There is considerable debate over immigration in the U.S.
Conservatives would have no illegal immigration, and are resoundingly shouted
down as bigots and historically ignorant. After all, the United States of America
was founded by European immigrants who settled it without permission of the locals,
and often with bloodshed. If you aren’t related to Sitting Bull or Red Cloud,
you should shut up about this topic.
Yet this critique misses a fundamental American point. Reconsider
the indigenous peoples, those pre-American Americans, those
absolutely-not-Indians. They did not start on this continent, nor even in this
hemisphere. Humans evolved in Africa and
spread outward over the course of millions of years. Even the Native Americans
immigrated here, without permission.
Without permission from whom, you ask?
From Nature. You can tell nature didn’t want them here because
as soon as it realized what was happening, it melted or tectonically shifted
their land-bridges away, preventing any further immigration for centuries. As
for those who remained on her shores? What
was Mother Nature’s immigration policy?
The mountain lion.
Or, consider the rattlesnake.
Or, consider the Grand Canyon,
a 277-mile long drop into certain death.
Or, consider the winters so abominable they were worse than
our Global Warming ones, and these natives didn’t even screw with the
environment to cause them.
Nature has a long history of telling humans to get the fuck
out. You think anti-Irish Immigrant sentiment was bad in the 1920’s? Consider
that the incoming hunter/gatherer immigrants travelled all the way from Canada to Argentina, on foot, just looking
for food. Nowadays you can barely muster the willpower to go to the fridge for
another beer.
The modern disparity is because the modern world, and America
in particular, has recognized that Mother Nature is an abusive drunk that should be respected. That fridge
runs on power that is killing her, and uses the power to refrigerate artificial
chemicals in the beer that is killing you. We have surpassed our creators by
killing both them and us, and one hopes will one day fulfill the dream of
deporting everyone from this mortal coil.
I think the old margarine commercial said it best: "You can't fool [with] Mother Nature."
ReplyDeletea murder/suicide?
ReplyDeleteInteresting. Mother Nature is the conservatives conservative. She should go for the extremist vote.
ReplyDeleteThis is a good argument for The Happening... might have made that movie slightly more watchable, at least.
ReplyDelete