What's the Matter With America? - Democratic Underground

SoCalDem

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Mon Apr-03-06 04:50 PM
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What's the Matter With America?

Edited on Mon Apr-03-06 05:40 PM by SoCalDem

A while back, I read a statistic that showed just how isolated most Americans are. NINETY-THREE percent of Americans do not have (nor ever had) a passport. On its face, this is no biggie, since our own country is pretty big, and there are plenty of places to see right here in the US of A. The problem is that if only 7% of Americans (and that includes the diplomats who populate the government) have ever gone to a place remote enough to require a passport, we have pretty much built that wall around ourselves, with or without legislation.

Sure.. some folks have gone to Mexico, Canada, and the Caribbean, but my guess is that most of them rarely stray past the grounds of their 5-star hotels or far from family they may be visiting.

Two oceans and a gulf have put a natural barrier around part of our nation, but the invisible barriers we have residing in our psyches are the dangerous ones.

When we speak of poverty, most people in the US probably have a picture of AMERICAN poverty pop into their brains. Our nation of stay-at-homes has NO IDEA what real poverty is, and why it's such a powerful motivator to get people across the globe on the move. Millions of people live in such soul-shattering poverty, that risking death to leave it is not something they worry about much. Millions of mothers WATCH their babies die of malnutrition, thirst, curable diseases...They watch the children who manage to survive, succumb to conscription into militias or "marital slavery" while girls are still adolescents... They live with dirty water, no sanitation facilities, no permanence .. Their children, if they survive, often never attend school.

A large percentage of the people on earth live pretty much as they did thousands of years ago, with one exception. Back then, the environment they lived in was a lot more benign. Modern people have managed to pollute even the most remote regions, without ever having set foot upon that land.

We fret about "the Mexicans" and "the Haitians" and "the Cubans", and "the Muslims". Why IS that?

There are plenty of laws already on the books, to handle immigration issues and labor issues, but the people we hire to administer these laws have abdicated their responsibilities. People come here for the same reason, no matter what they believe in, to whom they pray, or what color they are. They come here because they CAN, and because they want a better life for their families. We, as a nation, make them feel unwelcome, so is it any surprise when they huddle together for safety, or when they don't learn English? We have a PRESIDENT who's barely fluent in English.

Our schools barely cover World History or Geography, and haven't for a while now, so even our young ones are not learning about the world. We don't venture out much, so all we "know" about other people is the stereotypical information that our so-called media feeds us. We see sound bytes (usually violent or sorrowful) of other places in the world. Some see what Discovery Channel or National Geographic chooses to show us about the world. A little is better than none, but most people are truly ignorant of the world.

As more and more indigent people of the world pour into their population centers, they get glimpses of modernization, and with it, they SEE America. They see it on TV, and is it any wonder why they see us as self-indulgent, boorish slugs?

They often have to move in the first place because of turmoil that our foreign policies birthed in their countries, or the loss of their habitat because of greedy western loggers and "oilmen". They come off their lands with a bitter taste in their mouths because of what's disrupted their lives, and once relocated, they see WHY they had to move..

They want the same things WE want, folks. They want a roof over their heads, food in their bellies, safety--so they can sleep at night, and they want their kids to grow up healthy and educated.. Is that really so much to want?

They live in abject poverty, but see our wealth flaunted on that screen. This is relatively new. Before satellites, their image of America would have been what they saw in outdated books, or imagined from the stories of fellow countrymen who had been here. NOW they can see it for themselves.

It's not hard to understand their ambivalence.. They do want to come here if they get the chance, but at the same time, they hold us more than a little responsible for their own circumstances.. (Our foreign policy, not our individual people).

I have lived outside the USA, and can tell you firsthand, that poverty elsewhere is like nothing we see here. It's true that their poverty is often a result of bad government and it's not the job of the US to "save the world", but as our own Prince Pissypants would say.."Isn't it better to help with their poverty "there" so we don;t have to do it "here"..? The money we waste on their failed leaders and militaries, would go a long way towards making their own societies liveable, so they would not feel compelled to risk it all, in an attempt to get here. Once here, we DO have to deal with their problems, so why not do more to help them there?

We hunker down in our warm homes, and bemoan our country being "invaded" by poor people, yet we are loathe to reach out a helping hand unless there's a tsunami, earthquake, hurricane, or some other natural disaster involved. We have made ourselves "conspicuous", and even though most of us are not wealthy, the rest of the world sees us as the "place where all dreams come true".

We better start helping their dreams come true locally, or they WILL keep trying to come here.