“Remember when ICE locked up that guy from Guinea who lived in Philly legally for twenty years, just because they could? There are a million stories like his.”

I was telling my crusty neighbor Swamp Rabbit that the history of U.S. interventions in the southern hemisphere is one of unintended consequences. Heavy-handed efforts to expand U.S. business interests south of the border compel armies of desperate locals to head north. They try to settle here and are protected by the law — until they’re snatched up and mistreated by ICE goons, who are cheered on by MAGA Republicans.

“You see where I’m going with this?” I said. “The MAGA dopes are up in arms about the mass migration of dark-skinned people to America — it’s their main issue — but they don’t think about what causes it.”

I told him the migrants — “refugees” is a more accurate term — are fleeing brutal dictatorships that exist largely because of collusion between U.S. government and transnational corporations. I mentioned the wave of poor people who fled north after the drug-running Juan Orlando Hernández came to power in Honduras. Hernandez eventually received a 45-year jail term in an America court but was pardoned by Donald Trump, partly because Hernandez had helped set up a tax-free zone in Honduras that serves the business interests of tech billionaires — Peter Thiel, in particular — who are allies of the Trump family.

“Trump absolved one of the biggest drug dealers ever,” I said. “Hernandez and his cartel friends were trying to smuggle 400 tons of cocaine into this country.”

Swamp Rabbit sipped beer and looked bored. I reminded him that MAGA Republicans are blind to the crimes of the rich and powerful. They would rather blame drugs and crime on would-be immigrants who are dying in the desert or wasting away in detention centers.

My neighbor shook his head. “Democrats ain’t much better. Most of them didn’t care that the anti-immigrant policies are cruel, not until the orange hog monster came along and made the policies worse.”

It’s a good point. Leaders of both parties have long been in thrall to rightwing propagandists who claim migrants are stealing jobs from native-born workers (untrue) and raising the national crime rate (also untrue). It’s a point repeatedly being made by journalist and author Jean Guerrero:

If working-class white Americans can be persuaded their real enemies are the oligarchs and warmongers enriching themselves at everyone else’s expense, not the migrants fleeing the chaos these oligarchs create, a different kind of politics could become possible.

“It’s pretty simple,” I said. “Vote Republican in November and you’re voting to get screwed over by corrupt politicians and oligarchs who use the immigrant problem to make non-wealthy, native-born Americans forget that the system is almost as unfair to them that it is to immigrants. Vote Democratic and there’s at least a chance we can start changing the situation.”

Swamp was smiling at my political rant. “Don’t say anything,” I warned him. “Let me enjoy my pie-in-the-sky moment before I go back to full-time cynicism.”