Immigrants. . .

—From CB—

Don’t take this as expert opinion. I’m just your average dumb assertive citizen.

We’re mostly a nation of immigrants. This comes up in political debates on immigration, but otherwise not. But to my mind, it has multiple ramifications.

Immigration is not easy. Until this era of air travel and instant communication, it’s meant cutting ties with friends, family, and the culture that you’ve grown up in, You don’t understand the language, and you don’t understand the jokes.

Nor do you flee your home to “seek a better opportunity.” More likely it’s to save your family from starvation, enlistment in an army or a gang, or being shot in the street. Coming to this country, you face an absolute unknown: you may have family here or find help through an agency, but more likely you’ll face an unknown language, hostile people, and a future that soon proves to be a toss-up.  

It results, naturally, in clannishness, what my grandpa, who was Germanic, accused Norwegian farmers of—he avoided specifics. But you want to be with your own people, people who look and talk like you, out of safety concerns. Does that result in racism? Of course it does.

These thoughts come about largely because we’re the richest country in the world, certainly the most powerful, yet also the most fearful. What dominates our politics?—who can raise the most fear. If it’s not fear of invasion, it’s fear of change, fear of the new, fear of the absence of fear.

The other thing that flows from the trauma of immigration—not only from that, of course—is the rage that comes from the frustration of hope. We’re told from childhood that the future has all possibilities, that we’re in the land of opportunity, that all it takes is hard work. Then you find yourself compared to others, find yourself accused of racism, sexism, exploitation three generations back, and accused of stupidity for backing Trump, who at the very least is likely to shake thing up.

I’ve seen in social media lately lots of posts that sound left-wing, saying that anyone who votes in the coming election is a fool, that it’s only a plot of the international order to perpetuate the intolerable status quo, that we all need to get our souls readjusted to support the perfect candidate, who doesn’t exist. I resist that. Over the years, I’ve voted for many severely flawed individuals, some like JFK who was elected, some like McGovern, who wasn’t. In all, I’ve never voted for anyone who might deliver pie in the sky. I wish I could. Maybe some day…

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