This morning, as I left work, a customer who I know well, and who is an Iranian expatriate and business owner who fled Iran after the fall of the Shah, who his father served as a regional administrator, offered me a ride—and a story, he said.
I was game for a story after 11 hours of toil. We drove off through Baltimore County, into Harford County, to various construction sites and retail operations. He was irate.
“You are a writer. Tell me if this makes sense. It took me fourteen years and three thousand dollars to get my visa to the United States. Once here I invested thirty thousand dollars in my business—my money—a fortune in Iran, placed into this economy to permit me to contribute and make a living for myself and my wife. I think that this kind of immigration makes sense. There are many immigrants in my business.
“It takes a person from China ten years to get their visa, and a person from the Philippines twenty-three years! It now costs four thousand dollars for the visa. You have a four tier waiting list for family members of naturalized citizens. The Chinese compete with you, so I understand. But the Filipinos are your country’s allies—where the U.S. goes to war, they go. The people are educated and hard working. So why does your government—which turns away educated, hard-working people with money to invest—accept illegals, people who bring nothing but hunger, every day? You have Mexicans shopping in your store with food stamps—I see it every time I buy my melons. They are illegal, but they get government money?”
We were driving buy a construction site slowly.
“Look at these men, they are working and they are illegals. Look at him, a smartphone and blue tooth, a car—for which he needs a license—and he is an illegal! Can we even find an American on this construction site?”
As we drove around a Wal-Mart construction site and pulled up to a sign that said:
Wal-Mart
Hiring
Contradando
I said, “There’s your answer. The people that own forty of every one hundred American dollars want Spanish-speaking workers.”
“This is insane,” he said. “I love this country. It has been good to me. I pay taxes, even though I am not a citizen, which I should. But why spend those tax dollars breaking your own laws to bring in unskilled labor when your economy has such high unemployment? Why not give Americans the work? Can you tell me that?”
“It’s done to remind scrubs like me that we’re easily replaced. This is the reason for the drive toward a bilingual society, so that Latino refugees can replace us. If our masters were trying to build something sustainable they would insist on a national language, for no other reason than to prevent sectarian friction and promote efficient work. Instead they want a Tower of Babble.”
He looked at me as he swerved regretfully around a squad of recent Salvadoran immigrants crossing the street, and snapped, “Yes, the Ziggurat of the Idiots! I have seen it! It was a bad idea then, and remains a bad idea!”
-Thanks for the ride, Ali.
Note:
Since I began writing about Baltimore 19 years ago, the Latin American population has expanded from a few hundred to tens of thousands. Mostly along the East Side. These have primarily been laborers, with few Latinas and no Latinos using food stamp cards in the supermarkets I have worked and shopped in. Now, over the mast five years, accelerating steeply over the past two, most Latinas shop with an independence card, and many employed Mexican and Salvadoran construction workers purchase their lunch with food stamps.
It's classical Byzantine strategy. Invite the Normans to fight the Seljuks, ally with the Danishmends against the Normans. Play both sides against the middle until you get screwed. That's what you get when you have a state religion you don't really believe but no better alternative-no principles, just survival for the elites. Use the blacks to shatter the ethnic white enemy's communities, then bring in the Mexicans to use against the blacks.
I absolutely agree that the U.S.—domestically and foreign—pursues a Byzantine strategy.
But B, I must take issue with you about the your assertion that the U.S. lacks a state religion that its people believe in.
The religion of the United States counts virtually every American as a devout orthodox believer.
The faith of my forefathers waxes strong, with out temples soaring higher than any church or temple dedicated to other gods be a measure of ten.
Our iconography, likewise, is known and respected, and sought after around the world. In every nation believers of other, less pervasive, faiths, seek to possess our icons in ever greater abundance. Saint Washington is the patriarch according to which rival faiths measure themselves. Saint Lincoln is the Jesus or our pantheon. Saint Jackson is our very own John the Baptist.
Onward, I could extoll the virtues of our moneytheistic faith and its patriarchs, against which the followers of Islam currently battles worldwide.
Think about it, B. How many more theologians would the Muslims, Jews and Christians require, if, the first and last thing on the minds of their flocks when they awoke and laid down to rest, was their God? And, as for the waking hours of the work day. What faith can claim that its every adherent considers the will of their God, with every making of a sandwich, every customer complaint addressed, every movie script accepted, every business decision made, every bolt turned, with every swing of the baseball bat?
B, the worshippers of the American God, do not take a step, eat a lunch, or pull up to a gas station, without worshipping through their works and the submission to his will, the Almighty God of Things.
Folks, the state religion of the USA is low rent hedonism, without doubt. It is a branch of Materialism, the church of the infernal cellphone, whose patron saint is Kim Kardasian, she of the large caboose and confused stepfather, who used to grace Wheatties boxes. Sic transit gloria cerealis, or something.
There may be the lip service cited in the Bible, but not a whole lot of the real thing.
Oh tempora, oh mores!
Mr Cheerful
Bernie, as a violent primitive, and an honorary African American, I find much to admire about the Armenian caboose of our postmodern Nike. However, since when does an appreciation for utility—a place to set my can of Natty Boh, for instance—become misplaced worship? I agree, that this is a sorry state. Why can't we have a decent European style fall into decay in place of this evangelical greed?
I have a question, Sir. Since the actual religious and spiritual life of a people is often different than it's nominal metaphysical orientation—as illustrated by our moral decrepitude—and in consideration of our nationwide adulation of the aforementioned Armenian-American caboose, when archaeologists of some future civilization study us, will they come to the conclusion that we are a cargo cult?
In short, she should be the concubine of a conquering American, not the mother of our nation.
JL, yeah, probably. Well put, great thought. "Motel of the mysteries?"
Seems to me a whole lot of the folks are just that, doing wierd and distructive stuff ( and it do look ritual), and hoping that all kinds of useless schlock will magically appear, to fill their every need.
Why don't we call it the church of the blessed hoodrat?
I hadn't considered her utility. Whatta great idea! But then, you'd have to TALK to her, or, worse, LISTEN to her thoughts. Migawd! Call me if this occurs, and I'll do a Beloch rescue, before your mind turns to silly putty, or you start to transition. Saints preserve us!
Wonder if the cult has both high and low adherants? Or
Reformed and apostate?
There's some grist for your mill! Take a look at Heinleins "If this goes on" AKA "Revolt in (?)" damn, I'm getting old. A Mormonish theocracy takes over the US, it's prophet one Jeremiah Scudder. (a former TV evangelist) Me, I'd make him a used car salesman, in the Bill Clinton mode.
Time for my meds!
I'm expecting good things from you!
Father Hackett
“The first lesson of economic is scarcity: there is never enough of anything to fully satisfy all those who want it. The first lesson of politics is to disregard the first lesson of economics.” – Thomas Sowell
“We won’t have true Social Justice until everything is equal in everybody’s house” - Al Sharpton
“Some people regard private enterprise as a predatory tiger to be shot. Others look on it as a cow they can milk. Not enough people see it as a healthy horse, pulling a sturdy wagon.” - Winston Churchill
Is America a cargo cult? Yes, I think you hit on it James. Many people’s understanding of economics today is akin to that of a cargo cult follower: all the stuff you need is produced by magic. There is no such thing as scarcity and cost so if you are not getting all that you need and want it is obviously the work of the Devil. Some evil conspiracy is keeping those things from you. Terms like supply and demand are all lies and nonsense. There is no good reason for you to not be materially satisfied. There is no reason for any business to go broke since they all have secret rooms full of money like “Scrooge McDuck” in the comic books. Likewise no business needs to earn a profit; profit is just an overcharge that business owners place on their goods and services so they can buy luxuries for themselves and their families. In the same vein non-white people think white people are magic and can make all the stuff out of thin air. So if people of color are not getting all the material things they need and want it is simply because white people are being stingy and uncaring. The white people need to open up their secret treasure rooms and start passing out the money. But having said that, our “state religion” is actually secular humanism. Since secular humanism doesn’t believe in an afterlife or anything metaphysical, nothing matters except what happens in this life, the material world. So “spirituality” is just a quaint notion that has no bearing on reality. The only way to transcend the material world is to die. What matters is to make certain you get your share of the stuff (including sex). Then you’ll feel satisfied with your life.
As for immigration most people don’t realize that from 1924 t0 1965 immigration into this country was severely limited in order to assimilate the mass of immigrants who already settled in American during the late 19th and early 20th Centuries and to maintain “American Homogeneity” en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_Act_of_1924. Up until 1965 only immigrants who benefited America in some way were allowed in. The Immigration Act of 1965 (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_and_Nationality_Act_of_1965) changed all that and allowed in all sorts of poor immigrants from the third world without regard to national quotas of the past and without regard to whether or not they would be able to assimilate into America’s dominate Anglo-Saxon culture and/or contribute to America’s economy. And thus we are in the condition we are in today.
“The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public’s money” - Alexis de Tocqueville, “Democracy in America”, 1838.