If you want to know what all the respectable racists will be saying tomorrow, look to Rep. Steve King. He milked a demand for English-Only laws into a career in the House. He was certain brown-skinned immigrants were all drug-runners long before Donald Trump piped up with it. Now he's shifted into proclaiming Muslim-Americans to be the true menace, because to Steve King, racism is like fashion sense. You gotta keep up with the latest trends. And so now it is Muslim-Americans who will never, ever "assimilate" into American culture, because, Steve King says, just look at them.
"[N]o one has shown me an example of large groups of people that have settled into America from that part of the world that have assimilated into the broader American society," King responded.
He listed places like Dearborn, Michigan, and Little Mogadishu in Minneapolis and said that those communities appear to be similar to Middle Eastern cities.
Will somebody get Steve King a damn ticket to Dearborn, Michigan, already? According to every American racist and the good people at Fox News—but I repeat myself—Dearborn, Michigan, is a nightmarish "no-go-zone" land in which the laws of America do not apply and religious law trumps traffic lights. Cats terrorize dogs, toilets swirl in the wrong direction, and hamburgers eat people. If even half of the people who publicly opine on Dearborn, Michigan, were loaded onto a bus and dropped off in the most muslim-y portion of town, we would get somewhere. They would either learn something or immediately have aneurisms and die, and frankly either outcome would improve things.
Hayes asked if King felt that those communities with concentrated populations of immigrants were different from Chinatown in New York City.
"Of course I do," King responded. "They bring with them Sharia law, which is completely contradictory to the Constitution itself. It’s incompatible with the Americanism."
Truly, a fascinating tale. Chinatown good: Muslims bad. Why? Because Steve King doesn't like Muslims, that's why.
When pressed by Hayes about whether he thinks all Muslims are incompatible with American democracy, King then said, "I think that if they are willing to reject Sharia law, then we can talk. But until they do that, their view of Sharia law trumping constitutional law is incompatible with Americanism and eventually will break down the rule of law in our country."
I seem to recall from just a few months ago a great deal of huff surrounding a certain rural clerk and her pronouncement that her specific religious law trumped American constitutional law directly. For this, she was feted by multiple Republican presidential candidates, honored by multiple religious groups, and her declaration widely praised by her fellow religious zealots as obvious: Of course her religious law superseded the United States Supreme Court, and anyone who declares otherwise is wrong. I recall from past years a judge defying an order to remove a monument to religious law from his not-religious courthouse, and eventually being voted into higher office by his fellow religious-law zealots for his insistence that the Constitution means jack-all compared to the one true religion, meaning his and their own. As we sit here the Supreme Court continues, still, to ponder whether personal religious belief trumps American law when it comes to women's health; it is taken as a given that of course it does, according to a great many people in American towns that are not Dearborn, Michigan.
None of those unpleasant religious extremists are Muslims, but then again that has always been the point. Steve King is not afraid that religious law is sweeping American towns as residents insist they can ignore whatever part of the Constitution needs ignoring on God's personal say-so. Steve King is in a sweaty little rage because he suspects some religion other than the one he prefers is secretly plotting such things, even as fine Americans like Kim Davis put themselves up behind a microphone and preach the holy gospel of Screw Your Constitution, My Religion Wins.
Forget Dearborn, Michigan: I'm not convinced the people in Steve King's Iowa district have assimilated themselves to American culture or laws. Do they have traffic lights there, or does their God just tell them directly who has the right of way?