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Friday, June 09, 2006 The border  My good friend CB, who is my political opposite -- call him Bizarro Jae - suggested a Poli-Mob of Americans going to Mexico and demonstrating against illegal immigration. I think CB thinks my knee-jerk reaction to illegal immigrants would be support. That's not entirely true. My KNEE JERK reaction is that they're here illegally and demonstrating for rights they don't legally have. My next reflexive reaction is that the government should be able to send them back, since after all, they are illegal. But, good liberal that I am, things come to mind. If I went through life acting on my first impulse, I'd spend most of my time behind bars. I want to do a joke about that concept, Rush Limbaugh and where I think he should be spending his golden years, but... First, the individual has rights that go beyond government; the right to a decent life is one of them. Like other human rights, it is inalienable. Borders are irrelevant. Who among the pragmatic, Mona Charen-worshipping conservative sect honestly believe a good man or woman is going to sit idly by and watch his or her family starve rather than cross an imaginary borderline? George W. Bush would raise his hands, but he has lying confused with breathing. These are people who are coming here to work and work hard -- that should be taken into account, just as the failure of the Mexican government in regards to its citizens should be taken into account. Mexican president Vicente Fox has quite a pair if he can go to his idol, Bush, with a straight face and say, 'Please don't send soliders to the border.' It's obvious he doesn't want any barriers in the Mexican exodus. In a nation of about 100 million people, conservative estimates are that 12 million Mexican people have left the country for the U.S. That's comparable to CALIFORNIA packing up and leaving the states. That outflux has an honest cause: Mexico has a history of corruption and tyranny towards its people. I feel for them, primarily because we are walking down that same path. Certainly, the tyranny of GOP vote-squelching measures, unchecked surveillance and wrong-headed tax cuts are aesthetically on a higher tyrannical plane than the clear-cut, brutal tyranny of Mexico. But, the corruption looks pretty damn similar. Secondly, I am concerned with ANY move this government makes since its inherent insincerity is creating a legacy of hateful, xenophobic people. I deal enough with my own prejudices; they are hard enough to overcome without a subverted government telling me who to hate and why. And, why do they want us to be hateful? Because hate is a manifestation of fear and fear is the easiest button in the world to push. We are scared of phantom terrorists, ghost bombs, rumored nukes and two guys getting married. Sure, I'll vote for the devil if it means I won't get bombed. I will be your bitch, Neo-Cons, just keep the world away. What the fuck? What kind of fears are those? Whatever happened to death, growing old, lonlieness and whether or not our kids hate us? It's NOT the world or even an unusually sticky political situation that's the problem; it's our government that is making the issues of this era a big deal. Do you honestly believe WWI, WWII and Viet Nam were shits and giggles for the people of those times? They were hard times, times when the ever-present governmental tendency to close off borders and chain up civilians reared its ugly head and did bad things. But, common sense won out. So, when it comes to the borders, let's talk among ourselves little more. I don't trust our government and I don't trust conservatives to tell me the truth. So, in the end, CB is right, I do support the rights of those immigrants -- their HUMAN rights. I guess I believe there's no such thing as an illegal person. 3 Comments:
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