April 2, 2006
If she drew breath, the Statue of Liberty would drop her torch in disgust and hang her head in shame.
Inculcated
with the belief that they are morally superior and endowed with an
inalienable right to world domination, the members of America’s ruling
White Patriarchy and their ardent supporters have an immigration
problem. Too many "little Brown people" are streaming across their
southern border. As America’s de facto ruling class wrangles with
numerous potential solutions, they are overlooking the obvious: ask the
Native Americans what to do. After all, those who forged the American
Empire nearly drove the indigenous people of North America to
extinction. At the very least, the relatively few survivors of the
Native American genocide could help their White "superiors" put their
comparatively minute problem into perspective by reminding them that
things could be much worse.
While the Western European invaders
simply murdered and displaced hundreds of thousands of Native
Americans, the "marauders" from Mexico (and the rest of Latin America)
are committing such heinous acts as working hard, exercising a devotion
to family, and living decent, honest lives. Wearing their psychological
chains with pride, those who truly believe in the myth of the
superiority of the White-dominated American Empire provide unflinching
support for a government of criminals, murderers, and state terrorists
as they seek to rid themselves of the "dirty, lazy" Latinos. While some
are not even conscious of their racism or allegiance to evil, they are
just as culpable as those who are.
Driven by unbridled
consumerism, "patriotic" support of a militaristic regime (which is
drenched in the blood of millions of murdered civilians), narcissism,
self-absorption, xenophobia, racism, and an insatiable demand for the
exploitation of the rest of the planet to keep them comfortable, the
American Empire’s loyalists are demanding an end to the "Southern
Invasion". Sadly, hubris, insularity, bigotry, the endorsement of
murder and torture, and unsurpassed greed are the hallmarks of a nation
which purports to be a bastion of freedom, justice, human rights, and
equality. Trudging through a blinding blizzard of facts which expose
the United States as a ruthless empire, the purveyors of the American
Myth doggedly indoctrinate their minions with a relentless argumentum
ad nauseam, convincing many that the United States is a benevolent
beacon of hope for humanity.
Pigs will be pigs
Just
as the implementation of the utopian ideas of Communism resulted in
human suffering and totalitarianism, American Capitalism is an abject
failure for humanity, registering quite high on the misery index. Few
would argue that the United States affords a robust standard of living
to many of its citizens, but how much of humanity really benefits? The
295 million people of the United States account for a mere 5% of the
world’s population. A tiny fraction (about 2,950,000 individuals) of
that meager sliver of humanity feasts on a herd of fatted calves.
Meanwhile, 3 billion human beings are left to gnaw on the leftover
bones, clinging to survival on an income of less than $2 per day.
Despite
possessing obscenely abundant resources and wealth, the Empire even
neglects some of its own. 13% of Americans live below the official
poverty line. Over a million Americans are homeless. Many of these
homeless are children, untreated mentally ill individuals and military
veterans (who proudly served their country only to find themselves
discarded like human garbage). American Capitalism comes complete with
a dose of significant racism. 25% of American Blacks and 22% of Latinos
are poverty-stricken while 91.4% of the privileged White majority lives
above the poverty line.
Consider that the Capitalistic economic
engine of the American Empire, which benefits a thimbleful of the
world’s 6.5 billion people, was built through mass murder perpetrated
against Native Americans and the profoundly evil enslavement of our
Black brothers and sisters. Further perpetuated by the exploitation of
the working class during the Gilded Age, the juggernaut American
economy is now maintained by the cheap labor of illegal immigrants in
the United States, the gross exploitation of workers in corporate
America’s offshore sweat shops, decreasing regulation of corporations,
and an ongoing assault against the American working class including
massive layoffs, union busting, and job off-shoring. Obviously, one
cannot change the past, but one can learn from egregiously immoral
behaviors, make amends, and work to change. It is evident that the
Empire has no intention of mending its ways.
Despite the false
dichotomy presented by the government and the mainstream media, there
are choices beyond the collectivism of Communism and the unfettered
greed of Capitalism. It is a moral imperative and a pragmatic necessity
that the United States begin to strive for a more equitable
distribution of wealth, stronger government regulation of corporations (to minimize their crimes against humanity), and socio-economic justice.
We tolerate intolerance
Beneath
the noble rhetoric about equality in America lurk the sinister
realities of racism, bigotry, and ignorance. America’s extremist
Christians persistently fight to deny rights to homosexuals and women
while supporting the ongoing state terrorism committed by the US and
Israel. The Klan and other White supremacist groups have been making a
powerful resurgence by recruiting via the Internet. A federal
government which collects massive tax revenues (and is charged with
providing for the general welfare of its people) committed passive mass
murder and criminal negligence in New Orleans, where virtually all of
the victims were poor Blacks.
Despite some progress, many
Blacks, Hispanics and Native Americans still find themselves
desperately grasping for the bottom rungs of the socioeconomic ladder.
The wealth gap between Whites and minorities is a chasm, with White
families averaging ten times the average net worth of Blacks and
Hispanics. The Empire serves its law and order with a side of
discrimination. As of June of 2004, 2,531 out of every 100,000 blacks
and 957 per 100,000 Latinos were in prison. Compare that to the 393 of
every 100,000 White Americans doing time. For many outside of the
"inner circle" of America’s White Patriarchy, the United States is not
the land of opportunity; it is a land of economic and social brutality.
Both my personal experiences and my more abstract studies lead
me to conclude that racism and intolerance are alive and well in
America. Having befriended several Latinos, numerous Blacks, two
lesbians, a number of Muslims, and a gay man, I have listened to many
minorities share their personal experiences which underscore the
bigotry rippling throughout American society.
While I am not
particularly happy to be a cog in the machinery of Capitalism (as a
working person, taxpayer and consumer), I strive to make a positive
difference on several levels, including participating in NGO's,
boycotting, demonstrating, teaching my children alternatives to the
"American Dream", and recycling. Besides those activities and my
avocation of composing essays and publishing Thomas Paine’s Corner,
I devote much of my time to my vocation. My customers are primarily
immigrants, many of whom are Hispanic. A large percentage of my clients
speak very little English, so I have taught myself Spanish to enable me
to help them. My employer offers unskilled immigrant laborers an
opportunity to buy equipment for a business (with low barriers to
entry) where they can make over $100,000 per year. The alternative for
many would be to make minimum wage working fast food or some other
menial job. Often I hear of their struggles, the discrimination they
face, and the belligerent attitudes they encounter for not learning
"our language" quickly enough. To drive the absurdity of that
expectation home, consider the fact that as Americans, we do not even
have our own language. As a nation of immigrants (excepting our
indigenous Native American brethren), we speak English, not "American".
Imagine that.
Paul Revere rides again
America’s
ruling class created their own immigration problem. Now Congress is
contemplating draconian solutions which will cause human suffering. How
typical for the leaders of the Empire and their lemming-like followers.
Spurring Congress to take action, a repugnant vigilante group calling
themselves the Minutemen now patrols parts of the southern border of
the United States; they are armed and dangerous. While the Minutemen
are endorsed and supported by White supremacist groups, they claim they
are simply there to help the US government protect America’s borders
from potential terrorists, criminals, and immigrants carrying diseases.
With
the Minutemen crying, "The Mexicans are coming! The Mexicans are
coming!", the US Senate is debating several measures to deal with
illegal immigration, one of which would include the erection of an
Apartheid wall, the arrest and criminal detention of illegal
immigrants, and criminal charges against those offering aid to illegal
immigrants. Regardless of the outcome of the debate, I will continue to
help the illegal immigrants I know. My moral values supersede the laws
of men.
Catch 22
Representing
the 12 million illegal immigrants who have established residence in the
United States, millions of Latinos and their supporters have engaged in
a number of protests around the United States over the past week. Their
moral outrage is justified in the face of the entrenched power
structure’s bid to criminalize millions of hard-working human beings
and to punish compassionate people who help them.
Meanwhile,
corporate champions (like George Bush), whose greed over-rides their
racist, xenophobic tendencies, want to find a way to keep illegal
immigrants in the United States as "temporary guest workers" since they
are a source of cheap, submissive labor. With the Thirteenth Amendment
impeding them, the leaders America's corporatocracy are not about to
let these indentured servants slip away from them.
Self-inflicted wound
Living
in denial, the American Empire is blinded to its culpability in
creating the immigration problem. By enabling US corporations to build
manufacturing facilities in Mexico starting in the early 1970’s, the
United States set itself up for a mass exodus across its border and, at
the same time, betrayed its own working class. While the US businesses
maintained miserable working conditions and paid a small fraction of
what they were paying American workers, the poor in Mexico flocked to
the jobs they offered. Unfortunately for them, many American businesses
closed up shop and moved on to other countries once they found cheaper
labor pools. Many of those factories were close to the US border,
leaving large numbers of unemployed Mexicans living near states like
Texas and Arizona. Who can blame them for risking illegal immigration
to escape their miserable situations?
Furthering its illegal
immigration woes and deepening the plight of the American working
class, the United States accelerated the movement of US corporations
onto foreign soil by passing laws such as NAFTA. Utilizing neocolonial
and imperial tools like the International Monetary Fund, the World
Bank, the CIA support of dictators friendly to US corporate interests,
and even invasion, the Empire has bled the people and resources of
developing nations like a vampire with an insatiable bloodlust. Besides
subjecting the citizens of other nations to abject poverty, the Empire
has slaughtered millions of innocent civilians with its behemoth
military machine, and is continuing this pattern in Iraq. Employing the
lessons of its early history, the United States enthusiastically
enables Israel in the genocide of the Palestinian people.
Stop the killing and share the wealth
Why
wouldn’t people flock to the security and prosperity of the Empire?
After all, the rest of the world is a dangerous place considering that
the imperialist United States has run its "collateral damage" count
into the multi-millions despite its relatively brief existence, has
declared that it is above international and humanitarian law, and
invades nations "pre-emptively". Since 25% of the world’s resources
flow into a nation of only 300 million, some of the other 6.2 billion
human beings are bound to show up on the Empire’s doorstep begging for
food.
American Capitalism and the American Empire are blights on
humanity, particularly outside of the United States. They render far
more damage to the rest of the world than to the United States, which
explains why a small number of Americans expatriate while millions of
immigrants flock to this nation.
Congress will pass a law which
will put a bandage on the immigration problem, but the wound will not
heal. One piece of legislation will not come close to addressing the
myriad underlying causes. Ultimately, the United States’ increasing
trajectory toward a more brutal form of Capitalism with fewer
restrictions on corporations (and hence less protection for workers and
consumers) coupled with a rapid acceleration of the American Empire’s
quest for global hegemony will spark an influx of illegal immigrants.
Until the White American Plutocracy and their brainwashed adherents end
their tenacious and destructive efforts to ensure the perpetuation of a
"White man’s world", they will continue to be plagued by an onslaught
of "little Brown people" who speak a language that is "downright
un-American".
Suggested Reading:
Life After Capitalism - And Now Too
Minutemen Objective is Shameful
Scrimmage on the Border
U.S.Foreign Policy and Pentagon
Growing Wealth Gap Rates an 'Orange Alert'
The Face Outside: Starting Point, Reversal, Realistic Utopia
Jason
Miller is a 39 year old sociopolitical essayist with a degree in
liberal arts and an extensive self-education. When he is not spending
time with his wife and three sons, researching, or writing, he is
working as a loan counselor. He is a member of Amnesty International
and an avid supporter of Oxfam International and Human Rights Watch. He
welcomes responses at willpowerful@hotmail.com or comments on his blog, Thomas Paine's Corner, at http://civillibertarian.blogspot.com/