Locking the Golden Door
BY JASON MILLER
04/01/06 "ICH" -- -- 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
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://www.radford.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/.
