Opinions, art, debate
It’s curious how this happened without the famous “bipartisan border security bill” that we were told was so crucial to stop the flow of migrants. It’s even more curious how not a single person who bought into the lies about the “bipartisan border security bill” will notice and learn anything from this experience.
Ooh, imperialism, scary. We must immediately reach for our smelling salts because imperialism is supposed to be bad.
Never mind that I am where I am (and loving it) thanks to imperialism. I’m supposed to make a mournful face and pretend that imperialism is always wrong. Even when there’s no cannibalism on this continent thanks to it, it’s to wrong because… Well, nobody really knows why.
The scourge of Central America are juvenile gangs. They attract boys beginning at ages 8 or 9 and engage them in alcoholism, drug taking, gang rape, and murder. These gangs are made up of very young men. Here’s a question, though. Why are so many young men in Central America turning to the gang lifestyle starting in elementary school?
The reason is that their parents are not there.
For 30 years, Central American elites have exported human capital for cash. Governments of these countries ran costly ad campaigns to promote the idea that the best, the most responsible way to be a Salvadoran, Honduran, Guatemalan, etc was by not living in El Salvador, Honduras, or Guatemala but instead becoming an illegal migrant in the US. The definition of “Salvadoran” was rewritten to mean “anybody who sends money to El Salvador from overseas”. Please understand that I have researched this for my scholarship and can provide a lengthy bibliography for what I’m saying here.
An entire culture has formed in Central America and the Caribbean where young women are forced by their families and in-laws to become illegal workers in the US hospitality industry. Many end up in less savory industries, too, of course. These women are separated from their children and often don’t see them for years because families back home need a new TV, a new furniture set, an operation, etc, and these poor women have to provide. A woman is usually pushed out of the country (and her child’s life) when the child is about 2 or 3 years old. These children effectively lose their mothers at a young age and often end up – guess where? Yes, in the gangs. This is a phenomenon that has affected millions of people. In the case El Salvador, for example, which is a nation of 6 million people, there are 2,5 million Salvadorans who have been pushed out of the country.
This is a devastating human tragedy. Supporting this horror is not OK. If you look at the large amount of footage of immigrant groups marching towards the US border, you’ll notice that they always carry their national flags. These are people who love their countries, their language, culture, food, their greasy pupusas, their watered down beer. All we need to do is leave them in peace, stop dragging them over because it pleases us to witness their degradation. That’s all we need to do. That way, they’ll finally have a chance to love the way you and I prefer to live, which is at home with our families.
I may be an outlier but I have always found these “men who like women” to be very off-putting. The only woman whose company I need my husband to prefer is me. I definitely don’t need him to engage in performative gestures of how “women are more interesting than men.”
We had to beg Biden for every one of these, beg him, and hear all sorts of excuses about how it was absolutely impossible.
Trump becomes president, suddenly everything is possible. The entire Ukrainian segment of the social media exists in the “wait, what?” mode. Except for the part that is doing the “I told you so” thing.
P.S. By the way, Israel acted despicably throughout the transfer, and only the recent serious pressure from the WH managed to resolve everything. It’s quite shocking that Israel would have the gall to try to mandate what the US does with the weapons it so kindly provided to the defense of Israel.
Another stupid question in the same survey:
What does this even mean? How do you “identify with a country”? It’s beyond nuts to ask such a question.
Incidentally, the list of countries they provide doesn’t even include the USSR, which is the country where I was born. Maybe pay attention to history instead of torturing words with the goal of extracting some particularly neoliberal essence out of them?
According to this, I’m a late-career academic:
This makes me feel ancient but it’s also dumb because even if I retire at the dot of turning 65, I still have more years to work than I have worked so far.
This really hurt my feelings.
This reminded me of how my sister and I were renting a car in Madrid to drive to Portugal, and the guy at the rental company tried to upsell us. He was young, and hadn’t figured out yet that you don’t sell to women like you do to men.
“This Citroën is small,” he said. “The engine is weak. I could get you something larger and more potent for a surcharge.”
My sister and I started at him blankly. What he was saying meant nothing to us.
As a teenager, my sister worked at Avis, and she found out that the best way to upsell to men is to offer them a PT Cruiser. 90% get very upset and are willing to pay extra to get something larger.
For women, the magical words aren’t “large” and “potent.” What kind of a weirdo woman wants to be large? Instead, it’s “safe, comfortable, elegant, beautiful, chic.”
“Give women huge tax breaks for having kids” is somewhere right there with “get something larger” as a sales technique for female customers.
The prospective priest is exactly the age I am and emigrated to Canada from Ukraine in the same year. He had the funniest, very Canadian ideas about the US, and I spent over an hour yesterday allaying his concerns.
“No, it’s not dangerous. No, it’s really not dangerous. I routinely forget to lock the front door it’s so safe. Healthcare is great, and you get it immediately. You can see your doctor whenever you need. You can get medical help within an hour of feeling symptoms. Schools are not dangerous at all. Classes are small. Your kids can go to college for free. You can buy a decent house for far, far less than in Toronto. I promise it’s not dangerous at all. No, this isn’t East St Louis. In fact, you never have to go to East St Louis. No, there are no gangs here. No, I don’t have a gun. Yes, I feel perfectly safe without a gun.”
The priest is wonderful, even if he’s used to doing the Church Slavonic service and isn’t used to an English-language one. I really hope he decides to adopt our parish.
Trump froze the USAID grants, and I don’t know about other countries but it’s great for Ukraine. These were all spent on ideological projects of the far left. Everybody but the very shameless in Ukraine is celebrating. The opinion on Trump is changing even among the staunchest former Dem Party whisperers.
If you need proof, go read the X feed of the Ukrainian journalist who always interviews me. And many other honest journalists who despised the USAID grants and made their living by doing serious journalism and not propaganda.
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