My office manager is a communist. She’s not a young nitwit with a head full of nonsense. She is an old women who grew up wishing her parents were communists. From what I can gather, she has signed up for every crackpot scheme to bubble forth from the Cult of Modern Liberalism since her glory days as a teenager.
Whenever we discuss politics, which is something I try to avoid, her preferred solution is for the men with guns to impose a uniform solution on all of us. The phrase “single payer” pops out of her mouth anytime health care is mentioned. She has Moonbat Tourette’s.
Today we were talking about current events and the subject of immigration came up, regarding the lower classes. We were having some moving done and the crew that showed up was mostly Hispanic, with a few blacks. The guy running the show was Eastern European. My guess is he hits one of the many open air labor markets for day labor. The moving business is a tough way to make a living so Sergei can’t worry about the niceties of the current labor laws. He needs cheap labor.
I fully admit to being a bit torn on the issue of immigration. My grandparents were immigrants. Even though I now “identify” as African American on government forms, my genome says my people come from Eurasia. They fled the Bolsheviks and set up shop in America.
I kind of dig the fact that my country welcomes those who can’t seem to get along with the folks back in the old country. I love thinking about what the rest of the world thinks when all those mutts wrapped in Old Glory march into the Olympic stadium. You just know a lot of them are thinking, “I wish that was me.”
In my mind, I see that as a big old middle finger to the rest of the world. I get that from my grandfather. He was never a rich man, but he loved the “fuck you” side of being an American. He came here, learned perfect English and made a life for himself as an American. As far as he was concerned, the folks back in the old country were losers.
That bit of sentimentality is not intended to get your patriotism up. I’m just stating my bias. I have an unreasonable bias toward immigrants, at least the ones trying to be Americans. But, that only works if citizenship has any value. If anyone can wander over the border and get all the same rights and privileges as me, the citizenship has no value. Further, my loyalty to my country evaporates.
Anyway, that’s where I come from on immigration issue. Talking with my commie office manager, I was surprised at how strongly she is opposed to immigration. Her reasoning is that it hurts blacks and poor whites. I get the sense she is new to the subject, at least this side of the topic. She’s up on all the latest Progressive trends so I doubt she has arrived at this position independently. She’s getting this from somewhere.
The other thing she said is that immigration is a tool for corporations to exploit the middle-class. She is a big Elizabeth Warren fans so I suspect all of these new opinions from my office manager are coming from the Fake Indian side of the fever swamp. Warren has voted in line with her party on immigration, but I don’t recall her saying much about it.
Warren’s faculty lounge populism mostly appeals to credentialed Progressives who resent not making more money. A rich white woman standing on the steps of her mansion, ranting about the rich strikes normal people are laughably absurd. I think Progressives understand that this brand of populism has a small audience so they are looking to expand into other areas.
The idiots in the GOP may be focused on winning Hispanic votes, but the Progressives know better. They need to get white people voting for them again and an easy way to do that is the immigration card. They can even pitch immigration restrictions as a way to help immigrants, thus avoiding the charge of xenophobia.
There’s always been a Star-Bellied Sneetch quality to American Progressives. By that I mean they get revved up on a fad and it eventually fades, to be replaced by a new fad that often contradicts the old fad. In that regard, liberals are like teenage girls. In order to distinguish themselves from the Old New New Left of the Obama years, the New New New Left is embracing immigration restriction.
The polling on the issue makes clear that a hawkish position on immigration is the safe one and that may be what’s happening here. As both parties gear up for 2016, they are figuring out that the mood of the public is running away from them so they need to catch up. Whether or not the people in charge will follow on is unknown, but we may be seeing a paradigm shift over the next 18 months on the issue of immigration.
Or, my office manager will be burned at the stake by her coven for the crime of apostasy.
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“I do understand her position in that she is from Jewish stock”
oh that explains it
Maybe, just maybe, a common sense virus is sweeping the left. It is beyond comprehension how they believe a nation can survive by letting any and all cross the borders at will, stay, and drain the country’s resources without contributing. Notwithstanding the administration’s claims to the contrary, unemployment/underemployment is epidemic in our country and that affects leftists as well. Could it be that they are starting to connect the dots? I can’t say for sure as the left sure does believe in idiocy across the spectrum but “hordes of unwashed” claiming their jobs and absorbing entitlement dollars at an unsustainable rate might just be getting them to question this illegal immigration ponzi scheme. Or maybe not, it could just be a tic.
I think that the ruling class is starting to grok exactly how much peril we’re in. They’ve been able to manage immigration in America for the last few decades, but the possibility of MENA sloshing over into Europe in a completely uncontrolled and possibly civilization (for the Euros, anyway) ending event has gone from “laughably small” to “panties in a twist” over the last year or so. Even Lavrov has confirmed that Al Khalifah is enemy nomer odin over the last couple of days. The talking points have been distributed. The talking heads are being primed. The enemy is no longer Anglo-French plutocracy and American warmongering industrialists but… sorry, wait, I seem to have gotten an old version of the party line, er talking points. Here it is… the old enemy was neo-colonialist Americans, now it is ISIS. And immigration is bad.
Bismarck’s one really brilliant realization was that custom and currency unions, royal intermarriage, and a common language was never going to be enough to unite the Germans into Germany. The only thing that would bring the Germans together was blood. Hence the Franco-Prussian War of 1870.
For a very short while, I thought that the War on Terror could be the cauldron that Europe could be forged in. Looking back, I am not sure if the that thought even entered the minds of the Euro-elites. In trying to forge a European Union, they’ve used every trick of Bismarck’s except one. They had the opportunity to fight from a position of strength. From this point on, they will be reacting to enormously dangerous forces. The might end up with Europe. They could end up dead or enslaved.
You may be on to something. I have noticed in the comment threads in the New York Times over the last year or so that any article on illegal immigration gets a majority of comments against open borders policies. And this comes from regular NYT commenters that are reliably lefty on all other topics
You say about your grandfather: He came here, learned perfect English and made a life for himself as an American.
This is exactly why most people are now against immigration. People understand that Once Upon a Time, we actually demanded that our immigrants learn English, pull their weight, and become Americans. We no longer do this, presumably because a divided population without a sense of cohesion is much easier to rule for the Elites. Divide and conquer works like magic for them. We have become a Balkanized nation; isn’t multiculturalism grand?
I have a distant relative, by marriage, who lives the lefty lifestyle. No surprise that her and her husband live in a small but expensive house in a part of the nation I couldn’t afford but she can comfortably dream of her ideal rulers crushing the last of our freedoms. Actually, that may not be fair but she does dream of an end to the sort of thing her mates like to say they detest, such as a free market leading to a healthy economy and so on.
Anyway, like all lefties in this country she is gung-ho for immigration and frequently posts messages on social media extolling the virtues of the UK getting, at low cost and relatively no expense, skilled workers arriving ready to dissect brains and so on. I always find it a bit odd that a movement born of ‘the workers’ now wants all the expense of training the workers to be done by others. Seems a bit selfish to me. Almost filthy capitalist if I dare say such a thing. Never mind… she doesn’t, like all lefties, want to talk about the negative aspects of immigration. You know, unskilled low IQ arrivals and their large families on non-English speakers who have no intention of assimilating and are here for what they can screw out of the country while declaring we are the worst scum ever and must be eliminated. Inshallah.
Every time she posts something about arabic-speaking nuero-surgeons slotting smoothly into our society I am tempted to tell her that for every one of those there are at least a dozen taxi-drivers and benefit scroungers in places like Rotherham who fancy abusing young white girls. But for the sake of family unity, I don’t. I know, I know, I am merely being fearful…
I do understand her position in that she is from Jewish stock so she can see the positive side of immigration. After all, if her family hadn’t come here years ago they might be a footnote in the dusty ledgers of some far-flung pro-socialist government. But because she has been here long enough to regard herself truthfully as being British and belonging to this nation, she falls into the trap of thinking all immigrants are like her family. The Jews may at times have had a bad press but generally they work hard and generally keep a low profile. It is possible to interact with them and never really know they are Jewish.
That is not the case with a lot of other migrants landing here, and these newcomers are pretty determined you are going to know who they are and what they want. With the enthusiastic support of my distant relative and her mates, they have good allies.
Of course, some of the newly arrived here dislike the Brits almost almost as much as they hate the Jews…
years ago I attended an anti-war rally in San Diego for reporting purposes (my write up actually got kudos from both sides of the debate for being both accurate and pointing out the many absurdities of the event). the union hack speaker left the entire crowd silent as she railed against the ‘illegals coming in to take our jobs!’
it actually became uncomfortable for the organizers as this was during 2006, the year of ‘Si Se Puede’ in California. but the speaker wouldn’t relent, quoting Cesar Chavez and a parade of lefty heroes who worked hard to stop foreign workers from stepping in to take low-wage jobs and crippling the position of the underclass.
of course, when the Dems needed the votes, that wasn’t to be discussed. new immigrants means new voters means more programs means bigger slush fund. if things change the next 18 months, it’ll be due to the fact that the promises not kept are finally catching up, and now that the anti-whitey caucus is solidly Dem, it’s time to go after the GOP side that actually is sympathetic to immigration either in tone or substance (Bush by tone and deed; Rubio, Jindal and Cruz as ‘immigrants by association’) and keep the white working class away from the polls.
the GOP will either win with Walker or get stuck with Christie, who may win, but will be another progressive/establishment GOP pol, giving us a Rove/Delay/Gillespie style of governance without fallback ‘good guy at heart’ that kept people on W’s side for so long.