by Madeleine KandoI like to write because it beats talking to myself in my head all the time. And it’s always nicer to think that someone out there is reading your writing. I mean: I could write a diary like I used to when I was a young girl. But then no one would read it. My twin sister and I used to hide our diaries so that we wouldn’t know each other’s secrets. The trick was to pretend that you hadn’t read each other’s diaries, but of course you knew every little detail. But now my twin sister is far too busy to be interested in my thoughts. I am lucky if my little dog Max watches my moving fingers on the keyboard as I type. I have this fantasy that one day, after I am dead and gone my children will find my writing in a dusty box by accident. ‘Oh, my God’ they would exclaim with regret, ‘Look at all the stuff mom wrote. I had nooo idea.’ That’s a fantasy of mine, to be discovered posthumously. After I have turned to dust. Then I’ll show them how smart I was, how interesting. They will posthumously bemoan the fact that they never read my brilliant essays.
So, yes, I post my brilliant essays on this blog. Of course it’s a bit cowardly because I don’t know who will read my stuff. If they like it, that’s good. And if they don’t like it? Well, I don’t know who it is that doesn’t like it. So it’s a cowardly way of escaping criticism, isn’t it.
But enough said about my motives for writing. I am getting dangerously close to one of those people who spend 90 minutes presenting a 3 mintue speech. What I really wanted to say is this:
I am from Europe. I am an immigrant. I came here as a young adult with so many dreams, so much hope. I came and conquered the promised land. Yes, every immigrant has that feeling. Even though this country has been ‘conquered’ a long time ago, as an individual immigrant, you are the first one to arrive. I was happy to be in a place where I could explore, invent myself, not conform.
But now, after all this time, I don’t know. I look back at the country that I left. Or to be more precise, the continent that I left and I am not so sure whether my immigration has actually improved my life.
I feel like someone from Marocco who moves to Holland because they cannot survive in their own country. They spend a lifetime there, raising a family, adapting to a new land, sacrificing their emotional ties to their own culture. And then, one day they discover that their own country is actually a lot better off economically, culturally and otherwise. So why on earth did they emigrate?
The bottom line is that I think America is in deep trouble. This vast and beautiful country is slowly turning into one of those third world countries that people used to leave to COME to America. I hope that most of you will see this analogy as an exaggeration of the facts. Or am I onto something? Is this country moving so far to the right that it has become inhospitable to the middle class, that we will start seeing a mass exodus to greener pastures?
Wouldn’t that be a shame. After all, nothing has changed since I came. The mountains, the prairies, the people are still the same. With a little common sense, we could go back to rebuilding a nation that is good for the average person, not just for the very lucky few.
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4 comments:
In the absence of readers' comments, I'll respond. Hopefully this doesn't mean that our blog is becoming inbred - just the two editors talking to each other...
Like you, Madeleine, I worry about the health of our adoptive country ALL THE TIME. There isn't a topic about which I think more often.
And I just returned from Europe 2 days ago, which is precisely when comparing the two sides of the Atlantic becomes even more inescapable.
However, I am not quite so down on America. Sure, the country has lost the unbelievable superiority and advantage it enjoyed when we were young.
Now, there are severe economic problems, but we share those with the rest of the world.
Also, there are still great things happening - an incredibly charismatic President; America rakes in half of all the Nobel Prizes; we have Michael Moore (haha), and so forth.
So is the glass half full or half empty? It depends on my mood. Right now, the glass still looks half full to me.
Sure, things could be a lot better. This country has to stop squandering itself by trying to protect the world. We have had two wars going for nearly a decade, but the government is contemplating several additional ones - Pakistan, Iran, who knows maybe Somalia...Nuts!
Notice: I said "protect," not "exploit." America is the first imperial power which practices imperialism in reverse: the colonies become rich, the mother country bleeds to death).
The population has to develop a sense of self-interest, and recognize the lies of the plutocrats and the kleptocrats.
But the country remains beautiful, often an inspiration to the world, and its people remain good. I have a lot of hope.
Maybe Holland has deteriorated a bit less ..., but Tom's comment is right about the half-filled glass of course. So keep on dreaming, and fighting, but choose your battle, and your arms, best wishes, Paul
1)“This vast and beautiful country is slowly turning into one of those third world countries that people used to leave to COME to America” – that’s because a) we’re letting too many of the third world into this vast and beautiful country and b) cultural relativism promotes the bogus idea that somehow this diversity is a strength.
2)“Is this country moving so far to the right that it has become inhospitable to the middle class” – you fail to realize that the social conservatives on the right ARE the middle class (the married parents, the home owners, the tax payers, the small business owners, the military)
Madeleine is correct to worry about the American middle class. Its relative size in the population has diminished severely, while most of the wealth is now in the hands of only 1% and more and more live below the poverty line. I researched this and found a graph of wealth distribution in the U.S. over the past 100 years. The middle class currently comprises the smallest percentage it ever has since the Gilded Age. By contrast, it was a very large percentage of the American population in the 50s, 60s and 70s. In the 80s, Reagan drastically reduced the income tax rate for the rich. Those rates have stayed extremely low compared to pre-Reagan years. Also, President Clinton didn't help our middle class by shipping manufacturing jobs overseas via NAFTA. Neither did GW Bush, who pandered to Big Oil, corporate lobbyists and other big monied interests. Under Reagan, Clinton and GW Bush, our government consistently weakened its regulations of banks, and continued to hand power to the corporations and away from the middle class. By objective standards (surveys from U.S. and other nations), American IS sinking: in education, health care, environmental protections, and pursuit of happiness. It's not just Madeleine's concerned opinion. These are conclusions drawn from statistically sound surveys.
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