Just who is the 'illegal scum?'

A few years back, I was in a medical facility with a needle stuck in my arm, and the woman wielding it was talking politics — Iraq and the war. "They ought to just put a fence around that country," she said, "and drop a nuclear bomb on all of ‘em!"

She said it with a concealed snicker and a triumphant pause of expectation, so I knew this wasn't the first time she'd said it and that she expected snorts of approval.

I thought about mentioning the millions of innocents that she was breezily sentencing to death. But she had a needle in my arm, and so I kept quiet.

Today people aren't ranting much about Iraq, but about illegal immigrants. And if you think it's just a civil policy debate, you aren't paying attention.

Some serious ugliness is loose in America, whipped up in part by politicians trying to appease angry voters.

What follows is disturbing. You may wonder why I bother to print it. It's because I believe it's important to know what your fellow Americans say anonymously.

These are some of the online comments to recent Charlotte Observer items about illegal immigrants, and to postings on reporter Franco Ordonez's blog, "This Land." Spelling and punctuation are mostly unedited:

>>On a Thursday blog that healthcare reform is unlikely to include care for illegal immigrants: "Somebody here illegally gets sick, let ‘em die and ship the body to UNC Med for training
purposes."
From earlier articles:
>>"ONE WAY TO ‘FIX' THIS ILLEGAL PROBLEM IS TO GIVE OUR BORDER PATROLS RIGHTS TO KILL ANYONE THAT CROSSES THE BORDER."

>>"SEND THE ILLEGALS BACK TO THEIR COUNTRY OF ORIGIN!!!! If they are ofund her (found here) a second time execute them."

>>"I am in favor of forcing illegals out. They need to take their anchor (sic) babies with them. Taxpayer citizens come first!! Illegal scum never!!"

Had enough?

There was a time, as George Washington University's Carol Darr reminded my Harvard Kennedy School class in fall 2007, when some idealists thought the Internet would produce a flowering of democratic discourse. What naifs. What we got instead, Darr said, was a "pitchfork-waving mob."

Yes, illegal immigration is a problem. The presence here of an estimated 12 million illegal immigrants is troubling, both for what it says about border security and for the impact on our economy.

Yes, a study from UNC Chapel Hill's Kenan Institute found that in 2004, North Carolina spent $61 million more on social services for Hispanics than it collected in taxes they paid. An estimated half the state's Hispanics are here illegally.

But execute them? Doesn't that strike you as, oh, a bit Hitler-esque?

And who has done more harm to this country — illegal immigrants or the fine folks who brought down the global financial system? You know, the folks committing mortgage fraud? Spreading mortgages among people who couldn't repay them? The folks who took out mortgages they knew they couldn't repay? Bankers who sold debt they knew was toxic?

What about CEOs who illegally shelter billions from the IRS? What about your buddy who cheats on his taxes? Tax fraud is a crime. Entering this country illegally is not; it's a civil infraction. Who, again, are the "illegal scum"?

I know the people who scuttle out from under rocks to put those abusive, anonymous remarks online are a cowardly minority. Most people have more compassion and humanity, or at a minimum better manners.

But to understand America, you can't be blind to the existence of Americans who think it's fine to talk about executing or bombing millions.

In 2007 at Harvard I met Abdul Razzaq al-Saiedi, in my class of Nieman Fellows. Razzaq is a wiry young Iraqi with glasses and a big grin who wanted to be a journalist. But under Saddam Hussein that was not a wise career choice. So he studied civil engineering. After the U.S. invasion he found work as a reporter at the New York Times' Baghdad bureau.

Under Saddam, his older brother disappeared, and it was years before the family could finally confirm his death. While we were in Cambridge, Razzaq's cousin died in a Baghdad car-bombing.

The woman who wanted to nuke Iraq didn't know Razzaq or his family. But still, she wanted to wipe out them all, and his whole country.

What is the point here? Just this: There's a powerful mean streak in America. And it is scary.

Mary Newsom is an associate editor at the Charlotte Observer. Readers may write to her at the Observer, P.O. Box 30308, Charlotte, N.C. 28030, or via e-mail at mnewsom@charlotteobserver.com.