Maria Sacchetti and Nick Miroff provide an exhaustive and horrible catalogue of the multitude of ways our white nationalist regime is trying to prevent foreigners from coming here, whether they are family members of residents, refugees, or immigrants seeking a better life. The list is long; the toll of human suffering from cruel and arbitrary regulations is immense.
But Trump and his frightened MAWA backers can't avert the inevitable. The time is coming when this will not be a white man's country.
Or we all can just get used to living alongside each other.“You can slow the rate of Latino and Asian immigration, but it won’t make the population whiter,” [William Frey, a demographer at the Brookings Institution] said. “It will just become less white at a slower pace.”
Or learn to live with the social rules the newcomers want-- Sharia Law anyone? With enough newcomers, whatever ethnicities, social mores here may change. Many don't come because they admire our culture but instead want more prosperity, which may not happen if we move to a Lords and peons system. Change can be good but that's not guaranteed just for the sake of change. I don't know if it's true (haven't researched it), but have read that between WWI and WWII, immigration was ceased for a period of time to allow for assimilation, after so many new arrivals. The desire for assimilation would be dependent on whether the resident already here believed we had a positive culture worth maintaining. Obviously, not all share that belief and would welcome different rules and ways--no matter from where they had come or even what they did to freedoms. (Reading Lolita in Tehran is a good example). These are indeed interesting times as to whether we are experiencing immigration or invasion lol.
ReplyDeleteRain: can you suggest anywhere in the U.S. where Sharia (Islamic customary family law) is in force? I certainly know of none. Some folks may try to enforce Islamic custom within families, but that's no worse that the fundamentalism or strict Mormonism that lots of people grow up with.
ReplyDeleteI worry more (but not huge amounts) about Christianist fundamentalists who want to impose their fears on all women -- like Mr Pence who doesn't trust himself to eat a meal with a woman without his wife along. Good grief!
You were talking about a future time. We are not a nation of Muslims or Catholics right now but a mix; and if the new arrivals, from wherever, adopt our ways, this will never be a problem.
ReplyDeleteI definitely worry about the growing power of Christianists who impose rules that aren't in the Bible and hurt anyone not of their ilk.
As for Pence and what he did... maybe he knew a thing or two about what was going on lol. I don't really think men, in any business, are smart to go out to dinner with a woman alone in what appears to be an over-sexualized environment (going by what I read as I am outside pretty much any of that these days). I've heard of sexual harassment allegations, where my husband worked, and why not go in a threesome or foursome? Temptations are everywhere and he did have concern where it involved liquor especially.
That said, I worry that if Pence gets the office, thanks to an impeachment or resignation, we'll have more to worry about than we did with Trump. As an agnostic, who doesn't go to any church and has little use for religions these days, I worry about any of them dictating based on what I see as a phony grasp of the Scriptures. Anybody who knows about the Puritans should worry that we could go back to that-- especially someone like me who is closer to being a pagan than any mainstream religion today.