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ACCORDING TO LIZ - Why do Americans find it necessary to keep track of who among us is more important, who is richer, smarter, more beautiful, or more worthy?
Do we have so little trust in ourselves that we need metrics selected and prioritized by others to acknowledge our own self-worth?
Thomas Hobbes, seventeenth century philosopher who formulated his social contract theory based on the consequences of societal collapse during the English Civil War, determined that the natural state of human beings is to seek violent domination over their neighbors.
Constant competition in the social and business arenas then become simply gambles, games that are less horrific than outright war. But still there can be distressing consequences.
For such a game to have teeth, the thrill of competing mano-a-mano, de facto there must be winners and losers. And not in the sense where it’s how you play the game but that the winners go on to battle other rivals while the losers languish by the wayside, rarely to recover a competitive edge.
Priorities may vary from group to group, but the emphasis is always on total annihilation of one’s opponent. There is little if any interest in communal sharing, of working together, or any mutual aid. Helping others garners social opprobrium for cheating in the game of life.
Competition builds ego, greed, selfishness, and inchoate anger.
It also drives stress, guilt, unhappiness, dissatisfaction, and despair.
And the desperate desire to have others to blame for one’s own failures.
The need to eviscerate potential competition at all costs.
Ta-da! The vaunted American history of welcoming “the tired, the poor, the huddled masses yearning to breathe free” has metamorphosized into disparagement of all immigrants.
Immigrants that like so many of our forbears fled trauma, poverty, and totalitarian governments.
For them, to paraphrase Jean-Paul Sartre, life began on the far side of despair, the far side of an ocean or a desert, where a physical move shook loose opportunities to initiate a new life.
A move that was the catalyst to seize individual responsibility and embrace freedom. Something transformative to transcend the despair of the past and uncover hope ahead. That beyond the depth of desolation as a human being they had new potentials.
That is what the American Dream has celebrated for almost as quarter of a millennium.
And now?
Now we have a narcissistic sense of entitlement being embraced by the disgruntled. It’s not enough to push for changes that will legitimately improve one’s lot in life, one must emulate the Great Egoist and demonize anyone who strays one iota from the Maverick Maestro’s ever-mutating vision.
Now we have flash White Supremacist demonstrations spreading fear and exacerbating existing anxieties into mob violence while MAGA-elected government officials entrench discrimination into American law.
Pam Bondi, who served on First Felon’s legal team during his initial impeachment and, as a loyal ally, was selected by His Niblick to stamp down hard on what her god sees as inimical: an independent and fair-minded Justice Department.
Currently, her confirmation as Attorney General is dragging through the Senate approval process but given that sycophantic MAGA-man and serial sexual abuser Pete Hesgeth squeaked through…
And with the Justice Department out of the way, the door swings wide to release all the egoistical ravings of the Demented One.
Hostility to immigrants will endanger the tech sector and the economy. It could significantly stifle the rebuilding of Los Angeles.
It's not what people look at, it's what they perceive and feel, constantly reinforced by repeated rants on social media.
Is immigration a drain on or a boom for the economy?
In the past four years, eight million people settled in the United States, a majority unlawfully.
But most are not the dregs of society wanting only to suck on the welfare system teat; most are energetic people who have proven their determination and resourcefulness by making it here. In a country desperately short of labor and looking to expand its economy, why not welcome them? If they can improve our lives, why not offer them a better life in return?
And America desperately needs them; this wave of immigrants that the New York Times editorial board calls “America’s rocket fuel, powering our nation’s unsurpassed economic and cultural achievements”
We need the compounding of cultures into something new and better – one to encourage newcomers to emulate the 142 immigrants to the United States who have been awarded Nobel Prizes.
Studies show that almost half of the companies in the Fortune 500 were founded by immigrants or their children. As the New York Times editorial points out: blue jeans, Tesla, basketball, and ‘God Bless America’ are all the work of immigrants.
We need to rebirth the American Dream, not destroy it. We need compassion, not inhumanity.
We do need border security, and the ability to ferret out and deport disreputable elements taking advantage of the system’s current sloppiness.
But we also desperately need leadership in D.C. to stop vilifying all immigrants of which I am one and, instead, create an immigration system designed not to brainlessly reject everyone who looks or sounds different but to serve America’s best interests by parsing what is better for everyone, employers and employees, people naturalized and by birth, on legal work permits and student visas, citizens whose ancestors date back to the Mayflower or were here when that ship arrived and the immigrants themselves, too many of whom are grossly mistreated in our broken system.
We need to tax the policy wonks to come up with transcendent solutions about how to encourage beneficial immigration while minimizing costs and chaos.
Closer to home, we need a hard-working workforce to rebuild Los Angeles, people who feel wanted and welcome in their communities.
We need to invest in a future for the United States that empowers both long term Americans and the newest of immigrants.
We need to ensure the rights of Dreamers, educated at American expense and integrated in American life, and allow them to stay and contribute to the only country they have ever known.
We need to develop ways to generate ID documents for contributing workers in the grey economy currently denied Social Security numbers and passports so that they can continue to work, pay taxes, open bank accounts, obtain legitimate drivers licenses, and travel within the US.
So they can live free of possible coercion based on their legal status, and openly contribute to a greater society.
We need to mandate that the Angelenos and Californians who have built our homes and labored in our fields have, at a minimum, the same rights as the homeless and gang members that plague our streets.
The same rights as a putative president who would deny respect to Jimmy Carter, for whom flags across the country were to fly at half-mast for the code-regulated 30 days until January 28, to stroke Peanut-brain’s pusillanimous ego by demanding they fly at full height – which they did at the Capitol and in California – for his inauguration.
(Liz Amsden resides in Vermont and is a regular contributor to CityWatch on issues that she is passionate about. She can be reached at [email protected].)
