Month: January 2019

I’ve been thinking about American culture amid all this talk about Steve King defending his views on white nationalism and calling himself an “American nationalist” as well as Donald Trump’s recent tweet taken from an editorial by Pat Buchanan that says we have to stop the immigrants at the border:

….Border is eventually going to be militarized and defended or the United States, as we have known it, is going to cease to exist…And Americans will not go gentle into that good night. Patrick Buchanan. The great people of our Country demand proper Border Security NOW!— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 14, 2019

In Pat Buchanan’s article that Trump quotes, Pat also says this: “The more multiracial, multiethnic, multicultural, multilingual America becomes — the less it looks like Ronald Reagan’s America — the more dependably Democratic it will become.”

You can clearly see all the lines being drawn here – the Wall is needed to prevent the country from being multiracial, multiethnic, multicultural, and multilingual. Because all of those things go against what “America” is really about.

Which made me think: What is American culture?

For some, it’s cowboy hats, pickup trucks, apple pie, hamburgers, and rock and roll. However, for me, it’s different.

To explain, I need to tell a story about when some friends of mine were visiting from Greece.

It was March, and they were going to head to Chicago for the weekend. It was still not quite spring, and they weren’t sure what they were going to do, but after a long Minnesota winter, they wanted to get away to the big city. It just happened that they would be in Chicago on March 17th.

“Holy crap, you guys can go to the St Patrick’s Day parade! There’ll be green beer, lots of live music, and they even dye the river green!”

The Greeks, however, did not share my enthusiasm. “But we’re not Irish.”

And it was at that point I had a revelation.

I’m not Irish, but I celebrate St Patrick’s Day. I’m not French, but I celebrate Mardi Gras. I’m not Mexican, but I’ll celebrate Cinco de Mayo. I’ll celebrate any holiday – any excuse for a party.

And that’s the thing. Most Americans aren’t necessarily those cultures, but that won’t stop us from finding an excuse to celebrate them. It’s an inherently American thing to take stuff from other cultures and embrace it as our own and celebrate them.

This week, Donald Trump served hamburgers (or as he might call it, “hamberders”) to the visiting Clemson Tigers and said “It’s all good stuff. Great American food.”

But for me, the greatest American food is the street taco. I mean, you take a tortilla, stuff it with barbecue beef, and top it with kimchi. A perfect meld of Mexican, American, and Korean cuisine in one. Do you think you’d ever find a street taco in France? England? Russia?

In conclusion, for me at least, it’s our multiracial, multiethnic, multicultural, and multilingual culture that makes us strong. It’s what makes us American. And we don’t need a wall – a real one at the border or a perceived one in the minds of Americans – to prevent that.

Trump likes to make all sorts of ridiculous arguments, like the fact that Obama has a fence around his house makes Obama an advocate for “the wall.”

Okay, then, here’s a semi-serious one for you, President Trump.

If you so surely believe that walls are 100% effective, here’s my challenge to you: Waive all secret service protection while you are in residence in the White House.

If you think that drones, sensors, and anything else non-wall related are just “bells and whistles,” remove those as well.

You have fences (“beautiful steel slat walls” as you refer to them) around the White House, and you allege that they are “100% effective.” Okay, then, go ahead and prove it to the American people. Get rid of all the security personnel and all of the “bells and whistles” and live in safety behind your 100% effective wall.

When you travel outside the “wall,” then by all means, you can have your secret service protection, but while in the White House, they won’t be necessary, because you’ll be protected by “the wall.”

Imagine the savings we could realize. No need to pay for those “guys with machine guns” around the clock. After all, they would be totally unnecessary, as you have a wall, right? 100% effective, right?

Please, Mr. Trump, take me up on my challenge. If you forego your security detail and show the people of the United States just how effective your wall can truly be, then everyone would see that absolutely we would be justified in building one along the Mexican border.

Do it for your wall. Do it for America. Cancel the Secret Service protection to make America great again.

So, there’s a lot of debate about the need for the wall, and a lot of people concerned about immigration and fear-mongering about the dreaded “caravan of immigrants.”

I had never heard of MS-13 before Trump became president, but now, he’s using that as the boogeyman for immigration. So I decided to look into MS-13.

MS-13 is a criminal gang of narco-terrorists that originated in the US in the 70s and 80s, and maintains a huge presence in Central America, mostly in El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras. These are facts that I doubt Trump would disagree with.

MS-13 is terrible in those countries. Among other things, they target not only enemy gangs, but all the families associated with enemy gangs. They target police and government officials. They force children into their gangs. They are nothing short of a terrorist organization. And I believe Trump will still agree with this assessment.

But now knowing all that – MS-13 runs rampant in Central America, causing bloody chaos and killing all over the place – what about the families who live there? What about the parents who want to protect their children from these narco-terrorists? What can they do?

Well, they get together, form a caravan, and make their way north. They head to a country known for its freedoms and security. They head to the United States of America.

If you followed the caravan, they weren’t full of drug thugs heading to bring cocaine to our borders; most of them were families trying to flee the violence and chaos in Central America.

And where did the caravan go? Did it head to the wide open desert in the middle of Arizona, where the thousands of them could flee, unchallenged across the open border? No. They went to Tijuana.

When they interviewed these people in the caravan – and you have to give them the benefit of the doubt, just like I am doing with President Trump right now – they all came here wanting to plead their case for asylum. And based on what I have shown above, pleading their case for asylum seems like a slam dunk when their homeland is overrun with narco-terror gangs.

But what President Trump has done is to turn them away, and NOT allow them to make their case for asylum. “Sorry, America is closed to you. Go home.”

I think if given the choice, most of these undocumented immigrants would choose to come here legally and within the system. However, it’s been made clear to them they we don’t them here.

If we really want to cut down on immigration – without having to build a wall that we will constantly have to monitor, maintain, and repair – then here’s what we really need to do:

1. Allow some immigrants with legitimate security claims to seek asylum within our country. If they haven’t committed a crime, why not take them in if they really want to be here?
2. Bolster their governments at home to cut down on corruption and fight against groups like MS-13 in Central America. It worked with the war on terror to fight al-Qaeda and ISIS on their territory, so why don’t we do the same thing with groups like MS-13?
3. Provide jobs for the people in their country. There’s a big reason illegal immigration started dropping after NAFTA: you no longer had to make a dangerous and illegal trek to America – there were good paying jobs in Mexico where you could earn a decent wage and take care of your family. We should be looking to expand free trade to these other countries, not cutting it off altogether.

Of course, this all works except for two things: we’re still sending jobs outside the country, and we’re still letting some Central Americans into the country.

If, after all that, you still think we need a wall – and to turn a blind eye to the evils occurring in Central America – then maybe you really have other problems. If you can’t look at the caravan and think that maybe some of them have a point for wanting to come here – and even considering that maybe of the hundreds of people at least some of them might have a valid reason to be let into this country – then maybe you’re just racist and xenophobic.