Grenade: Pull Pin & Toss...

The immigration debate has been an interesting volcano to watch erupt. Jackson over at Savage Distortion has teed it up if you want to get in on the shark frenzy, but what I'm talking about is the way it all played up in the press and the political machine. It makes me ill thinking about it. We're all such lemmings aren't we? This has been an issue that has been brewing here in Georgia for quite sometime and relative to what tone the debate has taken on lately the discussion has been fairly meaningful. Georgia, while not topping the list of states with the largest population of illegal immigrants, has one of the fastest growing populations of them. Here in the Atlanta metro area, houses continue to be built as quickly as counties can print building permits, and illegal immigrant population continues to grow like tribbles on the Starship Enterprise.

What I've seen in the past few weeks, perhaps more clearly than ever, is how we allow ourselves to be polarized so easily. We ALLOW the press to create this situation. It's like dropping a dead cow into a tank of piranha’s. I think the reason it's become so apparent with this particular debate is that when this topic broke big last week, our crappy two party system did not really have clear policy lines drawn. It's certainly spiltting the GOP right now, but I'm sure they'll shore that up soon at the expense of rationale. A couple of days have gone by and it now seems that, as with all issues these days unfortunately, this one will have missed an opportunity for a bipartisan solution. Nope, it's xenophobic GOP vs. the let'em all in Dem's. Nice.

John Cole make's a good side observation here.

If you'll excuse me, I have to get into my wetsuit and jump into the tank with the other piranha’s. The water's a little cold today...

UPDATE: Chrispy pointed to Tom Watson's post this morning that I hadn't gotten to yet. Tom's take doesn't suprise me, but he did say this that sort of supports one of the points I made above:

"So what to do? Clearly, the massive rally of half a million people in Los Angeles in response to the hated criminalization bill was a wake-up call to politicians on all sides and it shows us that immigration issues in the U.S. do not clearly have Republican and Democratic positions."

Of course, he's already sliced it up and pushed everybody into corners, but that's his meme. Back to the tank...