What We've Got Here is a Failure to Communicate

My buddy Rob has written a sincere and excellent post over at Gheorghe the Blog about grappling with the difficulties of our times--  the thrust of it is that our current government, who are behaving like "third world banana republicans" are something of a kleptocracy, redistributing wealth to the rich, at the expense of the uninsured, the immigrants, the rule of law (especially the powers of the FBI) and the "darker, the weirder, the more foreign among us," and people of good conscience are going to have to take a stand against that behavior; I have something to report on this issue and I'm not going to do it justice so I suggest you read the articles, but several Indonesian immigrants are taking sanctuary in a church around the corner from me in Highland Park-- one of the immigrants, Harry Pangemanan, has been here since 1993 (he entered on a temporary visa) and has been involved in a project rebuilding homes devastated by Hurricane Sandy since 2012 (he won the 2018 Martin Luther King award in HP for this) and while this has been a terrible time for these people, I'm proud of the role my friends and the the community have played in the situation . . . meanwhile, while the immigrants were seeking sanctuary, someone got wind of their absence and their homes were vandalized and ransacked, and passports and money was stolen-- it's still hazy how this happened, if ICE leaked information as to where they lived, or if people saw the homes on the news (but not all of them were on the news) and took action-- but there's something awful going on in this country and everyone needs to have a frank discussion about it . . . as usual, I have a couple of recommendations if you want to get deeper into this issue: The Weeds "The White Genocide Episode You've Been Waiting For" explains how some of the current immigration policy being considered offers concession for "undocumented immigrants" but there is a push to curtail legal immigration, especially to families . . . the subtext is the discussion that needs to be had: it seems the ethnic constituency of America changing too much and too rapidly for many people in the nation and there have been previous, restrictive and rather racist policies to preserve the racial constituency of America (most notably the Immigrations Acts of 1917 and 1924) so we've done this before . . . I live in central New jersey, one of the most racially and ethnically diverse places in the world, and I thought this debate was over in my area-- but the vandalism and ransacking of the homes of the immigrants seeking sanctuary obviously refute this . . . this is an issue on the purpose of America: is it a place for immigrants to come and thrive or are we building a wall and locking our doors; the interesting thing is that economists universally accept that immigration, legal or illegal, is a boon to the economy-- more workers, more jobs, more consumers, more people to pay taxes and buy property, etc. etc. a more diverse economy-- but it seems that certain white people are willing to take the hit to the economy to preserve the racial integrity of the country (or what's left of it) and if you really want to take a deep dive on this cultural divide, check out the second season of The United States of Anxiety, a podcast that does a fantastic hob tracing the roots of the current dichotomy; the climate change episode is especially informative, as it traces the evolution of conservative climate change skepticism, which did not exist twenty-five years ago when Bush Sr. announced that we would all have to band together and solve this global and existential problem, but then became a conservative bona fide once the Republicans realized it was not an environmental issue, it was a political issue . . . thinking about this stuff is going to make you angry and depressed and indignant, but we have to discuss it as a nation because there's actually a reasonable middle ground on issues like climate change policy and immigration (unlike, say, nuclear war) and if we can get beyond the rancor and the hatred and the utter disdain that people are feeling for those with different opinions, maybe we can elect some people that will hammer our some reasonable policy . . . I remain optimistic that people are not as stupid and narrow-minded as the folks representing them in our government right now.