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of the U.S.-based global corporate predator elite and hating the United States itself--its people and its democratic ideals. And it is idiotic--and the most jingoistic accusation in jingoistic BushWorld--to say, "America, love it or leave it!" What would Thomas Jefferson say to that? The U.S. was based upon the notion of strong internal criticism of government policy. That is not just our right, it is our safety net as a country. Combined with our right to vote, our right to criticize government and hold it accountable, is the means by which we can CORRECT the ship of state when it is headed to disaster, and DEMAND that it act lawfully and according to our best democratic ideals. These rights are the bulwark against tyranny and against rich, powerful elites gaining too much power for their own profit.
Further, when we see our government doing wrong, we are obliged as human beings to speak out against it, and we are obliged as the citizens of this country, to find out WHY it is doing wrong, and try to change those conditions, or bring powerful wrongdoers to justice.
Those who say, "America, love it our leave it," to critics of U.S. policy, are identifying what America IS with the most rightwing and greedy powers in our land. They are identifying with very undemocratic multinational corporations, war profiteers, union busters, thieves, murderers and the super-rich. They are identifying with liars, corporate news monopolies and fascists.
But these are usurping powers--greedy, awful people who have sucked at the tit of U.S. taxpayers and workers since the end of WW II, and are now just looting us blind, and have hijacked our military for corporate resource wars, and are dismantling our Constitution.
You want us to give up the fight for democracy in the U.S., and go elsewhere? No! We have a vision of a just and truly democratic country. OUR country. We are the Abolitionists, who fought against slavery. We are the union organizers, who fought against the Robber Barons. We are the suffragettes, who fought for women's rights. We are the New Dealers, who fought against the destruction of our economy by the greedy rich. We are the citizen soldiers of WW II, who fought and defeated Nazism and longed for world peace. We are the civil rights workers, who fought for full citizenship for the descendants of the slaves. We are the antiwar activists, who fought and fight against unjust war. We are the PEOPLE of this country, who demand lawful and honest government--because it is our RIGHT to have lawful and honest government.
When we see democracy arising ELSEWHERE, as in Venezuela, we praise it. When we see our government doing everything in its power to DESTROY another democracy--another democracy, in this case, which has far more honest and transparent elections than we do, and a far livelier political culture than our own--we cry out against such destructiveness, because it is unjust and unlawful, and the height of hypocrisy, on the part of our corporate overlords and their puppet politicians.
It is ridiculous to say, "Go live in Venezuela!"--as if to say, "SHUT UP!" about the injustice of our own government. If we, the People, ever DO shut up, it will be the final doom of this democracy. It will mean the bad guys won.
And with regard to Latin American immigrants to this country--legal and illegal--the great majority of them are Mexicans, Guatemalans and Hondurans--three countries which U.S. global corporate predators have particularly devastated, economically and politically. 200,000 Mayan villagers were slaughtered in Guatemala in the 1980s, under Reagan (and with his direct complicity), in order to destroy the leftist political movement in that country. Democracy was PREVENTED, by massive bloodshed. Fairness and justice were DESTROYED. All three of these countries now have rightwing governments that are continuing the devastation--colluding with Bush and the "free traders"--and actively oppressing the vast poor populations. Recently, in Oaxaca, yet another democracy movement arose, and was crushed by the Fox/Calderon government, which SUPPORTED the fascist governor and his murderous paramilitaries. There is vast poverty and disenfranchisement in these countries--supported and instigated by the U.S. government and its corporate rulers. If the U.S., instead, changed course, and supported democracy and justice in these countries, we WOULDN'T HAVE an illegal immigration problem. If the people who come here for poorly paid, hard labor jobs, had any hope of feeding their families and any hope of upward mobility in their own countries, they would remain there. They would PREFER to remain there. They love their villages and families and communities there. But they often have been stripped of their land by corporate predators. And they have often seen their unions and their rural cooperatives and honest, fair government smashed by local rich elites in collusion with multinational corporations. They have seen cheap U.S. ag products dumped on their markets to destroy local food self-sufficiency. They have seen every hope of fairness and justice destroyed. They have been forced into urban squalor or migration.
IF the U.S. government supported democracy in Latin America--and praised and helped governments like those of Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador and Argentina, which are actively trying to create social justice and prosperity for all, instead of conspiring to destroy them and to loot their rich natural oil, gas, mineral, forest and other resources--THERE WOULD BE NO IMMIGRATION PROBLEM. IF people had hope, IF people were able to participate in their governments, IF people had jobs and saw the benefits of their labor, they would not migrate! But the economics are so out of balance, after decades and centuries of exploitation, and are KEPT so out of balance NOW--in the countries that LACK strong leftist governments--there is NOTHING for them in their native lands, and they come here, seeking our hardest jobs, often at the risk of their lives and often reluctantly, leaving family, culture and all familiar things behind. WE, who have exploited and oppressed THEIR countries for decades and centuries, still have some pittance to provide in wages for picking crops and cleaning hotel rooms. WE have business owners, bosses and corporations that prefer cheap, unprotected labor, and who, of course, have an interest in spiraling wages downward and busting unions. This combination of hopeless poverty there, and the ill intent of the rightwing moneyed class here, is the cause of illegal immigration by the poor. It is not a preference of the poor. It is a necessity of the poor. And it is NOTHING to crow about. ("Why do they come here, if our government is so bad?") It is a disgrace. It is a deliberate 'diaspora.' It is the product of ungodly greed on the part of the fascist elites in both places, and on the part of monster global corporations who have loyalty to no one.
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