No, I’m not writing about the present state of the Irish economy. I’m also not writing about that wonderful soupy mixture I yearned for as a kid when Mom cooked fish on Friday. Today’s post treats several topics: the hijacking of the Republican Party by the Tea Party extremists; the Mideast peace talks; Labor Day; and bedbugs. Hence, it’s a stew.
Mr. Obama’s speech last night struck me as serious and cautious. He exhibited caution with respect to Iraq and caution with respect to the economy. Moreover, not by what he said so much as what he didn’t say, I received the distinct impression that he now realizes there is only so much a president can do and that sometimes you just have to let events play out.
Iraq is a sore point, to be sure. Mr. David Brooks in yesterday’s N.Y. Times declared nation building there a success. He considered the economic and political fronts, just as Mr. Obama did. Others are not so positive, including Mr. Obama. While Iraq this year might end up with the fastest growing economy in the world, growing from zero is a lot different than growing from an already high level. ABC News even thinks it’s significant that people can now go out in Baghdad and eat ice cream. I don’t know if that’s economic or political, but it is sophistic.
A new book out, written by journalist Leslie Kean and called UFOs: Generals, Pilots and Government Officials Go On the Record, will surely stir up that old UFO hornet nest again. My first acquaintance with serious works on UFOs occurred in 1956 with Capt. Edward J. Ruppelt’s classic The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects. (Yes, I was only ten years old—call me precocious.) This report seemed serious enough (to my budding scientific mind)—after all, the Captain was the first head of the USAF Project Bluebook. So what’s this all got to do with Fermi?
I’ll focus on only those agencies that deal with intelligence—not my intelligence or yours, as taxpayers, but intel: snippets of data that allow us to stomp on the “bad guys.” You can focus on any other part of the government, of course, and ask the same question. Here I’m just referring to the usual alphabet soup of acronyms: DHS, DEA, CIA, FBI, etc. In some sense, they are the most important ones when analyzing losses to our personal freedoms. They are inextricably involved with the future of our democracy. They also provide good examples of waste in government, especially if you add the cost of the military’s bureaucracy. And they are the most important to me as a writer.
One thing missing from all the discussion about immigration reform is the refugee aspect. Refugees come to the U.S. in many varieties but my thesis is that any immigrant, legal or otherwise, is a refugee of some variety. After all, if they were able to have the good life (always relative) in their home country, then why bother changing countries? Admittedly there are a few cases where someone immigrates due to a country for business or family reasons (this happened in my case and it happens all the time) but the general immigration tide is due to refugee winds.
I was motivated to write this post because (1) I know something about immigration and (2) I think the present discussion touches a lot of “hot buttons” without really looking for practical solutions. A case in point is Abby Goodnough’s article “Governors Voice Grave Concerns on Immigration” in the July 11 N.Y. Times. This is mostly about Democratic governors worrying about an emotional electorate. As I read I was acutely aware of a lot of hand wringing and whining on the part of state leaders—they acted like a deer in a headlight.
Today’s post is a little different. It was motivated by an article in yesterday’s N.Y. Times, that old rag that old liberals love and old conservatives love to hate. I say old because it used to be that you could only go further left by reading Izvestia while to cover all the right you had to read the Wall Street Journal, Christian Science Monitor, and your local John Birch Society meeting minutes. Now, with the internet, we have a lot of stuff on-line, including the N.Y. Times and O’Reilly transcripts (preferred to his TV rants—again, covering most of the political spectrum except for newsletters from Michigan militias and al-Zawahiri’s al Qaeda fanzine). This works well for me: Although I get the Times, by being on their newsletter list they lay out the day’s news for me and I can tell whether I missed something. I missed this article in the hard copy but found it in the newsletter summary. (Other evidence for my approaching senility?)
Don’t throw up your hands at the title of the post, by the way. I’ll explain in a minute what’s going on behind my bushy eyebrows sprinkled with gray. Let me first talk about the article. Written by Daniel J. Wakin, it was titled “Need a Job? Help Wanted at the N. Y. Philharmonic.” It appears that the famous Boston Symphony wannabe will have 12 openings next season. Their nemesis will have 10, the Chicago Symphony 9, and the L. A. Philharmonic 7. I’m not sure whether the BSO count, often high due to their stricter requirements for players and their intense schedule, includes replacing James Levine, who almost single-handedly soured every lover of classical music over forty that attended BSO concerts. In any case, I’m not about to dust off my trombone and hurry down to Lincoln Center for an audition—to play in any orchestra you need to be well prepared. Yet the question you might have—just what is going on with all these job openings?—tickled my brain cells too.
Just when you thought a good Le Carre spy novel was a thing of the past, we’ve got Russian spies again. Le Carre’s books never translated well into movies (e.g. The Spy Who Came In from the Cold)—they were tales focused on the dark inner workings of the U.S. versus U.S.S.R. spy networks, more character-driven than action-driven. Sure, movies were made (I liked The Russia House best), but they weren’t blockbusters. Compare his tales to Ludlum’s, if you will, where there was plenty of action that translates well to the screen when you allow Hollywood to modernize the plot (and change it beyond recognition as in the Bourne trilogy).
Yet, here we are, smack in the middle of a real life Le Carre novel with a lot of Boris and Natasha thrown in for good measure. To summarize the characters so far: there are the Murphys, Richard and Cynthia, of Montclair, NJ; there are Vicky Pelaez and Juan Lazaro of Yonkers, NY; Michael Zottoli and Patricia Mills of Arlington, VA; Donald Heathfield and Tracey Lee Ann Foley of Cambridge, MA; Anna Chapman of NYC; Mikhail Semenko and Christopher Metsos of who knows where. Metsos is the Boris-like fellow and was apprehended in Cyprus on his way to Budapest; he may be the paymaster. Chapman is the Natasha-like bomb shell that moved around the NYC night club circuit. At least the first two couples have kids that say they had no idea their parents were spies and neighbors of the various couples are dumbfounded.
The question for the day: How can all those (fill in the blank) be so fanatical in their thinking? Your cultural upbringing and/or emotional reaction to current events will often determine what you fill in the blank with at any given time. This is human nature. Some will fill in the blank with “Muslims.” Others might fill it in with “Jews” or “Zionists.” The advantage of the internet is no matter how much you want to, you won’t be able to throw stones at me. (I suppose you might try to spam me but there are filters for spam.) So let me first go out on a limb and fill in the blank with “Christians.”
Three recent cases in the news struck me as disturbing since they point to the most insidious danger represented by our anti-terrorism efforts: Our willingness to give up our own freedoms to combat jihadist fruitcakes. This gray issue of how much surveillance and protection is enough dominates much of the moral ambiguity portrayed in my two novels Full Medical and Soldiers of God and, to some extent, The Midas Bomb. People often don’t give it a second thought and that worries me too.
There is a growing xenophobic sentiment in this country. It feeds on the bitterness and desperation of people without jobs. It eats at the soul of those that are forced to choose between feeding their families and paying their mortgages for houses that no longer have any market value. It passes like wildfire through those weeds among us that think government and especially Mr. Obama are out to get them. Or it justifies the hate of people that are just plain nuts.
When President Obama’s administration and the Congress finally take up immigration reform, I’m worried that this sentiment will define the debate. Cooler heads will not prevail and we will pass legislation that reforms the immigration laws in a way that is bad for this country. It will make a mockery of what’s printed on the Statue of Liberty.
You are currently browsing the archives for the Immigration category.
