During the Mid 1990s I was a student at Cal (that's a story in itself)and I met Ron, who was a pumped-up radical grad student researching History-Ethnic Studies.
I recently received a random email from Ron, and I thought y'all might find the subsequent correspondence amusing. The topics cover American History, NAFTA, immigration, and of course, politics. I can't wait to hear what y'all think of this...
1)From Ron to Alex:
Alex, if this is the alex I think it is....its Ron..., from the cyberverse.
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> We were driving down Bancroft and I think I saw you crossing the street. Getting gray hair? Wearing more black these days?
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> Anyway, I was in the family car, my wife and 19month old daughter in the back, and there was lots of traffic on the intersection so I couldn't pull over ....you know how that goes.
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> But I wanted to say hi. I'm up at XXX State now. I'm teaching in Chicano and Latino Studies. Taught history and Chicano Studies at Laney, Merrit, Chaffey (San Bernardino County) and Napa. Married and have a kid and a tenure track job. Lots. Pretty normal life. One day maybe we can catch up.
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> Hope you are well and glad to see you are still engaged.
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> Ron
2)From Alex to Ron:
Hey Ron,
All us old "hippies" look alike in Berkeley. You may have seen some other faded soul sauntering along. It is interesting to hear about the developments along the path of your life.
Last I saw you, you were trying to keep kids from spinning out of the centrifuge they call secondary education in California. Now, since you are at a state college, at least half of your students can read and write at a junior high school level. Must be refreshing. After that experience, I'll bet you put your kids into private schools.
I am going crazy active. I have started a radical, non-politically correct group and website. You can imagine that I don't spout the corporate democrat party bullshit. Hell, I'll just cut to the non-politically correct heart of my website, where my novel approach to news and politics, honesty, required that I coined a new term to cover positions the press, the politicians, and their corporate masters fail to express. In a word: Crimigrants.
I think it's quite catchy and very descriptive of how our corporations replaced our middle-class with a permanently impoverished foreign working class. Yes, permanently impoverished, except for the poichos who have sold their soul to the American Nightmare. (We only have the resources to support our whole population at an "American" standard of life if we steal all the oil in the Middle-East, and much of the world, which we are now frantically pursuing.)
I also cover China, the Middle-East, Africa a bit, the environment extensively, and of course, the heart of my efforts is centered in exposing domestic political corruption. Check out my database. It searches fruitfully across a range of terms; Environment, Economics, Lobbyists, Illegal Searches, Illegal Detentions, Torture, Gonzales, Abramoff, Big Oil, Bush and Unconstitutional Presidential Power all produce interesting results. Best search recommended for Ron: Schools, and Prisons.
The address of the site is Committeefordemocracy.org The goal is to change our corporate fascist state back into a democracy. This will be difficult with so many people more interested in serving the criminal powers that rule us to receive the consumer rewards and blandishments our corporate masters reward their servants with. You know, besides the reward of American style poverty the corporations bestow on their slaves.
The site has abstracted, reviewed, and databased over 850 articles on the acts and affects of American political corruption, both here in the US and around the world, during the last 12 months.
I attempt to reveal and reconcile some of the disturbing alignments of the super poor and super rich here in the US that have trashed our democracy, our environment, and have empowered us to place and support dictators around the world.
As soon as the economy falls, I believe these ideas will grow and spread. Currently I am getting 1400 visits a month, and I have not done one lick of promotion...yet. I was working on the new, cool format when I saw your email.
The future is falling onto us like the twin towers, and we are too stupid, fat, and greedy to notice.
Alex.
3)From Ron to Alex:
Dear Alex,
Glad to hear all that intellect and energy are up to (no?) good . I actually did a study for a Mexican scholar on NAFTA and the US congressional debates. At that time, the Congress agreed that the US would help fund programs for economic development in Mexico, in order to stave off the kind of displacement that would lead to large scale migration, which was entirely anticipated and discussed. Of course, The Mexican and US Elite, both standing to make millions, ignored this and the US voters would never approve their reps appropriating money for such things, while the Mexican elite pockets the funds it promised. The best example for how displacement works is with Corn/Maize. US and large corporations can now buy up their Ejidos/collective farms, or plant ADM corn next door which is a dominant strain - if ADM fertilizes your corn you get ADM corn, which you cannot sell and which ADM can seize as contraband. The Corn prices are no longer protected so farmers are, in various ways, displaced and forced to sell (and migrate). In cities, even if such things are not happening locally, the prices are now 4 to 10 times higher and the corn is no longer enriched, so you are fucked and you have to go where you can make more money, so that you and your family are no longer starving and so you can 'keep up with the Gomezes'. Here, ADM and other companies have outsourced everything, so the average worker cant get a union job, and the average employer cant afford to hire people at decent wages. So you might as well sell coke...etc etc etc.
Anyway all this was anticipated. Many folk were against it, both on the Mexico and the US side.
It would be great to chat over coffee with you sometime, but it might be awhile, with my semester about to begin again. We go through novato many times, and we were there for the 4th of July parade, and I always think of you, as you hail from there.
But anyway, keep up the good work and be well.
Many blessings
Ron
4)From Alex to Ron:
Hey Ron,
The nut of the scenario you so well described, NAFTA, does not explain the mass movement of Mexicans to America. The acceleration of this illegal movement began in earnest in the late 1960s and early 1970s, long before NAFTA. The Unions were smashed in the mid-1980s.
Your articulate description of the pernicious effects of NAFTA (Started by Bush I, and Finished by Clinton I) does describe recent events (1992 to the present) which have accelerated the "pushing" side of the immigration equation. (There are forces both "pushing" people out of Mexico, and forces "pulling" people into the US)
I'm surprised you failed to mention the tremendous strain on corn prices the political subsidy for ethanol has sparked in the last three months. ADM is having its cake and eating it too...and eating all of us to boot.
I cannot but compliment your description of these forces, but must point out that there are a range of forces and factors at play. The preponderant factor I have encountered is the "pulling" force, consisting of the desire for money and material possessions, more precisely, the averaged differential in the levels of material wealth between the two countries. I.E., materialism.
Much as ADM has politically manipulated the corn markets, the members of the American employer elite, consisting of every major corporate interest from manufacturers to corporate farmers to the food service industry, have exerted their massive political power to neutralize enforcement of immigration law and allow the unlimited flow of cheap labor into the US. This constitutes another "pulling" force.
Much the same thing happened between 1880 and 1919, when the Eastern European immigrants combined with the Robber Barons to smash our farmer democracy, and replace it with a corporate aristocracy.
Our Corporate Aristocracy today has an extra tool: they are using the slave wage levels in China and India along with an unlimited supply of domestic cheap labor, not just as weapons against industrialized working classes both here in the US and around the world, but to complete their transformation of the US from a state dominated by a corporate aristocracy to a corporate fascist state. As Bush so famously said, "Mission Accomplished."
By my estimation Clinton's passage of NAFTA through a democratic Congress marked the moment when our corporate fascist state was conceived. It was at that point that corporate bribery short-circuited what was left of our tattered democracy. Bush is merely the midwife for the bastard offspring of this marriage between wealth and political power that has been quickening for decades.
The Dems offer little resistance to the war or the rise of domestic tyranny because they and the Repugs both work for the same corporate masters. (see the links following the abstract and commentary)
I am working on a brief commentary on this topic on my website. Check it out, but realize it is a draft. I am currently writing about 6 or 7 brief essays a day, and that baby is about half-way through the production process.
If you want to broaden the horizons of commentary on the site, I would welcome your submissions. I'm only getting around a thousand hits a month, but I haven't done a lick of promotion. Yet. I am working on a new format, my fifth or sixth, and when I complete it I will begin promotion in earnest.
It's sure good to hear from you, since you were one of my few rewarding experiences at Cal.
Alex
(P.S., Last year I drove a 1984 Isuzu pickup truck from here to Reynosa, Tamulipas. From there I followed the Gulf all the way around the Yucatan, and past Belize and Guatemala. I crossed the heart of the Chiapas mountains to Oaxaca, then up the pacific coast to Nogales. 37 days, 8700 miles. It was quite a trip. I ended up with a fifty page journal and a couple of hundreds of pictures. I must say although we have a lot of money, we are heartless. Mexico, on the other hand, has little money and a big heart. I am sure the immigration to the US has suppressed reform, if not revolution, in Mexico, as it has skewed the distribution of wealth here.)
5)From Ron to Alex:
Hey alex,
Factors in US Mexico international Migration
Its almost too complex to discuss, but I describe it to my students as a cyclical codependent global relationship that goes far beyond the US and Mexico.
1. over 100 years of the us actively and passively encouraging Mexican Migration (pull)
2. The US comparative wealth and availability of jobs (pull)
3. Economic crisis in Mexico since 1980 (push)
4. Multiple impacts of NAFTA (push)
-example, decontrol of price of corn, US access to buying farm land, collapse of key industries, etc
5. physical structure of railroads and roads (push-pull)
6. Border Industrialization's gendered labor structure (push)
7. change in Mexican class structure (push)
8. complete collapse of Mexican economy in some areas (push)
9. US demand for low priced goods and servile labor/slavery (pull)
10. MExican population growth (push)
11. US population growth decline (pull)
The other (1960s) factor comes from the fact that in 1964 two things happened: First, the Bracero program (1942-1964) was not renewed, but if you believe adam smith, economic processes are 'natural', practically organic, and have developed, as you point out, over time. The other thing that happened was the Border Industrialization Act, or Maquiladora laws, designed to export some production and simultaneously create a 'wall' of jobs to stop migrating Mexican men from going into the US. Produce, of course was ok. If your capital can be moved in the form of investments, its good and legal to move across borders. If you capital is n the form of Labor (sweat equity/capital investment) you cannot move it. So the rich can move their capital around but the poor cannot.
Back to Maquiladoras. It failed miserably. They didnt want adult men, they wanted tween and teen girls. They wanted the most pliable source of labor possible. This disrupts Mexican society. If my daughter migrates to a dangerous city in the North to work, how can I possibly stay here and just collect her money? Its shamefull, so I have to go to El Norte. At the same time, maquiladoras created a massive surge of population migration such that Tijuana is now the 3rd major city in Mexico.
Mexico gets to keep its peonaje and the US gets to keep a form of semi-slavery, just like the old days. I actually know a lady who was kept as a slave for 7 years. If you are part of the elite its great. If you are like most of us, it means you are a renter for life while the number of millionaires surge.
Anyway there is more to this, but I will have to send that later. The main problem is that our public debate is too But now, its not just a matter of deporting people; its a matter of helping Mexico to establish a social system in which justice prevails while we do the same, so we can have an honorable living wage and a decent life.
You know, while I realize how screwed up both countries are, I still honor the immigrants and their contributions, and I don't believe, as many do, that they are a burden. The elites of US and Mexico (but not the regular folk) wanted NAFTA and globalization for their profits, but we are all suffering for it. I also believe it probably would have happened anyway, as it is part of a global pattern.
More later, gotta go run errands.
Be well,
Ron
6)from Alex to Ron:
Hey Dude,
I choose a different heading than "Factors in US Mexico international Migration." Seems to me a better heading is
"Immigration: Birthmother and Bedrock of the American Corporate Fascist State."
As my heading indicates, our criminal immigration policy starts at the top, with the criminals who have hijacked our democracy. Our immigration policy reflects the political will of wealth and power, not the general welfare of our citizens, and certainly not the interests or welfare of Mexicans, except if they obey and accept the dictates of our corporate class.
Immigration is not based on "magic" economic principals. Although we may speak of push and pull, immigration is squarely rooted in political policy. I directly ascribe our irresponsible immigration policies of the last 30 years to the loss of our democracy.
After the Blacks and Liberals acted up in the 60's the borders were opened, and the voices of dissent were drowned in wave after wave of obedient Mexican slaves. The plunging wages and declining political power of the middle class were complimented by the feeding frenzy of greed that exploiting foreigners and the parallel massive rise in irresponsible profits, production, and consumption triggered by illegal and legal immigration.
The political basis of our immigration policy is twofold. First, we have lost our sovereign right to elect our own representatives from among ourselves. The corporate elite has monopolized politics. Second, the corporate politicians who betrayed our democracy discarded our sovereign right to decide who may or may not enter our country, and enjoy citizenship in the united states.
Our immigration "policy" is indicative of American's shift in the basis of sovereignty from our citizens, a democracy, to our corporations, finalizing the creation of a corporate fascist state. Our corporations replaced democracy with rule by and for wealth. Immigrants were a vital tool facilitating this transition.
Our approaches to, and underlying assumptions about, immigration also differ significantly.
First, the character and effect of immigration into the US since 1880 has been that of a foreign weapon wielded by one domestic class against another. In the 1880s immigration was used by the rising industrial robber barons to disenfranchise the middle and lower classes. It worked very well.
Today immigration is the main tool of the corporate fascists who emerged out of our Corporate aristocracy, and has been the factor which has decimated the political and economic power of our domestic middle and lower classes.
Immigration is merely a tool of wealth and power to create and concentrate wealth and power at the very top of American Society. I hope the crimigrants are getting their 40 pieces of silver for their service to wealth, power and self-interest.
The use of immigration in this manner reflects the evolving loss of democratic control of politics, our democracy, by the domestic middle and lower classes. Flooding the country with Mexico's poor is both a cause and self perpetuating effect expanding the loss of our democracy. The recent talk in Congress about trading citizenship for votes well illustrates the corrupting effects of having a large resident foreign population. Citizenship is now offered as a bribe.
And the corporations get richer and richer while massive poverty continues to deepen. Immigration has already destroyed the social, political and natural infrastructures which once well served our lower and middle classes. They are gone, consumed in a storm of greed and growth.
Besides losing our democracy and our social and environmental infrastructures, we have also lost our free press, and subsequently our middle class lost control of the nature of the political discourse about immigration. Our corporate press replaced democratic discourse with a materialistic analysis, ornamented with political correctness.
We are faced with spectacles like the farcical debate on immigration "reform" without one mention about who is going to pay for the schools and infrastructure already destroyed to subsidize previous waves of cheap labor, let alone who is going to pay for the prisons, the roads, and other infrastructure that will be used in the future to subsidize the massive profits generated by cheap foreign labor.
The Unstated Answer to the Unasked Question: no one. It would not be cheap labor if we paid the responsible costs to maintain our infrastructure. Immigration is no more than a scam to rip-off our country's resources and rights, and transfer them from the bottom to the top of society.
The corporations are going to continue to import cheap labor, and make the middle class pay to subsidize the services for the immigrants who are screwing them, while the corporations pocket the irresponsible profits of immigration. And the corporate press continues to extol how much money they are making, while the next article describes the collapse of our educational and medical "systems." Gee, Ron, think these things are connected?
You well illustrate the trend of analyzing immigration on a strictly economic basis. Your reliance on economic analysis to define of the nature of immigration is like watching a dog chase its tail. All the issues you cite are the products of economic policies crafted by our corrupted government: unless we reform the government, the corporations will continue to craft economic policy that screws both Mexican and American labor. As long as we are stuck on the symptoms, the cause remains unaddressed.
Maybe we should confront the root issue, the loss of our democracy. If we cannot restore our democracy, our corporate masters will continue to craft economic policies that kick people around, which we so euphemistically describe as "push" and "pull" factors.
The problem is not economic, it is political. Now It is time for patriots to expose the corrupt politics which generate these crappy economic policies, and fight the forces which put and keep them in power. It is up to us to restore domestic political legitimacy, and not be distracted by the web of lies and corruptions spun by our corporate politicians and their servile scribes. Instead of fighting the symptoms, we must fight the cause of these crimes. Immigration is one of the most powerful tools used by the corporate fascists to maintain their power. Thus the corporate politicians offer open borders to those who obey and serve greed.
The materialists have attained economic victory in the US, and the prize is not just economic and political control, but also brings control of the terms of the public discourse. And all public discourse about policy orbits and reflects the rhetoric and values of the creation and concentration of wealth, rather than democratic principals.
Intellectually, the materialists have established material production and profit as the basis of political power in the US. This is the latest evolution of fascism, and represents the ultimate marriage of intellectual, political, and material power.
The unification of material and political power in the United States threatens the sovereignty of every nation in the world, starting with ours. The pursuit of profit now justifies illegal immigration as well as military invasion, providing the intellectual basis, as well as the "tools," our corporate fascists require to practice both internal and external imperialism around the world.
The root justification for both immigration and invasion is exactly the same: Both depend on the notion that foreigners have some type of "right" to interfere with other countries' sovereignty. This imperial notion has seriously damaged every nation's right to define and control their own political, cultural and ethical institutions.
This tickles the Corporate Democraps and Repugnants pink, giving them unlimited power to do "nation building" both here and around the world, without pesky locals demanding the unalienable right to control and define their own affairs.
The flood of greedy foreigners into the US not only validates our politician's political philosophy of greed, but reinforces their transnational uses of military and economic power against 3rd world nations. Since we do not respect democracy here, expect our attacks on local sovereignty and self-determination around the world to continue unabated. Who's going to stop them, the ass suckers who mow their lawns and wipe their asses? Hell, the Cubans and Iranians are dying to ride American tanks back into Havana and Tehran.
But hey, who needs the right to create and live under political authority based on local values? Everyone, especially here in the United States, where our imperial arrogance must be checked to restore the right of every nation to control its own sovereignty.
This means that it is vitally important that we deny our corporate fascist state the power to use foreigners to transcend the political and economic limits of a democratic system, both here and around the world. Until we acquire the power to take back our democracy, the corporations will continue to run our country, and aspire to run the world.
This makes our country illegitimate on its own terms, and presents a clear and present danger to both Americans, and the people who seek freedom around the world.
I publicly demand that every country's specific historical, cultural, and political values be respected, and the right of every country to determine, among themselves without external interference, how they regulate themselves be firmly established and respected by every other nation in the world. And it starts here, now.
That would really change things in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Jordan. Dictators and Kings would swing, if their people had the right to select their own government and leaders. If we had a democracy here, immigration would have ended yesterday.
The corporate fascists and their tools always measure, and judge, the merits of a situation based on production, profits, and materialism. Until we reestablish a set of democratic ethics to regulate wealth and power, labor will continue to get fucked both here, in the cockpit of global corporate fascism, and around the world.
The trans national Corporate attack on local sovereignty, characterized here by legal and illegal immigration, allows our corporate masters to open and destroy local labor markets by leveraging the desperation of foreign workers around the world against each other. The first step is smashing local regulation and the local control of local labor markets into poverty.
Rather than helping each other up, the working people of the world are being used by the trans-nationals to club each other down to the bottom, to virtual wage slavery. Globalism and immigration work like a fist in a mailed glove against local sovereignty both here and around the world.
The rules of economics offer neither the fascists, nor the progressives, any cover or excuse for their crimes. The rules of economics are neutral, and operate in concert with the political and economic policies established to regulate commerce. Immigration and taxation are powerful political tools which determine the distribution of wealth between domestic classes. These political policies interact and work in concert with the economic "rules," determining the status and influence of our various classes.
Our immigration policy has been economically tailored to steal the wealth and political power of average Americans, and move it to the top of our society. Immigrants are the pall bearers for the final destruction and death of our democratic republic, and are the mid wives for the birth of our corporate fascist state.
Political policy is the bedrock on which the "rules" of economics play out, not visa-versa. In any case, individuals identify their personal philosophies through the "rules" they decide to regulate their lives with. Most Americans have philosophies that are no more than a thin cover for self-interested greed.
These personal philosophies and the economic policies that reflect them have real consequences on the nature of our polity, and it is way past time to put aside the politically correct positions that have blinded us to the real damage that our immigration policy has done to the US and the world.
We have immigration policies crafted to drive American wages to Mexican levels, but our analysis is insufficient to identify or check the forces which have usurped our democracy, and generated the poverty that feeds the luxury and perpetuates corporate control of our polity.
Thus we have witnessed the formation of an ultra rich class based on creating and spreading and deepening massive poverty across the country and the world. But, according to the Corporations, the "liberals," as well as the Democraps and Repugnants, the status-quo is just fine, and no change in direction is necessary.
I strongly disagree. I recommend that the United States seize and forfeit the property of every business that hires illegals. illegal immigration would end tomorrow. Period. The seized assets can be used to repair the social and environmental infrastructures that have been sacrificed in the pursuit of irresponsible profits. The Wages and political influence of the lower and middle classes would immediately rise significantly. Foreigners will be required to leave. This may happen soon if the market crash continues.
If our materialism does justify trumping local ethics and local rights, especially the local ethics of a native population, then our invasion of Iraq, like the invasion of cheap labor into the US, are both justified based on producing more profits, making ethical, cultural, and political considerations irrelevant. If this is correct, then our superior efficiency and production justifies anything that we do to anyone, any country, or to ourselves. This is an ethical delusion, and practically unworkable in either the short or long term.
This leads to the vision thing. The first part is identity. Who are we? As a democratic republic, if our democracy has been subverted, as I contend it has been, then our government is illegitimate, and we are in a state of revolution.
What then is the role of an illegal immigrant in a revolution? The legals and illegals have already contributed quite a bit to our revolutionary situation, offering their labor to serve the the rich, on the terms dictated by the rich.
The foreigners in America are by definition traitors to the American Constitution, and weapons used by America's wealthy and powerful classes to impoverish American labor, and impose top-down political and economic control on our country.
You should know who your allies are, and judge yourself accordingly. Agreeing with corporate immigration policy, while quibbling about the inevitable outcomes created by corporate politics and policy is intellectually dishonest, and will only perpetuate and deepen the injustices.
Practically speaking, our government is out of control both domestically and around the world. Those who enter the empire in service of those forces subverting our Constitution and government are enemies of the revolution to restore our democratic republic. The greed and self-interest identity thing is wearing rather thin, and will soon be repudiated.
The second vision thing is where the fuck are we going?
How many people do you think California's natural and social infrastructure can sustainably maintain? Both the social and natural infrastructures are presently overwhelmed, if not broken, while our elite classes are living like world class pigs, being served on bended knee by a foreign labor class, just like the Spanish Elite in Mexico.
It would be wise to look at how we got to the fucked up place we are at, and stop the root corruptions that brought us here. This era of massive demographic expansion and the related social and political distortions, not to mention the monumental environmental destruction we are serving up, is rapidly coming to a long predictable dead end, and we are still rushing blindly towards this bad end. We need to get down to a maximum American population of 150 million people to save our nation's environment, and sustain our resources into the future.
We have SURPASSED our ability to provide the water, electricity, and the schools required for decency, let alone competency, reliability, and security. For the majority of Americans, let alone our massive foreign population, that old canard, "the American Dream," is yet again proving to be a cruel joke.
If you haven't noticed, our resources are tapped out, our climate is radically changing, and our population is only growing because of the wildly irresponsible Mexican immigration that has consumed a century's worth of resources during the last 30 years. Immigration has not only destroyed our democracy, and drained California's resources, it has done significant environmental damage to the whole world.
The underlying assumptions of your "factors in immigration" is based on an impossibility: unlimited growth. We are reaching the end of a great fraud, a huge "Ponzi," or pyramid scheme that has broken our democracy, sucked the life out of our environment, and smashed our social infrastructure. The "unlimited endless growth" paradigm is crashing down around us. But let's all hold hands, and congratulate ourselves on our material successes, and continue to grow irresponsibly and consume more than can be replaced. While it lasts.
I believe that it is our duty not to "honor immigrants," but it is our duty to end immigration when their "contributions" are being used by our domestic corporate class as a political and economic weapon to beat down the middle class and destroy our democracy.
Historically, it is clear that immigration is, and has been, the greatest threat confronting fair distribution of American social, political, and natural resources for over a century. And now Bush is offering citizenship to foreigners who will fight our foreign wars for us...remind you of anything? Rome's mercenary armies. The traitor Gurkas. The Vichy French. And so on through all the historical examples of debased people putting aside everything to serve their self-interest by serving wealth, power and empire. Who are we? We have lined ourselves up with a historical rogues gallery of scumbags.
Yeah, come to America, and get rich and fat helping us fuck each other and the world. Dude, those days are over. The Second American Revolution is coming together as our country falls apart. People are waking up here, and around the world. When the rats realize the ship's on fire, they are going to run each other down trying to get out. To get "home." The loyalty of those who serve wealth is always on the market, and the market model is in mid failure.
In no way, shape, or form will I honor anyone who is here illegally, and I'm damned tired of the fucking fascists from Cuba in Florida, the fuckhead Shah's assholes who ran here when our dictator was booted out of Iran, (with billions) and those god-damned fascists pigs that suck our cocks in Taiwan and the Philippines.
These children of American Greed deserve the rod and rope, not reward. Not to mention Indonesia, Colombia, China, and the whole range of vicious dictators and authoritarian states we are propping up around the world.
I honor those who stayed in their countries to fight our dictators and gain their freedom, not those who come here to serve their self interest, and empower the web of dictators we support around the world. They are double-edged traitors, disloyal to their own country and ours. It's sadly ironic to see the corporate minorities wear "Che" shirts while serving the corporate fascists who killed him. Fuck those people.
The legal and illegals who come here to serve their greed and self-interest by serving our corporate fascist state are below contempt. Ignorance is no excuse. Greed defines culpability. Those who are here now are fully responsible for the crimes we are committing here and around the world.
You better hope the economy holds up, or you will shortly see why we need to have more in common than mutual greed. The ties that bind us are hollow lies. Things are going to get really ugly, both here and around the world. We have entered "the century of blood," and the coming violence is going to make the last century's violence look like a warm up exercise.
We are going to get what we deserve, not what we say we deserve. Our politically correct lies are evaporating in the heat of our greed and violence, and ultimately, our lies will not alter the trajectory of failure of our empire of lies.
Alex
7)From Ron to Alex
Alex,
Gee, I enjoy reading your ideas, and it makes me miss our passionate conversations from days of yore.
I also agree with much of what you say. I think however, that to separate politics and economics is a mistake, for they are one and the same, or two sides of the same phenom.
I think also that you are right, that immigration and its economic impacts on American labor, as well as the related and consequent political crackdown because of supposed 'anti-American' political ideas among unions and radicals, has practically destroyed our democracy, while the US and other empires also destroyed or prevented democracy elsewhere through foreign interventions, political, military, and economic, through the pillaging of foreign resources to fatten our stomachs and make us lazy with 'stuff'.
But I think that, if Richard Van Alstyne was right and we (the US) are simply an extension and replacement of the old British empire (which I agree with), then immigration is a current factor, but not the origin or the cause; which I think is systemic. Immigration, even in the early 19th century, was the industrial answer to slavery, which was in the US suited primarily to agrarian functions. And I believe that much of the demand for immigration is being shifted to international production or globalized commerce.
I have thought about this a great deal, even before this correspondence began, and I disagree that immigration is the 'birthmother and bedrock,' as I simply do not see it as a 'cause', but as part of a process that was already underway, and includes other factors, listed above.
Unfortunately, my semester begins tomorrow, so I cannot spend too much time on this discussion, or even respond to all the points I find worthy of comment on, but I will read your website and hopefully, one day when I am in the East Bay, we can sit down for a coffee (imperialist addictive beverage that keeps millions in economic/political bondage) and have a 'brief' chat. If that is even possible!
Be well,
Ron
8) from Alex to Ron:
Hey Dude,
The correlation of empires happened after WWII, not before. Before the US could take over from the Brits we had to consolidate an elite capable of taking over and running their global empire when the Brits collapsed.
Prior to WWII America was having an internal contest that was expressed in a number of ways over time. Brit vs. French in Jefferson's time, domestic infrastructure and the Bank vs. Jackson, the north vs. south, and hard money vs. silver were all domestic contests for domestic control. Immigration factored into domestic, not international power struggles, until the 1880s.
The use of the Eastern Euro immigrants to consolidate our corporate aristocracy gave our new industrial elite the capability of stepping onto the world stage, and they did, stealing the Spanish Empire. This massive immigration was different than all before it, for it was industrial and urban, while previous immigrations were overwhelmingly agricultural and rural.
The labor movement sparked by the brutality of the Robber Barons was brutally crushed by 1919, and organized labor did not mature until 13 years after immigration was cut off in 1924, The labor movement grew and prospered until the 1970s, when global business conditions, American arrogance, and massive immigration began cutting the legs out from under the labor movement.
Since then, the major assaults on the labor movement have come from immigration and globalism. These factors have been sufficient to gut the American Labor Movement.
If you read my last email closely, you will see that we are in complete agreement about the relationship between politics and economic policy. I distinguish myself by insisting that any real changes in the economic policies that we both agree are heinous can only be achieved by changing the relationship between wealth, power, and political power.
It is this relationship that the immigration of Eastern Euros in the 1880s altered. It was upon this tide of immigrants that an elite capable and willing to screw the world rose in the US. This explains some of the ambiguous actions of the US when we took over the British Empire after WWII. We had a corporate aristocracy barely held in check by our tottering democratic institutions. This explains why we shifted from marching in redcoated armies, as the Brits did, to supporting the colonial elite and their dictators and authoritarian regimes. We had to hide our Imperialism from ourselves. When we failed to fool ourselves during Vietnam, the outcome was the anti-war, and almost revolutionary era of the 60s. Our corporate elite responded to the challenges of the 1960s with a flood of cheap labor.
The last 30 years of immigration has been used by our corporate aristocracy in much the same way the Robber Barons used the Eastern Euros in the 1880s, but instead of Robber Barons transforming themselves into a corporate industrial aristocracy, our corporate aristocracy transformed our government into a corporate fascist state upon this last flood tide of immigrants.
The ebb and flow in the status of unions, and the changes in the distribution of income, can both be correlated with the ebb and flow of immigration.
So I must insist that immigration is the bedrock and birthmother, both of our corporate aristocracy during the 1880s, and of the recent transformation of our democracy into a corporate fascist state. The former immigration gave us the class structure necessary to participate in global imperialism, while the second immigration has given us the wealth and power to evolve our domestic class structures to levels of power and arrogance comparable to the old blood aristocracies of Spain, England, and France. The word of George is now the law.
Until we end the direct relationship between wealth, power and political power, we will continue to suffer under this illegitimate regime, and their economic policies designed to rape our country and the world.
My solution is simple: change the terms of political success, and that will change the nature of our leadership and the ensuing economic policy. I recommend cutting off the ability of anybody but qualified voters to contribute to candidates and officeholders. Limit political party contributions to no more than 30% of the total contributed by the local voters. Force the special interests and corporation back into exercising their valid rights of free speech and association, and force them out of our elections. If they give a penny to a politician, put them in prison.
It's good that you're so busy, but it would be nice to have you as a foil to bring out these issues on my website. I can see a set of letters between Ron and Al, exploring ideas and concepts that would broaden people's perspectives, revealing aspects of the American experience that are suppressed by the corporate media, and ignored by our corporate politicians. I think it would be really informative. But you can still contribute: If you run across any bits of news or info about the effects of political corruption on money, policy, or our rights, give me a heads up and I will publish it. If it pisses me off I will publish and comment on it...
It sounds like you've got a lot of work. I imagine that would be due to the high level of support our educational system offers our Professoriat, which is probably Zero at XXX State. I'm hopeful you get a reader per class. If not, you're going to be working your ass off. I imagine your students have a decent level of preparation, and you will not have to teach them how to read and write before you can teach them about history and culture.
But this is California, and you may have to start at scratch with 60% of your students. Get your ass down here!Coffee is always good, and I'd love to hang out over coffee and talk, but you never needed coffee to stimulate yourself or others!
I might be going north for a little backpacking trip in a few weeks, so maybe we'll be having coffee in XXX, and don't try to get me to step foot in XXX Park, that craphole. Did you know I lived on Flores St, in the prestigious "F" section, on the 4th tee of Mountain Shadows North? There's a lot you don't know about Al...I used to be infamous up that way.
Keep in touch, and don't stir up a hornet's nest unless you're willing to get stung...
Alex
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