What does an illegal immigrant look like?

In last night's Rachel Maddow MSNBC talk show, the eponymous host asked "What does an illegal immigrant look like" as the keystone of her mocking Arizona's new anti-illegal immigrant law.

Only it's a trick question. It presupposes that everyone is standing completely still, naked, on a vacant lot, and the cops are walking through the lot looking for people who look Mexican.

In reality the cops are stopping cargo vans stuffed with 25 men women and children in ragged clothes, with backpacks and water jugs. They're investigating homes in residential neighborhoods where 50 people are living and moving in and out constantly, mostly at night. They're stopping platoons of people walking in the desert just north of the Mexican border.

They're looking for people who are acting like illegals.

Rachel Maddow has a PhD in something or other. But when she says things like this--and goes on in like vein for full segments--I have to wonder. Because it fails the common sense test. Of course looking Mexican is one possible indicator that someone in Arizona might be an illegal. But that's only actionable if other signs are also present, such as the ones I described.

So what I want to know is: is Dr. Maddow a little slow on the uptake? She doesn't seem to be. And you can't get a PhD if you're stupid. Or does she just lose her wits when something triggers her emotions?

In my experience members of groups that have suffered systemic discrimination tend to respond reflexively whenever they see or hear about something that sounds like that. Jews, blacks, homosexuals all suffered from systemic discrimination, and not just by individuals, but by the State, for example.

So I'm guessing that Dr. Maddow, as a member of such a group, loses her common sense when dealing with what seem to her to be comparable issues--not to mention the feeling that you must defend everyone's individual rights or your own will be taken away.

Therefore it's possible that she isn't consciously using manipulative propaganda on her viewers, figuring that the ends justify the means. Most likely she just doesn't know what she'd doing because her emotions have swamped her reason.

That's why we have the word "fool." It doesn't mean stupid. A fool can be brilliant. They've just subordinated their reason to their feelings.