Prelude
The Players
How immigration creates political monsters is quite simple. First of all, three classes of citizens are necessary: homelanders (patriots), ideologues, and Judases. Homelanders consider their nation their homeland, fatherland, motherland, etc. To them it is sacred. They don’t want it invaded by foreign, alien cultures. Their concern is less with the immigrants themselves than with the cultural fragmentation of the homeland. Immigrants that share the same language, values, and historical origin are considered cousins rather than aliens. British, Irish, or Canadian immigrants are not considered members of an alien culture. And that pretty much true for all immigrants from European nations. Clearly, homelanders are nativists. The allegiance of ideologues is to an ideology—Marxism being the biggie and most influential. It’s attitudes toward the homelands are negative. Religious ideologues are more devoted to their religious ideology than to the nation. Being a Catholic, for example, is more important to the Church than being an American. Judases simply value money/profit more than they value the nation.
And who are the monsters? They come in three forms: politicians, political groups, and political decisions. The politicians or political agendas that divide a nation into two major hostile groups that threaten the stability, integrity, and culture of the nation are monsters. For example, in the U.S. the Judases first welcomed illegal immigrants as sources of cheap labor and as consumers. They were not interested in benefiting immigrants or the nation but profit. Illegal immigrants were treated as voluntary slaves. They worked for low wages and no benefits and if they complained (they rarely did) they were reported. Then came the leftist ideologues who considered immigrants a new proletariat that could be used as a weapon against capitalistic America. This demographic revolution needed funding, and received it from churches, corporations, leftist organizations, and the great nihilist George Soros who weaponized immigration not to save the world's endless have-nots but to destroy Western civilization. And the left followed his lead.
The Monsters
The immigration invasions, and that is what they were, angered the homelanders who aggressively pushed back against their politicians’ immigration policies. For example, Ellen Knickmeyer says, “Assad has been at war with opposition forces seeking his overthrow for 13 years.... [As a result] Some 6.8 million Syrians have fled the country, a refugee flow that helped change the political map in Europe by fueling anti-immigrant far-right movements.” (“What to know about sudden rebel gains in Syria’s 13-year war and why it matters,” Associated Press). The ideological left always had violent revolutionary tendencies, but they were galvanized and set in motion by the homelanders’ push back. Of course, the left took the side of the immigrants, not out of sympathy but ideological usefulness. The Judases watched from the sidelines throwing money at whatever side that might be most profitable to them. These, however, were not the monsters but the conditions that brought them into being.
A few examples of monsters. In France inept immigration policies created the Le Pen dynasty that divided the country into hostile ideological factions. And Marine Le Pen is one of Putin’s big fans. In the U.S. inept immigration policies gave rise to two monsters. Open-borders Biden is one who sided with the leftist ideologues who burned cities. Let’s-build-a-border-wall Trump was the other monster who sided with the homelanders, not out of love for the homeland but as an opportunity for self-aggrandizement. (Like Le Pen he is also a fan of Putin’s.) In Germany Angela Merkel (another of Putin's friends) invited a million Muslims from Syria into her Christian/atheist nation. She could be considered a monster of betrayal like Biden, but the real monster is the far-right extremist groups her immigration policy created. And it should be pointed out that Putin is a political disease that plays dull-minded politicians.
This scenario has occurred in a number of European nations as a result of inept immigration policies. In Great Britain the monster isn’t a person but an event: Brexit, the withdrawal of the United Kingdom from the European Union. A sad event, a separation of old, glorious friends (and at times enemies) defined by the foundational culture of Western Civilization. And what caused the wreckage? An influx of alien cultures. Not bad people, just people alien to the homeland culture.
So, today many nations are at war with themselves as a result of inept or self-destructive immigration policies. Now let’s bring Republican Judge J. Michael Luttig into the discussion. His concern is that “Many Americans–especially young Americans, tragically–have even begun to question whether constitutional democracy is the best form of self-government for America” (“Exclusive: Conservative Republican endorses Harris, calls Trump a threat to democracy,” CNN). The reason many young Americans feel this way is because they feel American democracy has failed them, and it has, beginning with LBJ and the Vietnam War. Homelanders point to the mishandling of immigration policy as an illustration of a failed democracy. Democracy’s failures are illustrated by the cases mentioned above. The decisions—like those of Merkel and Biden—were made autocratically by chancellors, presidents, etc., but not by the people. And now, and most ironically, the desire for autocratic leadership is shared by both homelanders and the ideologues. Their heroes are Russian—Putin or Stalin (both of whom failed the Russian people). In the U.S. a political civil war is raging, led by monsters created by inept immigration policies.
A Synopsis of the Immigration Problem by the Fictional Mr. Thomas
In this age of political correctness mainstream publishers shy away from books like Gringo, in which Mr. Thomas is a character who is strongly critical of illegal immigration and open-borders philosophy. Publishers do not want to be seen as promoting racist or hate literature. Besides, immigrant populations represent a large segment of their readership. It is simply good business not to antagonized them. This wall of silence appears to be a worldwide phenomenon, because my research indicates that foreign publishers are even less likely to publish such works out of fear of being prosecuted by their governments. Personally, I believe Mr. Thomas’ concerns should be made public because they represent, for better or worse, those of a large segment of the American population. Ignoring such concerns has been catastrophic not only for America but for other nations.
Based on my conversation with Mr. Thomas, I believe he would say that the publishing industry’s motivation is monetary or politically self-serving rather than ethical. On the other hand, governments seek to avoid antagonizing immigrant populations which they now fear. Such attempts at appeasement, he would say, are both pollyannaish and in the long run self-defeating.
Though Mr. Thomas praised the philosophical, scientific, and literary accomplishments of other cultures, one has to conclude that he was at heart a tribalist. He was called a racist. He called himself a culturalist, yet he did not believe his people (Western Europeans) were superior to all other groups, though he certainly believed that they were superior to certain cultures because of their inferior intellectual and moral development or because their way of life was morally and intellectually degraded. Judging from his class lectures, two peoples he admired and respected were the ancient Greeks and Native Americans. What he respected most about the European tradition was its philosophy and science and its goal to create a society based on the principles of law, equality, and respect for individuals, especially women, who have only recently achieved the economic opportunities, political rights, and legal status accorded to men. However, he also understood that the behavior Europeans and Americans displayed toward other peoples has been immoral and criminal. Though an atheist, Mr. Thomas had a great respect for Eastern religions, especially for what he called the godless religions of Buddhism and Taoism. It is ironic that as a tribalist Mr. Thomas was most critical of his own people—Americans. Nevertheless, his view of other cultures was ethnocentric, though more Western European than American. If I had to choose one country from Europe that represented Mr. Thomas’ ideal, it would be France, a nation he believed aspired to the universal embodiment of reason and beauty.
That brings me to the question of what was his belief concerning different cultural groups and their relationship to one another. As far as I can determine, he believes that every culture has a right to preserve its ethnic and cultural identity. Every citizen deserves to live in a place rooted in the earth where he or she feels safe and secure and culturally at home. That to live among one’s own people is essential to feeling at home in the world. This is especially true for ordinary people. Wealthy elites may not feel a need to live among their own historical people because they belong to an artificial subculture rooted in wealth that transcends ethnic and national identities. Such people might consider themselves cosmopolitan even though they socialize mostly with others who share their affluent lifestyle. Thus, one would expect them to be more accepting of multiculturalism as long as their primary group is not threatened. For the most, they remain aloof from any particular national homeland, history, or traditional cultural identity.
It is clear that Mr. Thomas believes that American culture had been defined by and consisted of three dominant groups: American Indians, African American descendants of slaves, and European Americans. There are other groups in the country—such as Asians, Hispanics and Jews—but he considers them ethnic and cultural outsiders who live on the margins of American history and culture even though they may play an influential role in contemporary America. He believed that America is unique in that it defines itself as a nation of immigrants, but he also seems to believe that though the country was built by immigrants, at some point in its history its ethnic-cultural identity crystallized. From that time on, certain groups of immigrants are considered a threat to America's ethnic-cultural integrity, especially when the new immigrant cultures are ethnically and historically other than the three main cultures America evolved from—Native Americans, Europeans, and the decedents of American slaves. As far as I can tell, Mr. Thomas believes America is trinity society consisting of the three unique ethnic-cultural groups, each of which seeks to sustain for itself homogenous regions within the society but also shares with the other two a common history that is the sacred substance of America.
Is he correct that most people prefer to live among their own? Perhaps the answer is to be found in how well the melting-pot, which is contrary to tribalism, has worked in America. Native Americans have resisted attempts to force them to integrate into the American mainstream and very much prefer to live among their own in spite of the social costs of doing so—high rates of poverty, alcoholism and drug abuse. European Americans have sought to maintain their ethnic-cultural homogeneity. Black leaders have complained about segregation, but since the end of segregation most blacks have not abandoned their communities in order to integrate into white communities. Their main complaint seems to have been that the policy of separate-but-equal segregation limited their access to jobs and education, as well to private establishments such as restaurants, hotels, theaters, and so on. Segregation was separate but never equal. In other words, blacks want institutional integration. They want to be able to work where whites work, go to school where whites go to school, and to attend college where whites attend college, but do not necessarily want to live apart from their own ethnic-cultural group.
Thus the desire of black Americans to integrate into white communities seems to be motivated not by wanting to separate themselves from their own people and culture but to live in an environment that is safe and wholesome for themselves and their children. Whites, on the other hand, see black culture as a threat to their own values. Thus, it seems the two cultures are distinct and to some degree incompatible with one another. Except for certain ethnic communities (Polish, Italian, etc.) white American communities seem without culture. For example, suburban communities seem to have been cleansed of traditional culture to the point of lacking a cultural identity. Functionality, utility, and practicality are their dominant features.
What of the immigrants that have come to America during the past century? They come for the benefits America offers, not to dissolve in the melting pot. As Mr. Thomas says, they come to work, shop, and play and to create ethnic-cultural enclaves. Their wanting to keep their own cultures is understandable because their identity is linked to their homeland culture. As a result, they reject the melting pot idea. They want to live in America and be American citizens, but that does not mean they want to be Americans culturally. In other words, what appeals to them is official citizenship status, not America's history, language, and culture. This may be less true for Asians than for Mexican immigrants because there is a good deal of antagonism between gringo and Mexican Hispanics that originated with the Mexican-American War and the annexation of more than 525,000 square miles of Mexican territory.This attitude has antagonized traditional Americans and perhaps created bad karma that has resulted in the MAGA cult's hostility toward immigrants.
Native Americans, black Americans, and European Americans share a common historical experience that has woven them together into a single fabric. Any member of one group can see in the other groups the historical role their people played in the creation of America. The building of America was a tragic affair for Native Americans and black Americans, and it was not easy for white Americans. But the tragedy and suffering they endured during the building of the nation bind them into a single national culture. According to Mr. Thomas they are the only true members of the American family.
He considers the new people as interlopers, outsiders. Most are indifferent to American history because their people have their own history. Some, such as the Mexicans, are hostile. The Mexican-American War, which resulted in America’s appropriation of a large part of Mexican territory (500,000 square miles), continues to cause Mexicans to look upon America more as an old adversary than friends. Similar bad history exists between Europeans and immigrants from former colonies. The immigrants from Europe to America share with white Americans a common culture. The Europeans established the first colonies in what would become America and defined the American worldview.
Representing the homelander's mindset, Mr. Thomas is troubled most by what he considers as an assault upon America’s ethnic-cultural integrity. He fears the emergence of a multicultural society in which Americans are just another ethnic minority. He would say that today what is being dispersed by the influx of alien cultures is America’s cultural soul, formed over the centuries but now disappearing from the scene, soon to be relegated to the history books as something that once was but is no more. He believes that America is becoming a nation without a national soul, a place where various cultures gather—some hostile, most indifferent to one another. They come to set up shop and to do business with one another. They are not creating a new nation but a mélange of many cultures, which multiculturalists see as having a beauty similar to that of a rainbow, but which tribalists like Mr. Thomas consider it to be a defilement of a national work of art created by Americans’ ancestors.
As the character Dr. Yerkes says in Mr. Thomas' memoir, the new aliens retain their ethnic-cultural homelands. Mexicans have Mexico; Chinese, China; Vietnamese, Vietnam; Iranians, Iran; Jews, Israel; and so on. Only Americans lose their cultural homeland. Mr. Thomas discusses numerous times black Americans and white Americans being driven out of their communities by invading newcomers, such as Latino gangs targeting blacks in black communities. Doing so, Hispanic gangs created a lot of bad karma for law-abiding Hispanics. On their reservations, only Native Americans are safe from invasion. Invasion is one of the central themes of Mr. Thomas’ nightmarish view of the demise of the old America.
Unfortunately, the invading other people’s homelands is a universal theme of human history, quintessentially described the biblical book of Joshua, which describes the Jewish conquest of Canaan and the destruction and ethnic cleansing of Canaanite populations. Europeans and Americans did the same to Native American populations. The Romans dispersed Jews living Israel and European Jews re-invaded the Palestinian homeland in modern times. Invasion has been the humanity’s most self-destructive behavior. Invasions have ignited the ire of Muslims against America and Europe. Americans forget that Afghanistan has been invaded and occupied by the British, Soviets, and recently Americans. Of course, beginning with Muhammad, Muslims engaged endless invasions and conquests for centuries. (See Jihad by Paul Fregosi.) And there is not a single homeland in the Middle East that has not been invaded and colonized by Europeans. Many of the old European colonies achieved independence only since the end of World War II. In many parts of the world the colonization became permanent—North America, New Zealand, Australia, Tahiti, Hawaii, South Africa, Palestine, and elsewhere.
Bin Laden and Mr. Thomas share the same view of the importance of homeland: that the ethnic-cultural homeland is sacrosanct. Europeans fought wars into the twentieth century to protect their homelands from one another. Today their nationalistic patriotism seems to have waned, and for reasons of economics or guilt they have allowed their nations to be invaded and occupied by millions of immigrants whose cultures are dissimilar, incompatible, and even hostile in relation to the European host cultures. Mr. Thomas finds it ironic that as former British colonies seek to purify their cultures by purging them of reminders of their former colonizer, Britain itself has opened its doors to the peoples it once colonized, a process called reverse-colonization. Apparently, it was assumed that the alien cultures would eagerly assimilate into the European host culture, but Mr. Thomas would say that assumption was based on naiveté and cultural arrogance.
He would have immediately given the example of the Native Americans refusal to adopt the European-American lifestyle. Americans considered the life of the Indians to be harsh, primitive, and lacking the benefits provided by industry and technology. He would say it was absurd to believe the Indians would have wanted to give up a way of living that was so much a part of the primordial world of nature in order to live in suburban track homes or city apartments. The resistance to the modern way of life has in fact been a central theme in much of America’s art and literature. Can one imagine Daniel Boone or even a modern-day cowboy wanting to trade his rough-and-ready existence to work in an office and live in the suburbs no matter how affluent that way of life might be? To do so would be tantamount to selling one’s soul, surrendering one’s spiritual self for another that is designed and constructed from the commercial marketplace of consumer goods and popular forms of entertainment. A way of life is replaced by a commercially acquired lifestyle.
And if you are wondering who am I that I speak on behalf of Mr. Thomas’ story? As it turns out I too am a character in the story, the editor of Mr. Thomas' memoir. In addition, I had been a student his student when he taught high school. And after having spent months reading and preparing his manuscript for publication I was drawn into his life and way of thinking. Because Mr. Thomas has caused me to reconsider my beliefs concerning the many topics and issues he addresses, especially that of immigration, I believe it is not inappropriate for me to comment on the problem of immigration from my perspective, though within the context of what Mr. Thomas has said in his memoir. I will not speak for or against his position but only explore our different ways of seeing the problem. I am not sure, for example, that the high level of immigration that the U.S. has recently experienced is a problem per se. However, the fact is millions of Americans like Mr. Thomas believe that runaway immigration has become a serious threat to the nation’s social and cultural integrity. The support he has received indicates that much. In the world outside of his story, we see that the consequences have been catastrophic, in particular the return of Donald Trump to the White House. It is interesting that President Trump's agenda has been to cause as much harm and suffering as possible. He is a monster, but Biden's open-borders prank got Trump reelected.
So now I feel I must go beyond my teacher and offer a different perspective of the problem. I do this not to be critical but because of the series of events—his killing the Mexican, writing the memoir, and then his being murdered in the facility, as he called the jail where he was incarcerated, have left me dismayed and puzzled. The question that comes to my mind is “What is happening to America?” I do not have an answer, but I can offer my own experience and thinking on the matter. I was shaken by what Mr. Thomas did and by what happened to him. And now I feel I must express myself, and I do so as his former student. In class Mr. Thomas always sought to get his students to express themselves. He could be very provocative, and he enjoyed hearing what students had to say on issues. He called the back-and-forth dialogue the dialectical approach to truth that Socrates favored. He said it is not the best approach for determining empirical truth, though dialectic discussion has always played a role in science by offering various perspectives on a theory. Ultimately experimentation and empirical investigation are the only reliable approaches for determining whether a scientific theory is credible.
However, when it comes to beliefs that are not a matter of empirical fact, but matters of morality, aesthetics, and value, the dialectic method can be very useful. For one thing, its approach to issues is very democratic. Everyone has his or her say. That is what Mr. Thomas always wanted in class—for every student to express his or her opinion. So now I wish to have my say about the issue of immigration that so troubled Mr. Thomas.
I do not identify with Mr. Thomas’ tribalism. It is not that I believe his desire to preserve what he considered to be America’s cultural identity is wrong or misguided but because I do not feel what he felt. I grew up in a suburb that lacks a distinct cultural identity. It is just a place where my family and I lived. The streets are indistinguishable except for their names and are lined with newish cookie-cutter houses. There are three schools located beyond walking distance so except for a few students who rode bikes we never saw students walking to and from school. Though the schools are considered quite good as public schools go, my parents sent me and my siblings to Fairmont Academy, an expensive college preparatory school. My parents are professionals who make enough money to put them in the upper middle class, but they have had to manage their expenditures carefully. Except on weekends our street was quiet and mostly empty of human activity. One would see joggers in the morning and late afternoon, a woman pushing a baby carriage, or a couple women walking together. Many of the families had children but they mostly stayed indoors or played in the backyard. A couple of miles from the house is a small, convenient shopping center consisting of a bank, supermarket, a Starbucks, and other franchises. Thus, the area where I grew up is a safe, comfortable, convenient living environment, though it is very much an automobile dependent community. I am reluctant to call my suburb a community or even a neighborhood. I suppose it is what is called a bedroom community.
The other place where I spent most of my time during the day was Fairmont Academy, which has a multicultural student body. The school constantly preached that its diversity was a great benefit to everyone. And I believe that aspect of the school appealed to my parents, though more from the point of view of practicality than cultural enrichment. Professionals—such as doctors, lawyers, or business people—are required to work with people who come from different cultures. My parents told me to take Spanish not for cultural enrichment but because it would be a useful language to know. My brother and sister also took Spanish because they were told the same thing. My sister also took French, not for its usefulness but for its cultural appeal. The school had assemblies that celebrated diversity and it was obvious that teachers were required to take diversity into account when designing their curriculum. Also, throughout the year there were days devoted to celebrating different cultures. There was international week, during which foods from different cultures were served in the cafeteria, performances from different cultures were given each day in school assemblies, and in-class presentations or discussions were devoted to the topic of diversity.
However, I always thought the agenda of the various on-campus celebrations of diversity to be a form of propaganda intended to promote tolerance. I do not believe all the preaching of the value of diversity made any significant difference in the way students thought about people from other cultures. Our parents had taught us to be respectful of others. And at school the students got along. Mocking someone for his or her ethnicity would have been criticized as being boorish behavior. Intolerant language or behavior would have been criticized more as a lack of self-control or dignified behavior than for its intolerance. In other words, for the most part students at Fairmont Academy treated one another with respect, but at the end of the school day each cultural group went its own way. And that was even truer during the summers. So what had been achieved by the time students graduated? They certainly were respectful of one another and most would consider expressions of intolerance as a lack of sophistication. Did the students have a greater appreciation of cultures different from their own? I would say that for most students the answer was no. The attraction to other cultures remained superficial—their food or music, for example. The old stereotypes remained but were less likely to be revealed except among close friends.
My college experience has been similar, though the administration does not preach diversity. It does not have to. The student body is made up of students from all over the world and from various ethnic and cultural groups. However, I would not say the cultural diversity enriches the environment, nor does it detract from it. Just as people do in the greater society off campus, students go about their business—attending classes, working, and pursuing a personal life.
I have really never understood exactly what the benefits of diversity are supposed to be for Americans. The benefit most often pointed to is the variety of foods available when dining out. That is hardly a profound benefit. I do appreciate other cultures, but they are most meaningful in their native environment. Here they are superficial, clichéd representations of the home cultures. The barrio in San Diego is hardly Mexico. Little Italy is hardly Italy. Little Saigon is hardly Saigon. They are nothing more than caricatures of the home country. Mr. Thomas is correct when he says the real benefit is to the economy—cheap labor, an ever expanding economy, and certain technical job skills Americans avoid acquiring. At the service end of the economy there are what might called low- and semi-skilled drudgery jobs that are essential but do not appeal greatly to most Americans. Then there are the immigrants who are brought in by universities and corporations for their technical, scientific, and mathematical expertise. The most popular college majors among American students are business, social sciences, history, health sciences, and education. Other areas of study are security services, parks, recreation, and leisure studies. It seems obvious that American students are attracted to jobs that are lucrative or have high enjoyment value. The U.S. Government also needs native speakers for its overseas operations.
The benefits in these cases are clear, but hardly ones that have to do with average Americans’ multicultural experience. If cultural difference means anything special, it does so mostly to the immigrants. Living in the U.S. highlights for them their cultural identity, perhaps enhancing its meaning. Living in in the U.S. strengthens immigrants’ ties to their homeland and to their cultural identity. If Mr. Thomas is an example, the response of millions of Americans to the presence of millions of immigrants who have come to live in the U.S. has not been positive. It certainly strengthens their patriotism and national pride, but the mood is not celebratory but fearful, despondent, and angry. Americans feel threatened as a people and society. Given that mindset I do not know how Americans like Mr. Thomas will ever be convinced that diversity is good for them and their nation.
From what I have said the reader must think that I agree with Mr. Thomas, and I do on the particulars. It is my response that is different. My attachment to America is not what you would call strongly patriotic. I believe I am fortunate to have been born in America because of the opportunities it offers me to successfully pursue my goals in life. I am not sure but perhaps I feel that way because that is how America presents itself to the world—the land of opportunity for individuals, not the land having a particular history and culture. I know that the Pledge of Allegiance is recited in some high schools, but not at Fairmont Academy. Occasionally, the national anthem was performed, but I was not especially moved by it. At Fairmont Academy the emphasis was on multiculturalism, not patriotism. The two seem incompatible. If there was a time as a young adult that I felt strongly patriotic it was during the 9-11 attacks and for a time after. Those attacks, however, did not transform me into a fervid patriot. I did not join the military. I felt that the terrorists had committed a crime and should be punished for what they did, but unlike the president I did not think that America had come under attack by a nation, such as when Japan bombed Pearl Harbor. I knew there would be no enemy armies invading the U.S. I never feared for my safety, nor did I believe Americans were in grave danger.
More importantly, no one I knew felt threatened. And I understood why we felt that way. The terrorists who carried out the attacks using America’s own planes had to plan and prepare for months. We also knew that if another attack were to occur it too would be a local incident. The nation was not under military attack nor was it threatened as a whole. As it turned out, the men responsible for the attacks were hiding out in caves in Afghanistan. The government and media tried to whip the country into a state of hysteria, mostly and it worked on many people; but my friends and I calmly continued to go about our business. We were not looking over our shoulders for terrorists.
When caution was required it was not for fear of being attacked by terrorists. The greatest danger we faced was being injured or killed in an automobile accident. After that was being robbed or mugged. The greatest threats faced by American women continued to be aggressive husbands, boyfriends, dates, and rapists, not terrorists. So like many of my friends, I believed the threat of terrorism to Americans was exaggerated mostly for political reasons. When America invaded Iraq I felt that something was terribly wrong, not with the world but with my government. If the 9-11 attacks had made me feel a greater sense of patriotism, the invasion of Iraq deflated my patriotism. My feelings were disgust and shame. My response was to distance myself mentally and emotional from the War on Terror and simply focus on my education and pursuing a career.
What I find in Mr. Thomas memoir that I do not find among the people I know is a strong feeling of nostalgia. Maybe one has to reach a certain age before longing for a past time or past life. One day I might feel such a longing, though I doubt it. I do think back fondly to the time I was a child and the time I was in high school. Due to my parents and my brother and sister, I had a happy childhood. Furthermore, my brother, sister and I were good kids who got along well with one another. There were disagreements of course but no serious outbursts of anger. We are a happy family, and I will always cherish the memories of when we were all together. I doubt, however, that I will ever wish I could return to the good old days with my family. One reason is I still have my family. A few times a year we all get together, and we stay in touch by phone and email. So when I think back to those happy times, my family and school mates come to mind, not the community where I grew up. There is nothing nostalgically American about it.
In fact, I would say that it is remarkable for its lack of cultural significance, almost as if a cultural identity is incompatible with the artificial, monotonous character of the design and materials of the homes and grid-like layout of the community—as if it had been designed by a computer. It is a Starbucks community—friendly, functional, yet artificial and superficial. Such a community could exist anywhere in the world. It has a small park but no fields or clumps of trees, no factories or old buildings, nothing old for that matter, no community hangouts, no places for young kids to explore. There is nothing to captures the imagination, nothing that evokes mystery. It is a checkered board and every square has been functionally utilized. Such communities do what they are designed to do, yet everything seems fake, everything except the people who live in them. And perhaps their lives have to some extent become artificially designed and programmed, but that is another issue. If my sister, brother, and I went out of the house we usually went no further than our yard. Life inside our home was exciting—music, television, video games, computers, and ourselves. The so-called neighborhood outside was boring.
I think nostalgia requires something distinctive and unique to latch on to, but there is nothing at all distinctive or unique about my neighborhood except perhaps its lack of those qualities. I do not recall my brother, sister, and I playing on the block with other kids. Of course, we did not attend the local public school, but I am not sure it would have made any difference if we had because our connection would have still been primarily with the school, not with the neighborhood. In a sense there was no community consisting of friends and neighbors. So as far as the place where I grew up is concerned, it is just a place having nothing memorable about it except that it is the place where my family lived and where I grew up.
I am also willing to admit that perhaps my experience of growing up in America is not typical of the nation as a whole but only for people like me who grew up in the suburbs. Still, what I am looking for is the America that Mr. Thomas was so strongly attached to because it seems I never knew that America. As a result, I have never felt the despair and outrage he felt in response to millions of immigrants entering the country illegally. He obviously felt some aspect of America was being lost with their arrival. I think the reason he felt that way is to be found in Mr. Thomas’ childhood.
Mr. Thomas grew up in a very different place from the suburb where I grew up, a small Texas farming community called Meadowview. He knew most of the people of the community, and the character of the community was very much defined by a particular economy—farming and ranching. Most of the people were white, but there was a small black community. There were Hispanic workers as well. It had one elementary school, one middle school, and one high school and all the kids attended these schools. The students must have all known one another since the student populations were small. I am certain that the sporting events were well attended by the entire community. That was impossible at Fairmont because the school itself was the only community. Sporting events were well attended but mostly by the parents and school friends of the athletes. It is odd that Fairmont was the only real community for most of the students and their parents.
That was not true for Mr. Thomas. The entire town was the community, and its members came together at sporting events and for church services. They also encountered one another at work or at various places in the town—such as the two grocery stores, the filling station, the two family style restaurants, the local Dairy Queen and Whataburger, and the pharmacy. There was a theater when Mr. Thomas lived there, but it has since closed. Based on the research I have done, crime rates were low in Meadowview. Underage drinking was probably a concern. Fatal highway accidents did occur, some involving teenagers. Apparently, drug use was not a serious problem in Meadowview when Mr. Thomas lived there, certainly nothing similar to what one reads about occurring in small towns today. There were no gangs.
I believe Meadowview was Mr. Thomas’ America, and it became the benchmark by which he measured the changes that he witnessed occurring in the country. Meadowview was in many ways idyllic. It was a friendly and safe community. People knew their neighbors and trusted them. They could leave the doors to their homes unlocked and the keys to their cars in the ignition. People were content because they were devoted mostly to work, family, church, and community. They did not feel the need to spend a lot of money on non-essentials or entertainment. It was paradise if one did not demand too much from life. Mr. Thomas was very fond of the Biblical story of Adam and Eve, and perhaps that story can give a clue to what happened not only to America but also to Meadowview.
In Paradise Eve wanted more, a very human attribute. However, an enticement was required to create this need for something more, and the Serpent offered that enticement. I doubt that when Mr. Thomas was growing up he felt bored with Meadowview. I will guess that had he the chance to teach there or some other small town he would have been satisfied to do that, though I cannot say for sure. America was changing even when he was a child. A different way of life was being offered—what Mr. Thomas called a life devoted to maximizing individual experience and satisfaction. Once Eve became dissatisfied, she had to leave Eden because Eden was a place of moderate satisfaction—young love, work, family, and community. As America became more affluent, there were more things to spend one’s money on—really cool things. And there was more to do. Every year my family went skiing. As a family we traveled often, twice to Europe. At one point we had three cars. And yet I considered our way of life rather modest compared to that of some of my more affluent friends.
For decades now, young people have been abandoning the small towns for the big city to seek an exciting life of self-expression, self-fulfillment, and self-indulgence, including causal sex. It is a way of living that is very different from what Mr. Thomas experienced in Meadowview. Neighbors and other members of the physical community no longer play an important role in one’s life. They are replaced by a few close friends and colleagues. Work can be important for certain professions, such as doctors, artists, lawyers, teachers, firefighters, and police officers, but for most people its meaning is limited and subordinate to how they spend their leisure time. What no longer exists is a community that is defined by a dominant form of work—such as farming, fishing or manufacturing. Thus, for modern Americans life has become fragmented in such a way that there is no longer a defining culture or overall community structure with the individual at the center. Today the old physical, organic community is being replaced by the micro-communities involving work, play, and worship and by electronic social-network communities. People increasingly create their communities by picking and choosing the components they desire for their community, which consist of like-minded citizens. Such a community disappears if the individual relocates or dies because it is rooted in the individual, not in a place that exists independently of the individual.
However, cyber communities are emerging that are portable because of the computer and Internet. Mr. Thomas was a science fiction enthusiast, and one genre he especially liked was cyberpunk stories. He said that stories have always been a medium that allowed people to escape from their humdrum existence into a more exciting and interesting virtual reality. Today movies, television, and video games have replaced books as the most popular forms of escape. One day he said something that really struck me, and that was whereas movies, television, and video games are considered forms of entertainment, thus not a part of reality or real life, the social interaction that occurs online is considered a part of reality and real life. He mentioned the cyberpunk novels Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson and Neuromancer by William Gibson. In both these stories the virtual reality of cyberspace is no longer entertainment but a virtual lifeworld. The same can be said for the social interaction that occurs online. Today online social-networks enable hundreds of different cyber communities to exist that are populated by people who share common interests.
A person can belong to a number of these communities at once, which may consist of extended family and friends but also special interest groups having to do with politics, religion, academics, hobbies, sports, recreation, art, and entertainment. These are ideal communities because all the members share a single interest they are passionate about. Existing in cyberspace, these communities are portable. Place or location becomes irrelevant. What seems strange to me is that people can also feel nostalgic about the virtual worlds that they have been a part of if only vicariously. I know this because some older members of my extended family enjoy watching reruns of shows that they watched when they were younger. Equally strange is how involved people become with television shows they watch. One of my grandmothers, for example, will discuss at great length the characters of her favorite television show, treating them as if they were her neighbors. It is clear that she is much more involved in the lives of these fictional characters than she is with her actual neighbors and the other members of her community. That may be because like Mr. Thomas she does not live in a community where she grew up, or in the community where she spent most of her adult life. To be closer to us, she and my grandfather moved when he retired. I find her obsession with long-ago television shows strange, yet outside of school and work I spend most of my time interacting with members of my online communities, many of whom are former high school classmates. And most relevant, I am not close to any of my neighbors.
So perhaps an important difference between Mr. Thomas and me is that our social worlds and their settings are not the same. Whereas the influx of immigrants threatens what he considers to be his home-world, they cannot threaten mine because it is a cyber construct. Most important, I feel no strong connection to the place where I live. I will leave Chicago when I finish school, yet I have no idea where I will eventually end up living. I might end up in San Diego, San Francisco, Seattle or some other city. But whatever city that might be, I doubt I will develop a connection to it that Mr. Thomas believes is so important. Cities have become like clothes and cars in that they serve a practical purpose and at the same time can be enjoyed. I cannot see that kind of relationship as ever being profoundly personal.
To Mr. Thomas Meadowview was a profoundly personal place. Its meaning was similar to that of one’s family. I believe that is why his response to illegal immigration and mine are so different. To him, having immigrants occupy an American community is like having a family member kidnapped. I do not feel that way because I have always existed in a very different living space than that of Meadowview or any other traditional American community. His community was unified by a common history and by a traditional way of life. Other than my family, my living spaces have been artificial in the way air travel and passenger planes are artificial. The attendants and passengers are well behaved and polite. The accommodations are comfortable. But unless a friend or family members are present, the other people onboard do not matter, and the meaning of the experience is superficial and forgettable. What is important is getting to one’s destination.
The people who have abandoned the old community-based way of life have been white Americans like Mr. Thomas. Blacks have retained their communities, if not pushed out by Hispanics or other immigrants. American Indians have preserved their traditional communities on reservations. As Mr. Thomas repeatedly points out, the new immigrants create ethnic-cultural enclaves for themselves. And certain European-American groups have tried to preserve a traditional community and language reflective of the homeland left behind—the English, Irish, Italians, Germans, Jews, and Poles, for example. And perhaps these multiple European ethnicities made it more difficult for white America to see itself as a distinct, culturally unified group. Yet, it seems to me that more than anything else what has undermined the white-American community has been whites themselves. Certainly, millions of white Americans still live in small-town communities, but they represent a minority of the white-American population. Clearly, white Americans prefer living among other white Americans but for reasons that have little to do with a sharing a culture. On the other hand, immigrant enclaves are cultural enclaves.
An American Requiem
The community I grew up in was a collection of mostly white people living in proximity to one another. It was safe and convenient, and the quality of life was quite good. But such places really are not communities united by a shared culture. In some ways they are very similar to the places where people shop or work, defined by function rather than cluture. So if white Americans have come to see America primarily as a place where they are able to fulfill individual goals in life, then perhaps that is why they never really cared enough to protect America from the large number of non-white, non-European immigrants illegally entering of the country each year. I would even suggest that Americans were already abandoning the old America even before the great waves of the new immigrants arrived, and only afterward did they, like Mr. Thomas, begin to reevaluate what they were losing.
Mr. Thomas thought of his memoir as an American requiem, and in a way it is a remembrance of an America that once was but is no longer. But Americans themselves were responsible for its demise, not the illegal immigrants. So perhaps the memoir is a requiem for the nation and a personal tragedy for Mr. Thomas.
