cheap labor lobby and their corporate masters.
Who exactly do you believe was doing those jobs before illegal aliens were enticed in to do them for less money?
Who exactly do you believe are working beside those selfsame illegal aliens now, except for less money?
Did you think that there were indistries and jobs here that were 100% manned by illegal aliens? There aren't. Most have from 35 to 60% depending on the work.
Americans have done, can do and still do the jobs you are claiming they don't do or can't. They just work for less money now or are out of a job thanks to business preference for cheap illegal labor.
Yes many come to work, nmost of the families they bring with them are not coming for work. The 10 to 17% criminal element coming in certainly are not coming for work.
By the way, there were and are plenty of folks driving to the welfare office in Cadillacs. Old Cadillacs are cheap and plentiful. Aside from which, driving a Cadillac doesn't mean you can't fall on hard times. RR waqs just from California and he was a republican...that explains it! :)
"Who exactly do you believe was doing those jobs before illegal aliens were enticed in to do them for less money?"
The people doing the jobs before the Latinos took them over were the Dust Bowl refugees - people who had no other choice. Today, Americans can go on welfare rather than do those jobs. Somewhere I saw some numbers on that: most people on welfare (even accounting for the sizes of the populations) are white.
So who is going to do the work Americans won't do if the illegals are granted amnesty and
choose welfare?
Maybe this will curl your hair.
I advocate everyone getting a living wage whether they work or not. I am also certain that people would still work, and that they would be far more productive and creative.
Please do not call human beings "illegals" in my presence. Thank you.
Sure about 10% would still work but who would pay for the other 90%?
You are hanging with the wrong crowd, or projecting your own ideas onto others. Maybe in your circle people are lazy and would rather have a free ride than pitch in or be engaged in meaningful and productive work - you yourself are taking something of a free ride on this thread and letting the rest of us do all of the work and thinking.
Most people want to and do contribute without being threatened or forced to. Tyrants through the ages have told us otherwise, but they were lying.
What I am saying is so self-evident that it always amazes me that people keep spreading lies about it. In every situation where people are stranded or in an emergency, the vast majority - it is almost universal - pitch in and share the burden for the sake of the group without being forced or paid to do so. Cooperation and looking out for the good of the whole and pitching in and doing one's share seems to be hard-wired in to us as human beings. It is, after all, the only way that the species would have survived.
Those who today, after all of the benefits that they themselves have received from cooperative human society, wish to portray others as lazy and selfish and who want to deny the cooperative nature of human beings, seem to me to be the ones along for a free ride. They then assume that everyone must be.
It is the mentality of the overlord, the slavemaster, the tyrant that says that people must be forced and punished to get anything out of them. One thing you can say - very few immigrants bring THAT attitude with them, and that attitude is more destructive than anything could possibly be to the social fabric, and hence to the country and to all of us in the country.
"What I am saying is so self-evident that it always amazes me that people keep spreading lies about it. In every situation where people are stranded or in an emergency, the vast majority - it is almost universal - pitch in and share the burden for the sake of the group without being forced or paid to do so."
Doesn't seem to apply to the French:
Emergency:
amid worries that the government debt crises that alarmed markets worldwide earlier this year could flare up again.
Response:
Public transit ground to a halt across France and on the London Tube on Tuesday, with tourists and commuters bearing the brunt of a wave of discontent over government austerity measures. plans to raise the retirement age from 60 to 62, shutting down trains, planes, buses, subways, post offices and schools.
http://www.cnbc.com/id/39034442
Your anti-socialist link has a lot of tea-bagging mfers for comments. Do you tea-baggers in the USA ever think of getting a life instead of being shilling for the corporate elite? Ya'll hate the French and yet you love some of their evil ways and not their good values. Go ahead and "close" those doors to immigrants. This country's already crumbling like a house of cards.
Good for them. Hope we emulate them soon.
Your last comment hit upon the crux of the matter for me, TWO AMERICAS. The fact that we call other human beings "illegal" demonstrates just how far we have devolved as a species, and it also proves how "fixed" the so-called debate already is. How will the problems and struggles and feelings and emotions of these human beings ever get considered when we insist on calling them "illegal" right from the get-go? The debate is already finished before it even gets started.
So how would you differentiate between those who enter legally from those
illegally?
By due process in a court of law, upon the presentation of a proper warrant and with reasonable cause, with the Bill of Rights intact, the presumption of innocence and Habeas Corpus honored, and all legal rights respected, convicted only through a trial by a jury of peers, with legal counsel afforded the accused. Does any of that sound familiar at all?
How would you have us decide who is innocent and who is guilty?
WVK,
I don't feel any need to differentiate between the two.
Thanks Seventhson. The bigotry and racism expressed by people here is disturbing. The frenzy of hatred seems to be building, and that cannot end well. It never does.
No not bigotry or racism but concern about the consequences of the USA being
flooded by 10s of millions of poor, ignorant people.
It was founded by the same type of people. All of those Irish, Scottish. English, Italian (plug in nationality here) were the poor and ignorant of those countries.
They LEFT those countries because they were poor and ignorant and wanted a chance to better themselves.
It was not the Doctors and lawyers that fled Ireland.
Immigration before the welfare state was a good thing. And Immigrants then wanted to become Americans, my Italian relatives were ashamed the ones who could not speak English.
WVK,
This country has ALWAYS had a welfare state. For a good portion of its history, though, that welfare state was only available to the very top tier of society, and for that same good portion of history, that top tier of society was rich, white, male landowners.
Of course, one could easily argue the same situation exists today . . .
Excuse us for wanting to even the playing field a little bit and help our fellow human beings at the bottom of the social ladder. What a crime.
What are you willing to give up to level the playing field?
We all benefit when the playing field is leveled. Nothing need be given up.
Amen!
Haven't read much about the tenements of New York from a hundred years ago, have you? Not too familiar with the labor gangs that built the railroads either, apparently, nor the conditions that immigrant miners and their families endured. That damned "welfare state" eliminated much of that suffering.
My great grandfather never learned English, he was too busy working his ass off for the sake of all of us who came after him. I can't imagine anyone in our family being "ashamed" of him. My great aunts never spoke English very well. Glad I had the chance to hear the mother tongue as a youngster. I sure am glad that Social Security was there for them in their old age, as well as all of the "welfare state" protection for workers and the "welfare state" safety net for the disabled, injured and laid off.
It sounds to me as though you yourself are ashamed of your own heritage, or part of it, and are projecting your own self-loathing onto innocent people.
It sure is a good thing for you that people with your attitude didn't prevail when your people came over.
Let's take a stroll through the past. We can see how little some things change.
The fate of numerous Italian Americans was no different than that of other ethnic groups targeted by lynch mobs. The most infamous lynching of Italians occurred on March 14, 1891 in New Orleans. This event claimed eleven victims and was one of the largest multiple lynchings in American history. The catalyst for this tragedy was the unsolved murder of popular city police superintendent David Hennessy. Hennessy's murder led to a roundup of the "usual suspects" -- in this case Italians. Those detained, immigrants from Sicily and the southern portions of Italy -- possessed swarthy complexions and were viewed with suspicion and contempt by the white protestant elite ruling New Orleans. Akin to Negroes, Italians were "not quite white" and subject to a racial prejudice only slightly subtler -- mingled with a baseless and deliberately orchestrated Mafia scare associating most Italian Americans with a vast criminal organization that did not exist in the New Orleans of that era.
The morning of March 14 was bright and sunny. By ten o'clock, a crowd of thousands was gathered by the Parish Jail, with many of them shouting, "Yes, yes, hang the dagoes!" The prison was soon attacked by a carefully selected band culled by the mobs' leaders comprised of about twenty-five well-armed men. With battering rams ringing in their ears, the prisoners were both trapped and doomed. In the prison yard where several Italians were clustered together at one end, the hit squad of lynchers opened fire from about twenty feet away. More than a hundred rifle shots and shotgun blasts were fired into six helpless men, tearing their bodies apart. When the firing stopped, the squad inspected their victims. A man saw Pietro Monasterio's hand twitch and yelled, "Hey, this one's alive!" "Give him another load," another gunman answered. "Can't, I ain't got the heart." Then one of the men walked up to the body, aimed a shotgun point-blank, and literally blew the top of Monasterio's head away. Someone laughed. There were two or three cheers. One or two men turned their faces away, looking sick.
So it went. Joseph P. Macheca, Antonio Scaffidi, and Antonio Marchesi were shot while turning to face their pursuers. Marchesi was struck in the head by a bullet. As he raised his right hand to shield himself a shotgun charge blew off and went on to disintegrate the top of his skull. Yet he did not die until nine hours later, lying all the time where he fell.
More gunmen found Manuel Polizzi. Sitting on the floor in a corner of a cell, muttering to himself. Dragged by five men into a corridor he was shot two or three times while staring with wild eyes at nothing in particular. Antonio Bagnetto was found in another cell, pretending to be dead. He too was shot. Several of the men's corpses were displayed to the mob outside the prison and hung on lampposts for all to see. Witnesses said that the cheers were nearly deafening.
http://www.americanlynching.com/infamous-old.html#1891
And another stroll into the past...
Italian immigrants unknowingly took replacement jobs of Irish workers on strike in the factories. They just saw it as work, not knowing they were breaking a strike by doing so. It is because of this that the Irish began to hate the Italians.
In 1874, striking Irish workers attacked a group of Italians for taking their jobs during the strike. This peaked to anti-Italian riots and mob violence. This violence killed many Italians and forced many more from their homes.
Another reason why the Irish disliked the Italian is because of their religious beliefs. The Irish were a Roman Catholic people, but Italian customs dated back centuries and were brought together with modern day Roman Catholicism. While Irish families were in church in silent masses, Italian families gathered together in celebration and festival of their beliefs.
Americans discriminated against Italians mainly because they were the biggest Immigrant group coming to America at the time. Because they didn't have very much money, most Italian immigrants chose to live in poor conditions and because most of them didn't understand much English, most of them worked for very low wages, seemingly taking the jobs themselves from Americans. Americans seemed to think that Italian immigrants were not strong enough or smart enough to get good jobs because most of them worked construction jobs and other manual jobs which required no intellect.
Newspapers criticized them in editorials, schoolboys taunted them, calling them ethnic slurs such as "Guinea" and "Dago", and threw things at them, and politicians complained and called for restrictions on the amount of immigrants being let into the country. These attitudes led to the Immigration Act of 1924, which especially prejudiced against Southern Europeans (Italians). Part of this act called for 5,645 Italian immigrants to be allowed into the United States per year. This number was ten percent of the amount of Italian immigrants who came into the country the year before the act.
http://www.angelfire.com/indie/immigrants/
You are either naive or a pro-immigration operative.
They're not the poor and unfortunate souls everyone thinks.
That is what they want you to see. The have intent, purpose and ulterior motives.
Until you have had feet on the ground or a lifetime of living side-by-side with the culture, as I have, you'll just be another pro-immigrationist sock puppet.
For one, the anchor baby is one of their prime tactics, estimates of 5M in the country already.
Once their kid qualifies for Human Services the whole family is on the ride then the chain migration begins.
There are plenty of studies on the impact of illegal immigration.
Here's one: http://www.gao.gov/archive/1998/he98030.pdf
I'm sure you'll dispute it like all good immigration operatives do. If you google "cost of illegal immigration" you'll get plenty of hits.
The fact is, most Americans want the southern border restricted and the invasion of "illegals" stopped.
They have no quarrel with immigration otherwise, a fact you pro-immigrationist won't accept.
I'll give you my view, for what it's worth, and you definitely will find it objectionable: America is full, no vacancy, except for people who have something to bring to the table, an education, a profession, a talent or exceptional skill such as medical or science -regardless of color! The invaders you defend bring nothing but poverty and ignorance that lasts for generations.
The fact that you'll settle for the lowest common denominator tells me something of your aspirations in life. BTW, I find your objection to the use of "illegal" a charade, a tactic. It's right out of the pro-immigrationist playbook and as soon as people call you on it the sooner they can realize they're being emotionally manipulated.
Every single word you have written here was said at one time about the Irish, the Poles, the Chinese, the Italians, the Greeks, the Jews, the Rom, and on and on.
There is no "they." Talking about a "they" and describing what "they" are doing and what "they" are like is inherently and undeniably racist and bigoted.
The other transparent pro-illegal immigrationist playbook tactic: accuse those with who you disagree of being racist/bigot
Unfortunately, pro-illegal immigrationist such as yourself use the progressive platform for their personal agenda. As someone said earlier in the thread Progressives need to choose their fights. Any curiosity one might have about a different political philosophy will be quickly dispelled when you advocate defending people who assume we should make an exception for their bad behavior.
I mean, after all, we don't raise our children that way and we choose personal relationships based on trust and responsibility.
However, we're supposed to throw all that away because the nutjob pro-illegal immigrationist and some PhD say so.
Bullocks.
Care to respond to any of my arguments?
Calling my remarks "playbook tactics" is not a rebuttal.
Obviously, you feel the need for validation.
I don't.
Deal with it....