Locking
The Golden Door
By Jason Miller
03 March, 2006
Countercurrents.org
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 [email protected]
or comments on his blog, Thomas Paine's Corner, at http://civillibertarian.blogspot.com/.