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| After the 1903 pogrom in Kishinev, state-sponsored gang violence that convinced my grandfather to come to North America. Nobody in America was worried he might be a gang member, though they may well have worried he could be a Communist. In fact he was too cynical for that. |
So as you know the Mare Salvatrucha or MS-13 gang, which arose among criminals of Central Americn origin in southern California prisons in the 1980s, and expanded to Guatemala and Honduras and El Salvador when the Reagan administration started deporting them to their homelands, is a big issue in the mind of the president, who seems to believe all Central American immigrants (who are at this point and for a couple of years now mostly fleeing from gangs of the MS-13 type at home) belong to the thing, as his dad no doubt believed all Italian immigrants were members of the dread Sicilian Mob (as some of them, especially the ones the Trumps worked with in the real estate business, unquestionably were), and he was saying, "They're not people, they're animals!"
How do you know, Ben? Maybe your parents didn't tell you great-great-grandpapa was a horse thief back home in Bessarabia. My zeydi was a draft dodger and a socialist and an atheist who made bubbi cry every Passover by singing obscene parodies of the sacred songs, and she was actually illiterate, in three different languages. I don't know any MS-13 members, but I'll bet most of them don't do the gross things you're worried about.
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