Right up until spending money became free speech and the highest expression of our ideals, esp. when used to buy someone off. Or buy up all the local media so you can monopolize each & every bully pulpit in all the small & midsized cities and far-out rural reaches across the USA.
Perhaps in some circles .. certainly they could immigrate in limited numbers (so white to some lesser degree unlike Asians & Africans). But they were also described as belonging to “inferior races” or “stock” & worse. Proving “whiteness” too became a thing—tragically at the expense of BIPOC.
Dear old Schumer plugged the idea to Harris of focusing on burbs and paying less heed to working people (don’t want to lose those neoliberal ideals or billionaire donations) — and here we are. In hell. But (hopefully!!) about to shove Mamdani in his face.
A century ago Southern Europeans esp. Italians, Eastern Europeans, Asians — none were considered “white” .. a designation that has no ethnic, biological or other kind of validity outside of serving as a card to get out of jail, pass go and collect $200.
I have students who wouldn’t take college’s free lunches/groceries because they thought they’d be “taking food away from the poor” — only I can attest by anyone else’s measure they more than qualified. Such a poor word, poor.
In 1990s I loved nyc summers when rich hightailed to E Hampton, car traffic cleared out & sound of congas filled the parks. Heat, humidity, no a/c? I’d tell myself I lived on an island, then catch a double feature at old St Marks theater. Ignore retirees crinkling their plastic bags (it was a thing)
Sorry .. tens of thousands showed up for rallies. Not a tiny bubble & not out of touch. Those addressing healthcare, monopoly corruption, loss of opportunity, racism etc have the right platform. Headless chickens run around saying Dems don’t know what to do — they do but don’t wannna.
See, there is a wee unbreachable chasm between being a communist and a jihadist, as the two positions are antithetical to each other. ‘Religion is the enemy of the people’ anyone? But Cruz is recycling a soddy bit of agitprop lobbed by astroturfers against Obama back when.
The collection of talent laid off is mind boggling. That it is driven by desire to appease racists is mind numbing. So - best revenge - what does it take to start something fresh. In your face DEI. The Mamdani of news & culture pubs?
Just last night after 2am doom-scrolling, he shows up .. incoherent, pasty faced, rotund and oratorial, but very drunk, as well as unsure on his feet — still groping women in the aisle (did I mention this was a train car with open-ended compartments? And a dream?)
Hard to separate .. immigrant = stranger = other. “Race” is a colonial invention grafted onto same — as well as idea that the mythic nation defines itself by what it is not. Constructs like Blut und boden, jus solis/sanguinis impose distinctions based on imaginary ties of blood or land rootedness.
They knew it was wrong, made their devil’s pact yet wrote a Constitution that guaranteed all ‘men’ unalienable rights. They also believed slavery would die of eventual disuse, vanish of its own accord. Instead it festered & sickened the nation .. morally & economically. And its end took a war.
