JACKSON COUNTY, TENNESSEE — Brad Fenton is a forty-six year old self-described Republican. He joined the Republican Party at the age of 18 at the behest of his father and mother who are both lifelong, “rock-ribbed conservatives,” according to Fenton. Brad, an assistant shift leader at a nearby truck stop in Jackson County, Tennessee, tells The Political Garbage Chute that no matter who his party nominates for next year’s presidential general election, he hopes they “stick to their conservative principles” on every issue from “guns, gays, God, cultural homogenization.” Fenton says that he’s pleased that the primary season so far has seen so many candidates “willing to be bold and proclaim what’s right” when it comes to immigration reform.
“I’m not racist. I’m not racist at all,” Fenton told us, “hell, I have black people that work for me, and I think Raj, the staff plumber, is from Mexico or Guatamala or one of those Hispanolic countries down there.” The Political Garbage Chute later confirmed taht Raj in fact isn’t from a Latin-American country, was born in nearby Hampton, Tennessee to parents who were from Pakistan initially, and he is a member of the same church that Fenton attends. “How I could I be racist if I go all day sometimes without saying a single bad thing to them or about their heritage to their face,” Fenton asked rhetorically.
Fenton says his support of proposals like Scott Walker’s and Donald Trump’s to build a large fence along the U.S.-Mexico border isn’t latent nationalism or subtle jingoism, but instead he says his reasoning is much simpler. “I just don’t like or trust foreigners…or Mexicans. Does that make me a racist, or does that make me pragmatic and able to put aside all the Cultural Marxism and liberal propaganda about how we’re a melting pot, you tell me,” Fenton said indignantly.
“Does it make me racist to have an irrational fear of new people coming here and fundamentally changing us, even though that’s literally exactly what the colonists did to the natives a few hundred years ago,” Fenton asked, adding, “nowhere in the Constitution does it say we have to treat people not from here decently, not unless you count the parts about how it applies to all human beings. But that’s just a liberal elite trick of semantics. We all know the founders never intended this country to be anything but a white, Christian nation. Or at least that’s what the guys at stormfront and on Fox News tell me, and why would they lie? What possible agenda would they have for pumping me full of historically inaccurate information to help me create a completely warped perception of American values and ethics,” Fenton demanded from our reporter.
Fenton said he doesn’t “give a single slippery squirrel dick” that members of his own family didn’t arrive in the United States until the early 20th century, that he says “happened a long time ago and doesn’t matter now.” When asked what Fenton’s life would have been like had his great-great-great grandmother not been pregnant when she arrived at Ellis Island with his great-great grandfather, or had been sent packing back where they came from because Americans at the time didn’t want any “Anchor Babies,” as some conservatives have come to pejoratively refer to the children of undocumented immigrants born in the U.S.
“Well, that, was, um, different and stuff. We didn’t have the immigration laws we have now or the welfare state,” Fenton replied. When reminded that the current federal budget contains more than twice the amount of corporate subsidies than it does social welfare programs, Fenton scoffed. “Prove it,” he said. So we showed him some data. His response was to tell us he’d “have to get back to [us] once he could find enough deflection, cherry-picking and word salad from Bill O’Reilly or Charles Krauthammer to debunk” our “liberal propaganda disguised as facts.”
“The bottom line is that foreigners come here and make America not as America-y,” Fenton said as we were wrapping up the interview. “I mean, how many times have you had to dial ‘1’ for English? That is an absolute affront to George Washington’s cherry tree itself! Do you know how hard it is to press that number 1? Why should I be asked to do something that takes an additional 2 seconds out of my life just so that someone else can navigate a company’s or government service with confidence in their native language,” Fenton demanded.
“I just think it’s time we showed the world what a truly free society looks like,” Fenton said at last, “and the best way to do that is to close up all our borders, put Naval battleships off every coastline, electrify a 900 foot tall fence around our southern border, and annex Canada so that no matter what, no foreigners or Mexicans can get into our wonderfully free and open society.”
