Out of many, one.
Tucker Carlson is in the news, just in time for the 28th annual Greater Medford Multicultural Fair.
Carlson is the most popular opinion host on Fox News. He says that White Americans are victims of a "Great Replacement" policy, one intended "to change the racial mix of this country, that's the reason, to reduce the political power of people whose ancestors lived here and drastically increase the proportion of American newly arrived here from the Third World."
He describes immigrants as making America less its real self, therefore taking something from him.
Everyone wants to make a racial issue out of it, ‘Ooh, the white replacement theory.’ No, no, no, this is a voting rights question. I have less political power because they are importing a brand-new electorate. Why should I sit back and take that? The power that I have as an American, guaranteed at birth, is one man, one vote. And they are diluting it.
Meanwhile, in Medford, done virtually because of COVID, we will have a Facebook version of the traditional September gathering of people and booths. It will be broadcast on Facebook beginning at 11:00 a.m. Pacific Time. In Facebook, go to "Medford Multicultural Fair." The Fair is an affirmation of variety and diversity. The live events in prior years are feel-good events of people together. The gathering has a subtext. These people are Americans. Americans come in varieties. Variety adds to America. It doesn't dilute it.
Much of today's political buzz says that immigration and borders--not budgets and infrastructure--are the issues that will determine America's political future. Trump thrived in the GOP primary and 2016 general election with a message that Carlson has adopted:
When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best. They’re not sending you. They’re not sending you. They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.
I will relate a conversation I had with a man about my age, and like me, White, married, and financially comfortable in retirement. He is a conservative Republican who voted for Trump. The dialog went about like this:
That topic of conversation doesn't always go so smoothly, but he is a smart guy, and he got the point even if a media diet of Fox News obscures it. Real Americans come from a variety of backgrounds and ethnicities.HIM: "Some new people bought the house next door. They are both doctors, nice people. They are young. Have kids. They are a bi-racial couple, like you and Debra. The kids are mixed-race, like Dillon. She looks Vietnamese and he is, well, American, you know, like us."ME: "You mean he has European heritage."HIM: "Yeah, regular American. White."ME: " I probably wouldn't normally put it the way you did. Your neighbors are both Americans. I said "European" extraction because that's what we are, in contrast to the wife, of Vietnamese extraction. My Debra is American. The doctor whose heritage is Vietnamese is American. American isn't a race or ethnicity. American doesn't mean White. There are all sorts of races here."HIM: 'Hmm. [pause.] Yeah. Of course. I guess I sort of assumed---well, you know, American is White. It was just something in the back of my mind, but yeah, I get it. American isn't a race. Right."
I am part of that American story in my marriage to a woman of Chinese ethnicity, and a son who is a mixture of the two of us. America is a country consisting mostly of immigrants. From my fathers' side, the first Sage came from Wales to Middletown Connecticut in the 1600s, David Dudley Sage. From my mother's side, I am the grandson of the two members of the "huddled masses" who came to Ellis Island from Greece in the great immigration period of the first decade of the 20th Century, Panos and Chrisoula Kostarelos. They became Americans. I, too, am an American. So is Debra, so is Dillon.
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| Painting by James Kirk, 1993. American Family |
10 comments:
Thanks primarily to agreed-upon shifts in official news media, government and academic usage, Democrats/progressives have largely succeeded in conflating immigration and illegal immigration. The polemical corollary is that opposition to illegal immigration should be considered racism. The continued power of the immigration and border issue demonstrates, however, that the Democratic caricature is not only not credible, but will hurt them at the polls in 2022 and 2024 just as it did in 2916.
The real immigration and border question is not race but attitude towards America. Why exactly is it that America alone (plus some of Europe) somehow sins against humanity if it maintains a strong border and immigration controls, but Mexico or China have far more rigorous controls with nary a complaint from Western liberals! The baseline liberal conceit is that Bad America owes open borders as geopolitical reparations of a sort, and has no moral standing to insist on immigration rules or standards.
The wider implications now appear. Legal immigrants and heretofore traditional refugees for the most part love and trust America, warts and all, and primarily feature gratitude and obligation. Illegal immigrants by definition are scofflaws, even if they are willing to conditionally assimilate. Third World “refugees”, real and nominal, on the other hand, increasingly and with progressive connivance blame America and Europe for their home problems, and see contempt, crime and separatism as if entitlements.
The Medford Multicultural Fair will celebrate diversity of a sort. That will not include divergence from stock reductionist, collectivist left-wing dogma about Bad America and the Bad West, likely with Bad Israel and certainly Bad Capitalism tossed in. Applied to immigration or whatever, the overarching ethic is social “justice” as government-rigged equity of outcome, because wealth and influence are, axiomatically, ill-gotten gains. Most Americans still reject that view as toxic, with ample historical reason.
Mr/Ms Dudgeon has it exactly right. So does Peter. Legal immigration is great. Illegal immigration is not.
My Jewish grandparents got here from Eastern Europe legally to escape antisemitic persecution. If they had not, my parents would have gone up the Nazi smokestacks, and I would not exist.
America benefits greatly from legal immigration.
What makes America great isn't its wealth or military power, but the ability to recognize thee basic humanity of people from all races and religions: unity in diversity. In spite of our history of racial oppression, we have evolved for the better. That's something the MAGA hatters seem determined to change.
Climate change, overpopulation, crime and corruption in Latin America are driving people North. Progressive empathy for those displaced by economic conditions in their homelands is offset by white supremacism.
Stalemate.
Until we come to terms with racism the issue of migration will be used to divide Americans. Republicans have no interest in addressing this or any other human rights issue because it will alienate them from their base: ignorant bigots and the 1% who resist paying taxes.
Meanwhile, Britney!
The Colonies and the US had no immigration policy until much later when a populous of Americans became worried about being overrun by immigration from Asia. Then and only then did Congress put in place immigration laws restricting people from entering the United States. We like to magnify the open and welcoming moments in our history but we have had many dark moments attempting to limit and deny entry to multiple groups of people. The present quota systems limit our ability in many areas most recently agriculture, high tech and scientific research. The current immigration policy is outdated needing a complete rewrite. G W Bush tried during his term but both Democrats and Republicans blocked enactment. Regardless of what action Congress takes the United States is on track to be less than fifty percent white.
I removed an anonymous comment. It briefly appeared possibly to be from someone other than Curt Ankerberg, but then its origin became persuasively Curt's when the comment disintegrated into calling another commenter a Nazi. Readers may realized that Ankerberg has been found guilty of fraud by the Federal Tax Court. His defense was that his brain was damaged. Some readers consider him a proper subject of ridicule; others of sympathy. His nasty comments may be a result of a mental disease, not sociopathic desire to defraud others for selfish reasons. In any case, he is a Trump supporter and a Republican and his comments reflect on them as well as on Curt personally. Warning to readers: just because a comment is obscene or nasty does NOT mean it is necessarily Curt's. It might be someone imitating the Curt Ankerberg style.
One further note: Although Curt Ankerberg's behavior reflects on Trump and the GOP voters who support Curt, not all Republicans or Trump-supporters believe in writing obscene comments. His persistence in tarnishing the brand and reputation of Trump and the GOP is a benefit to Democrats, but the author of these Curt-like comments seems to be unaware of it. Or unconcerned.
Thank you, Peter, for the heads-up, but it's hard to imagine anyone tarnishing the Republican brand more that Trump himself. Why they would want to identify with someone who attempted to overturn a U.S. election and continues to spread lies about it is beyond me. Nonetheless Trump, the coup leader and pathological liar, is now the GOP. Fear, anger and hatred have become their stock in trade.
11 million illegals can find a job, not necessarily a good paying one. Paid under the table, some contribute to my social security but most will wind up with a zero retirement, We love exploitation of any and every country and any body that will do the grunt work without complaining for low wages or none at all. We dumped Native Americans on the worst land available and told them to survive on pennies we threw at them.
I remember Braceros contracted from Mexico to work the fields then go home. Farmers under contract had to spray them for lice and give them infested cabins to live in; could not cheat them and then send them home. Farmers hated the program, exploitation worked better by keeping them here with their families . More leverage to cut wages because the family depended on the husband or wife or kid worker. This is a vicious country for the underclass. Hire an illegal go directly to jail. Never happen, never will. Diversity is a coined phrase to make liberals feel good. Sorry, but you burned the bacon and that doesn’t go well with my fried eggs.. So who picked the squash and green beans for tonight’s dinner? Shut the fuck up and pass fried chicken.
What with the new ideological purity tests among good and sophisticated Democrats he may well soon be cancelled, and the streets and schools named for him duly renamed, but it’s well to note while it still matters that the most prominent and celebrated Latino in American history (to date), Cesar Chavez, was a staunch opponent of illegal immigration as harmful to the American worker, especially workers of color. Maybe we shouldn’t hold his pedestrian practicality against him, though. Chavez just didn’t understand bourgeois, pharisaical white-savior moralizing.
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