Who represents me?

5-20-2006 Who represents me?

As things currently stand, I’m not quite sure which topic I am getting the most sick of hearing about. A tap on the remote control leads me to nonstop debates on Islam, or the devastating effects it has on innocent peoples everywhere. And the next tap usually produces political pundits incessantly droning on about unchecked immigration. Can’t we just stick to bashing Bush?

According to some of it’s most overzealous diehards, the ancient book of Islam sez infidels should be plundered, quartered and fed to gerbils. What’s to debate? We either defend our way of life, or we don’t. Pick one.

After listening to both sides of the political fence debate the illegal immigration issue practically to death, it’s become obvious to me that neither side wants to make a declarative statement or take a definitive stand whereas our sovereignty is concerned. You see, leadership doesn’t always rub all of the people the right way. And political careers will never be put at risk for the good of the country. When U.S. Senators triangulate their future political options and then vote against making English the official language of this country, no better argument for term limits need be made. The needs of their political “careers” come first. Our needs come in a distant second.

As far as the illegal border jumpers are concerned, the solution to the vexing (?) problem seems painfully simple to me. And Allah only knows, I like simplicity. Try this on for size. Let’s say you got caught up in this Home Depot do-it-yourself phenomenon and decided to erect a newfangled fence around the entire homestead. And let’s assume that you did countless hours of homework on the internet and had the entire project mapped out in your mind. So you trek on over to the big box store, load all of the goodies in the truck, haul ‘em back to the house and get to work after a beer or two.

First order of business? Well, you have to create the holes for the fence posts. Despite your wife’s repeated concerns, you power up that immense auger you borrowed from Uncle Hoby and launch it earthward. It’s a powerful sumbitch. It roars, it spins, small rocks scatter as if suddenly taken ill by being in direct contact with the soil, and it’s all you can do to hang on to it as it bucks violently and the oversized handle makes a direct hit on your testicles. You put your weight on it, soil shoots out of the deepening hole and when you’re satisfied with the depth of your first-ever hole in the ground, you extract the bit from the soil only to be startled when cold water smacks you right in the chops. Rutro! You ruptured a water line.

Now, I ask you. As water bubbles up out of the ground at a rate that would horrify a tree-hugger if it was crude oil and it is flooding your property and adjacent properties, what would your first reaction be after the initial shock wore off? Would you gather all of your neighbors together and debate how best to accommodate the unwanted water? Or would you try to figure out how to stop the flow? I’m just asking.

I keep hearing the do-gooders arguing for tolerance whereas the invasion of illegals are concerned, but they always sound very short-sighted to me. They also tell me that the Mexicans coming over the border are all hard-working people simply looking for a better life. While that hard-working part of the equation may be true for the most part, what of their offspring? And what of the offspring’s offspring? For lack of a better word, the people our politicians are inviting into this country are poor, uneducated and their kids are underachievers whereas education is concerned. Don’t give me any jazz about being a mean ole’ racist, do some homework in this regard.

Now, how long do we suppose that 20 million or so poor, uneducated people are going to be content with digging ditches, spreading mulch, harvesting crops or hauling bundles of shingles up a 40-foot ladder before they get to feeling some resentment with their plight? I know things are not regularly thought-out, but poverty breeds resentment, resentment breeds anger, and anger leads to societal ills that haven’t even been thought of yet. It is instructive to consider what poor people in America have been known to do when they get thoroughly sick and tired of being poor.

Having been poor myself many moons ago, I know firsthand how easy it is to want to blame others and lash out at others for your miserable existence that seems grossly unfair by direct comparison with the lives of those that surround you. And I’m telling you, no race of people is going to be content with making up the bottom rungs of the societal and economic ladders that a clear lack of education and opportunity mandate that they occupy. We’re always anguishing about the sorry state of race relations in this country, yet, we seem ready and eager to create a brand new, sizeable class of poor people that will come to hate us as time marches us by. What seems like a much better life as of today will undoubtedly morph into being a second-class status of sorts down the road. And as far as I’m concerned, I’ve got enough people detesting me the way it is.

Give us your tired, your poor and your hungry…

Some say we are a nation of immigrants and that’s all swell and such, but my grandparents did not get into this country by welding together a crude ladder made of metal scraps culled from a rusted-out Oldsmobile. Rather, they played by the rules--the laws--settled in Denver, Colorado, and became very successful, if not somewhat wealthy. But, they came to this country fully educated and saw to it that their two children were educated and beyond. Fact is, a solid work ethic is not enough to overcome poverty in an increasingly complicated economy. So, by allowing unregulated immigration, we will get poor and uneducated by the millions who have demonstrated an unwillingness to assimilate into our society. And if they refuse to assimilate, they limit their opportunities tenfold. We’re asking for big trouble in this respect.

The way it seems to me, Democrats and Republicans alike are jockeying for the best position from which they can shower our illegal friends with social services and suchlike in an attempt to capture the growing Hispanic vote. Now, the last time I checked, just about every fedrule program on the growing books was at risk of going insolvent on us, although, assigning blame for said financial problems rather than fixing any of them seems to be ruling the current political discourse. And a quick glance at my most recent pay stub sez this political tomfoolery cost me $848 over a 2-week period. If we refuse to enforce our borders--our laws--how much more of my hard-earned earnings will be confiscated so that the likes of Ted Kennedy and John McCain can play nice with a growing voting bloc that appeared completely uninvited, and quite illegally? If rules count for nothing to the well-entrenched, self-serving incumbents, then why the hell should I have to play by them? Who represents me?

Our local congressman claims that the current administration has failed to protect our borders, which is patently absurd when you remember that this border-jumping has been a festering problem since Ronald Reagan was in office. A de facto amnesty was offered in the latter stages of the ‘80s, and the illegal immigration all but exploded during the ‘90s as a direct result. We need clear-thinking leadership, but instead we’re offered little more than obfuscation. You know, politics as usual. You know, Bush did it. Works every time it’s tried.

War on Poverty

If eradicating poverty in this country was the ultimate goal of the War on Poverty, it backfired. All that it managed to do was create a more readily identifiable permanent underclass that came to resent being what it was in the first place. Like much of what the feds do, it was a touchy-feely make believe undertaking long on heartwarming sentiments, but disastrously short on results. Providing for the poor will not empower the poor. And that lack of empowerment is caused by a lack of education. And with that said, how are we empowering the illegal poor by allowing them to hump shingles up to the peak of a roof, while their kids are leading the charge whereas high school drop-out rates are concerned?

They only way to eliminate poverty is to educate the poor on a massive scale. And if the cost of educating our own is growing prohibitively high as it is, how will we fund the education of damn near half of Mexico? By confiscatory taxation? By pandering for votes with my money? By courting the illegal immigrants at the expense of the legal residents? Probably.

We’ve had a shooting and a purse-snatching in the Heights just this past week. This is no doubt the drug trade at work. And while it’s primarily disaffected blacks perpetrating this senseless violence upon each other, what will the future hold for our society when the clear lack of education on the part of our newest “residents” makes the allure of fast drug money and whatnot to tough to pass on? While the first generation illegals may possess a solid work ethic and a god-fearing way about them, what will become of their children who, by all accounts, eschew formal educating? How many more cops can we afford to hire? Not many.

We’re currently bleeding money all over the sands of Iraq. Whether we want to believe it or not, we’re heading for an energy crisis that could make all that came before it pale in comparison. We can’t afford health care. Social security is a cruel joke. Face it, we’ve got problems like poor people got macaroni & cheese. And what do we get from the big boys in Washington, D.C.? Well, we need to reject our persistent racist tendencies and welcome all the world’s poor with open arms no matter how they came to be here.

Say what you will, but I say we’re being set up and sold out by the very same folks we voted for. We need to enforce the immigration laws on the books, but we need not clamp down on our borders first? Coming from Washington, D.C., that’s sounds just about right. Create a problem and then make it a helluva lot worse by correcting it.

I dunno.

It just seems to me that we’re slipping further and further into the un-escapable abyss that was created when the needs of the politicians superceded the needs of the people they were elected to represent.