Revisiting The Turds Will Rise from the Shitholes—Murfin Verse

 

Note—An apt reminder from eight years ago.  This fetid lump squash guts has not changed since then.

The Cheeto in Charge bluntly revealed the depths of his racism and openly flaunted his reverence for white privilege in a bi-partisan meeting.  He did not speak in veiled or code words as in the past or even with any wink-and-nod deniability.  “Why do we need more Haitians? Take them Out!... Why are we having all these people from shithole countries come here?” he said adding Salvadorans and Africans to the list of those he wants excluded.  Almost plaintively he wondered why we can’t have immigrants from nice countries like Norway.  

The remarks came in a meeting to discuss an immigration deal that would have restored protection for Dreamers—those brought as children to the country but have grown up and made lives here in exchange for 50% reduction of legal immigrants under the lottery system and some adjustments to quotas from various countries.  Democratic Senator Dick Durbin of Illinois and Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham had worked out the compromise which seemed to have a chance of passage.  Earlier the Resident had signaled support for the compromise.  Issues over funding for his heralded wall were still to be ironed out, but even there administration sources hinted that he had discovered that a physical wall might not be necessary for the entire length of the border.  

Senator Dick Durbin and Rep. Steny Hoyer of Maryland flank you know who during the photo op at the meeting on immigration which rapidly turned ugly.

The meeting broke up acrimoniously and Democrats in attendance made sure that the crude remarks were quickly reported to the Washington Post and other outlets. Within hours the shit hit the fan.

Durbin, Graham, and other Congressional leaders in the delegation to the White House believed they would be meeting privately with the Twitterer-in-Chief and that a deal was in the offing.  Instead they found that Administration’s designated White Nationalist and Joseph Goebbels doppelganger Stephen Miller had brought in rabid Republican anti-immigration fanatics such as Representative Bob Goodlatte of Virginia and Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas to “shore up the President’s spine.”  They found leader belligerent and bellicose from the beginning of the meeting and reverted to campaign mode nativism on steroids.

By then the wavering pumpkin was also feeling the heat from troglodyte right wing commentators including Anne Coulter, Lou Dobbs, Tucker Carlson, and raver Alex Jones who warned him that his base would abandon him if he caved on immigration.  So perhaps the raw and explicit language was a desperate direct appeal to the stereotypical Joe Six Pack racist ranting at Fox News from the corner of the bar.

Condemnation was swift and overwhelming not only from Democrats and immigrant communities, but from most of the respectable press including Conservative outlets and even the loyal Trumpistas at the Wall Street Journal.  World-wide condemnation mixed with open ridicule.  Even some Republicans expressed modest chagrin at the blunt and salty language, but some of them seemed more concerned with the scatological content than the racial slur.

At first the White House did not even try very hard to walk back or flatly deny the statement. The notorious Press Office issued a statement praising their boss for using blunt language to attack Democrats who wanted to sponsor “open borders, drug dealers, and terrorists” while saying that the words reported in the Post were not the exact words he used.

But by the next day the uproar had grown so loud that tiny fingers flew over his cellphone to Tweet.

The language used by me at the DACA meeting was tough, but this was not the language used. What was really tough was the outlandish proposal made—a big setback for DACA!....Never said anything derogatory about Haitians other than Haiti is, obviously, a very poor and troubled country. Never said ‘take them out.’ Made up by Dems. I have a wonderful relationship with Haitians. Probably should record future meetings—unfortunately, no trust!

Anti-Immigant Republican Senators Tom Cotton of Arkansas and David Perdue of Georia flanked The Cheeto during an after meeting press statement.  Later they tried to provide a thin cover of deniability by sayinge that they "didn't recall" thoue shithouse remark.

Hours later, Sens. Tom Cotton and David Perdue of Georgia fell all over themselves issuing a statement that they “do not recall the President saying those comments specifically” — but conspicuously didn’t outright deny that he said them.  Most other Congressional Republicans fell silent and spectacularly unavailable for comment.

Sure enough, at Tucker Carlson and others predicted, right wing social media accounts suddenly erupted with cheers for their favorite racist oligarch and doubling down on his rhetoric while salting their rage with violent threats.

On Friday Rex Huppke, contract reporter in the Chicago Tribune wrote in an article that soon went viral:

What did you say when President Donald Trump referred to Haiti, El Salvador and some African nations as “shithole countries”?

What did you say when the president of the United States followed that comment by suggesting he’d rather see more immigrants from countries like Norway?

Whether now or in the future, you will be asked this question: What did you say?

This is my answer to that question.  It was penned in haste and outrage on Friday and hours later read for the first time at a reading sponsored by the Atrocious Poets at the Old Court House Arts Center on the Square in Woodstock, Illinois.  It was the most enthusiastically received of the four poems I performed.

Bri McLaughlyn of the Atrocious poets read as the Old Man awaited his turn to throw a poetic hand grenade.

The Turds Will Rise from the Shithole 

January 12, 2018

The turds will rise from the shitholes,

one by one, thousands, millions,

climb through oppressions that gave them birth

and ooze through the night

to a certain gilded bed

where they will suffocate a bigot.

And they will laugh.

We will laugh.

We are the turds and decedents of turds

  from every shithole in the world.

Did you think we came for the climate and cuisine,

for a pleasant change of scenery

and satin sheets on our beds?

Eat shit and die. 

—Patrick Murfin

Genocide on Hispaniola—Haitians Were Victims in the Parsley Massacre

 

Rafael Trujillo of the Dominican Republic may have strutted on a smaller stage than others, but in his country his record for ruthlessness and brutality was up there with the big names of 20th Century despotism and he had a "final solution" for his country's "Haitian problem."

Note—The people of Haiti seem to be the collective Job of the Western Hemisphere.  They have experienced the near total destruction of the native Carib peoples at the hands of Spanish and French invaders; the brutal capture, transportation and enslavement Africans; slave revolt and revolution; near total isolation as a Black ruled nation; political turmoil, long time periods of despotism, and rebellions; exploitation by American and other Western neo-colonialists; not to mention frequent devastating earthquakes, hurricanes, epidemics, and fires.  That has made waves of Haitians refugees, exiles, and stateless migrants.  They have often been met by hostility, rejection, outright racism, and often violence.  Not to put too pointed a comparison but Rafael Trujillo’s careful propaganda to cover his Dominican Republic genocidal massacre of long resident Haitians to the similar set up by J.D. Vance and Donald Trump of legal Haitian residents of Springfield, Ohio for “eating pet dogs and cats.”  No, I’m not accusing them of genocide, but the scapegoating tactics for repression are only differences of degrees.

If Americans recall Generalissimo Rafael Trujillo, the brutal and avaricious dictator of the Dominican Republic, at all it is for winding up dead in a bullet ridden Chevy in 1961, the victim of an abortive coup d’état arranged with the wink-and-not support of the Central Inelegance Agency (CIA.)  His death unleashed a decade of turbulence in the Caribbean nation which eventually “required” the intervention of American Marines yet again.

His death was just one bookend of a career as President and/or power-behind-the-throne for more than thirty years.  The other bookend was his rise to power as an officer in the Dominican Army, the protégée of Marines who occupied the country on behalf of United Fruit and other American interests through most of the 1920’s.

He was Army Chief of Staff in 1930 when he allowed a revolution to topple a previous dictator, then quickly assumed power as President winning 99% of the vote in an election that a U.S. State Department official admiringly reported earned him more votes than there were voters.

Before he even donned the Presidential sash for the first time his soldiers and police were rounding up and quietly disposing of any possible opponents.  He ruled with an iron hand, directly or indirectly until peppered with rounds from CIA supplied M-1 carbines.

On one hand, Trujillo set off on a modernizing campaign that built highways to tie the nation more closely to the Capital Santo Domingo which he eventually modestly renamed Ciudad Trujillo as well as schools and hospitals.  He and his family also appropriated most of the nation’s cattle and dairy production as well as vast sugar cane plantations and other local economic powerhouses.

One key element of his nationalist policy was assuring the continued mastery of a White elite in the face of a nation that was largely Mestizo, with a rapidly growing Black population.  That population included not only a high birthrate for the decedents of Spanish slaves, but increasing numbers of Haitians spilling over a porous and contested border from the Creole French speaking western portion of the island of Hispaniola.

Relations between the two countries had always been difficult.  Haiti had invaded and occupied the Dominican Republic from 1822-44.  When Trujillo took power, the western provinces were poorly connected to the capital and to Dominican markets, naturally trading across the border to Haiti.  In the sparsely populated northwest Haitians, lured by jobs in the sugar industry, had been taking up residence for decades.  Many now were second or third generation and while speaking still Creole, were at least nominal Dominican citizens.

French Creole Haiti and the Dominican Republic--the former Spanish colony of Santo Domingo have uneasily shard the  island of Hispaniola.  Tensions came to a head in the so-called Parsley Massacre in 1937.

The border was poorly defined and both nations had outstanding territorial demands of the other. Trujillo was concerned that Haiti would use majority pockets of Haitian immigrants and their descendants to make further claims. In 1933 and 1935, Trujillo met the Haitian President Stenio Vincent to settle the border issue and in 1936, they reached and signed a settlement.

But that settlement did not include repatriation of Haitians in the Dominican Republic.  Trujillo had other plans for that.

For years his tightly controlled press had hyped any and all reports of crime committed by Haitians.  When there was not enough, he would manufacture it.  He particularly pointed out nearly non-existent rustling of cattle from the large herds of local ranchers—of which he and his family were the most important.  In the kinds of tactics that Hitler would later use to justify the invasion of Poland, depredations were made up and highly publicized.

On October 2, 1937 the President publicly signaled a brutal new policy already underway in a speech given in the northwest provincial province capital of Dajabón.

For some months, I have traveled and traversed the border in every sense of the word. I have seen, investigated, and inquired about the needs of the population. To the Dominicans who were complaining of the depredations by Haitians living among them, thefts of cattle, provisions, fruits, etc., and were thus prevented from enjoying in peace the products of their labor, I have responded, “I will fix this.” And we have already begun to remedy the situation. Three hundred Haitians are now dead in Bánica. This remedy will continue.

Indeed five days of unimaginable horror and brutality that came to be known in English as the Parsley Massacre was underway.  In a well-organized campaign elements of the Army, police, and Trujillo’s security force, the dreaded Servicio de Inteligencia Militar (SIM), fanned out across the border region searching for Haitians.  They were not hard to find.

The story circulated that soldiers brought with them sprigs of parsley—perejil in Spanish.  Creole speaking Haitians were supposed to be unable to trill the r in the word.  Those who failed the test were executed on the spot, along with family members found with them.  Afro-Dominicans who passed the test were allegedly let go.  This tale, while popularized in the Anglo press, is largely mythical.  And in fact many Afro-Dominicans as well as Haitians were swept up in the blood bath.

Dominicans and Haitians have two different names for the five days of killing that followed.  Dominicans call it el corte—the cutting.  Haitians call it kouto-a—the knife.

Murdered by the Army and Trujillo's personal security forces the rotting bodies of ethnic Hatians littered the ground.

Because many of the attackers were in civilian garb, surprised Haitians—many of them longtime residents and citizens—at first expected the Army to rescue them.   Instead they were shot, hacked to death by machetes, and bludgeoned with clubs and baseball bats.  Whole villages were surrounded and wiped out.  Those attempting to escape by fleeing across the Artibonite River to Haiti were intercepted on its banks and killed or drowned trying to reach safety on the other side.

In the five day killing spree, somewhere between 20,000 and 30,000 suspected Haitians were killed.  Murders continued on a more subdued level across the region for years.

The government of Haiti naturally protested the massacre.  But the Black-ruled nation was largely a pariah to neighboring Spanish speaking Caribbean and Latin American nations.  The U.S. State Department conducted an investigation and determined that, despite Trujillo’s claims that the killings were the work of outraged Dominicans and not the state, that the killing were indisputably the policy of the government and conducted by its forces. 

The Roosevelt administration toyed with the idea of another intervention to save the Haitians but was effectively blocked by powerful Southern Democrats in the U.S. House and Senate who saw nothing wrong in killing Blacks.  Some were also the recipients of Trujillo’s gifts and largess.

Despite a moment or two of international embarrassment, Trujillo easily rode out the controversy.  He would subsequently kill an additional 30,000 suspected opponents of his regime in his long tenure.

In the end, the State Department accommodated him as the country’s economy prospered and so did the profits of American investors.  

When Trujillo became an embarrassing nuisance to the United States the CIA provided the encouragement and carbines for the attack that riddled the dictator's Chevy killing him and his entourage.

But by the ‘50s Trujillo’s heavy handed meddling in the affairs of its neighbors including Haiti and Cuba began to concern American authorities.  After he tried to assassinate his biggest Latin American critic, Venezuelan President Rómulo Betancourt in an aerial bombing attack on his car, the U.S. had enough and the CIA began its intrigues with the potential Dominican junta.

After ten years of chaos and the intervention of the Marines, the CIA finally turned to a Truillo protégée, Joaquín Balaguer returning one of the late dictator’s puppet presidents to power as a bulwark against a Cuban-style revolution.

For their part Haitians on both sides of the border remained mired in poverty, repression, and hopelessness.

 

 

The Turds Will Rise from the Shitholes—New Murfin Verse

The Cheeto in Charge bluntly revealed the depths of his racism and openly flaunted his reverence for white privilege in a bi-partisan meeting.  He did not speak in veiled or code words as in the past or even with any wink-and-nod deniability.  “Why do we need more Haitians? Take them Out!... Why are we having all these people from shithole countries come here?” he said adding Salvadorans and Africans to the list of those he wants excluded.  Almost plaintively he wondered why we can’t have immigrants from nice countries like Norway. 

The remarks came in a meeting to discuss an immigration deal that would have restored protection for Dreamers—those brought as children to the country but have grown up and made lives here in exchange for 50% reduction of legal immigrants under the lottery system and some adjustment to quotas from various countries.  Democratic Senator Dick Durbin of Illinois and Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham had worked out the compromise that seemed to have a chance of passage.  Earlier the Resident had signaled support for the compromise.  Issues over funding for his heralded wall were still to be ironed out, but even there administration sources hinted that he had discovered that a physical wall might not be necessary for the entire length of the border.  

Senator Dick Durbin and Rep. Steny Hoyer of Maryland flank you know who during the photo op at the meeting on immigration which rapidly turned ugly.

The meeting broke up acrimoniously and Democrats in attendance made sure that the crude remarks were quickly reported to the Washington Post and other outlets. Within hours the shit hit the fan.

Durbin, Graham, and other Congressional leaders in the delegation to the White House believed they would be meeting privately with Twitterer-in-Chief and that a deal was in the offing.  Instead they found that Administration’s designated White Nationalist and Joseph Goebbels doppelganger Stephen Miller had brought in rabid Republican anti-immigration fanatics such as Representative Bob Goodlatte of Virginia and Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas to “shore up the President’s spine.”  They found Trump belligerent and bellicose from the beginning of the meeting and reverted to campaign mode nativism on steroids.

By then the wavering pumpkin was also feeling the heat from troglodyte right wing commentators including Anne Coulter, Lou Dobbs, Tucker Carlson, and raver Alex Jones who warned him that his base would abandon him if he caved on immigration.  So perhaps the raw and explicit language was a desperate direct appeal to the stereotypical Joe Six Pack racist ranting at Fox News from the corner of the bar.

Condemnation was swift and overwhelming not only from Democrats and immigrant communities, but from most of the respectable press including Conservative outlets and even the loyal Trumpistas at the Wall Street Journal.  World-wide condemnation mixed with open ridicule.  Even some Republicans expressed modest chagrin at the blunt and salty language, but some of them seemed more concerned with the scatological content than the racial slur.

At first the White House did not even try very hard to walk back or flatly deny the statement. The notorious Press Office issued a statement praising their boss for using blunt language to attack Democrats who wanted to sponsor “open borders, drug dealers, and terrorists” while saying that the words reported in the Post were not the exact words he used.

But by the next day the uproar had grown so loud that tiny fingers flew over his cellphone to Tweet “The language used by me at the DACA meeting was tough, but this was not the language used. What was really tough was the outlandish proposal made - a big setback for DACA!” and “Never said anything derogatory about Haitians other than Haiti is, obviously, a very poor and troubled country. Never said ‘take them out.’ Made up by Dems. I have a wonderful relationship with Haitians. Probably should record future meetings - unfortunately, no trust!”

Anti-Immigant Republican Senators Tom Cotton of Arkansas and David Perdue of Georia flanked The Cheeto during an after meeting press statement.  Later they tried to provide a thin cover of deniability by sayinge that they "didn't recall" thoue shithouse remark.

Hours later, Sens. Tom Cotton and David Perdue of Georgia fell all over themselves issuing a statement that they “do not recall the President saying those comments specifically” — but conspicuously didn’t outright deny that he said them.  Most other Congressional Republicans fell silent and spectacularly unavailable for comment.

Sure enough, at Tucker Carlson and others predicted, right wing social media accounts suddenly erupted with cheers for their favorite racist oligarch and doubling down on his rhetoric while salting their rage with violent threats against.

On Friday Rex Huppke, contract reporter in the Chicago Tribune wrote in an article that soon went viral.

What did you say when President Donald Trump referred to Haiti, El Salvador and some African nations as “shithole countries”?

What did you say when the president of the United States followed that comment by suggesting he’d rather see more immigrants from countries like Norway?

Whether now or in the future, you will be asked this question: What did you say?

This is my answer to that question.  It was penned in haste and outrage on Friday and hours later read for the first time at a reading sponsored by the Atrocious Poets at the Old Court House Arts Center on the Square in Woodstock, Illinois.  It was the most enthusiastically received of the four poems I performed.

Bri McLaughlyn of the Atrocious poets read as the Old Man awaited his turn to throw a poetic handgranade.

The Turds Will Rise from the Shitholes

January 12, 2018

The turds will rise from the shitholes,

            one by one, thousands, millions,

            climb through oppressions that gave them birth

            and ooze through the night

            to a certain gilded bed

            where they will suffocate a bigot.

And they will laugh.

We will laugh.

We are the turds and decedents of turds

            from every shithole in the world.

Did you think we came for the climate and cuisine,

            for a pleasant change of scenery

            and satin sheets on our beds?

Eat shit and die.

—Patrick Murfin