Yesterday it was terrorism, the Taliban and Saddam, but that unholy trinity is losing its ability to scare people into dangerous and stupid undertakings and, worse, people are becoming pissed off at being duped into supporting a costly and ill-advised war halfway around the world that seems to have no end.

Before Al Qaida it was the Serbs, who turned out in the end to be a pitiful target, and the "victimized" Kosivars a gang of racist, drug-dealing bandits.

Before the Serbs it was Saddam (a former client strongman) and the first Gulf War, followed by murderous sanctions that were responsible for the deaths of over half a million children. Madeline Allbright, our secretary of state at the time, felt that their deaths were "worth it."

Before Saddam it was Noriega, another former ally who became inconvenient.

Before 1992 it was the evil empire. Included along with the Soviet Union was Nicaragua, ruled by the Sandinistas, and the vicious and dangerous island dictatorship of Grenada, ready to pounce upon an unprotected and helpless U.S.

There is also the war against drugs, begun during the Reagan presidency, a continuing assault upon the treasury and our civil liberties with virtually no prospect of victory before the 22nd century.

Fear and greed are the tools used to manipulate the chumps.

What chumps?

Us chumps.

And manipulation it is. The Jackson Progressive web site is getting hit daily with dozens of messages coming from fake grassroots organizations predicting the imminent demise of the country if something isn't done to stop the influx of illegal aliens. A month ago I would receive 1 or 2 such messages a week. An examination of the message headers reveal that they originate from relatively few IP addresses.

Many years ago, I was required to read William Golding's Lord of the Flies as an assignment before starting my freshman year of college. It's the story of how a group of perfectly normal, middle-class boys stranded on a tropical island were turned into murderous savages by fear of an imaginary beast invented almost out of whole cloth by a couple of the boys. I'm beginning to appreciate William Golding more and more.

The country has gone through waves of xenophobia with past migration waves and the republic was never in danger of being overwhelmed by foreigners. In fact every new wave of immigrants brought us priceless gifts, every one of them: the Scots, Irish, Poles, Italians, Czechs, Romanians, Bohemians, Dutch, Germans, Cubans, Japanese, Chinese, Vietnamese, Latvians, Lithuanians, Estonians, Ukrainians, Russians, Indians, Thai, Indonesians, and last but not least, black Africans. (There are many others that do not come to mind immediatly. My apologies.) For most of the life of this nation, there were virtually no restrictions on immigration. We have done pretty well as a nation, I think, not in spite of immigrants but because of them.

My female barber, born in Korea and and adopted as a baby by an American couple, speaks with a pronounced Mississippi drawl, creating a most amusing cognitive dissonance. The Mississippi Delta is full of Italians and Chinese who have been there for generations. Today, the state is home to illegal aliens who work in the big chicken plants and other agricultural industries. For the most part they work hard, take care of their families and don't make trouble. The police and immigration authorities leave them alone as long as they don't commit crimes. Their children will grow up speaking English and live their lives as ordinary American citizens.

Our Mississippi social and economic model has not stood the test of time very well. All the talk of our "southern heritage" pales in the light of the reality. We're the poorest, unhealthiest and most ignorant state in the union. In the unlikely event that Hispanics become so numerous that they control the state it would probably be an improvement.

Historically, Republicans advocated loose immigration laws in order to keep down wages. Now that a substantial percentage of the Republican fundamentalist base is in the lower income brackets, the Republican Party has a big problem, which is why Bush's speech the other night was almost unintelligible. It was unintelligible because it was meant to be unintelligible. He is attempting to sail between Scylla and Charybdis.

Would anyone want to give odds on whether immigration will be an issue after the November election?

Or whether Halliburton will get the contract to build the Rio Grande Wall?