April
6, 2006, Volume 13 Nr. 41, Issue 209
Your Huddled
Masses are now my Wretched Refuse:
Locking the Golden Door Jason
Miller
3/31/06
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 pig
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
http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?ItemID=6842
Minutemen
Objective is Shameful
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2002883309_danny23.html
Scrimmage
on the Border
http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/2005/07/scrimmage_on_the_border.html
U.S.Foreign
Policy and Pentagon
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Foreign_Policy/US_ForeignPolicy.html
Growing
Wealth Gap Rates an 'Orange Alert'
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0601-07.htm
The
Face Outside: Starting Point, Reversal, Realistic Utopia
http://wwwradford.edu/~peace/Peter-Raoul%20paper.htm
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/
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