The Immigration Obfuscation III

Two reasons proffered for immigration policy are Political Asylum and Diversity.  Political Asylum carries along with it the assumption that our system of government is better than the immigrant's county of origin and that the act of immigration will benefit the individual emigrating and the political situation from which they emigrated.  No regime has been overthrown through granting political asylum to a rebel.  Corrupt regimes usually fall under the weight of avarice, corruption, and the difficulty in keeping any sizable population of human beings under control.  The rebel is best served by remaining in country to continue the fight or become a martyr, which is universally regarded as a great motivator for change unless your the one being martyred.

Diversity is another Doublespeak word that has lost all meaning.  It is certainly beneficial to consider that all cultures to have some valuable contributions to the human condition.  All cultures are not created equal.  Some still hold on to the concept of Royalty or automatically consider some lifestyles, religions, or gender to be illegal.  We don't have to import diversity.  It already comes over in the form of media and commerce.  We are hardly doing that anyway.  Most of the immigration is from Mexico and China.  And there is no certainty that the immigration will add value to our culture.  In a democracy, it is actually nice to have a common language, culture and ideals.  Intellectual curiosity about other cultures is  a good thing as long as it carries with it the ability to discern the beneficial from the detrimental.   It is not necessary to bring in concepts via human beings.  

The Immigration Obfuscation II

Part II

The United States, being a sovereign nation, can decide who is allowed to immigrate.  The current debate, however is focused on immigrant rights.  Which means that the 10-15 million who are here illegally, have an inherent right to stay here, work here, and become citizens.  Which is nonsense.  And no, I am not racist because Mexican or Guatemalan or Chinese  is not a race but a nationality.  Because the United States has the right to determine who enters the country legally and what that status entails, we should decide what immigration policy is best for the United States.  We don't need to populate the continent anymore.  Cheap labor is a misnomer due to costs beyond wages for supporting an underclass.  We should be investing in automated agriculture, not using human beings instead of machines.  We do need nurses, doctors, engineers, mathematicians, and lawyers (kidding on the last one).  We should have an immigration policy that brings in the best and brightest in these fields.  That's it, immigration policy should serve the personnel needs of the country.  We don't need to provide political haven or increase diversity, which I will discuss tomorrow.  

The Immigration Obfuscation

Part I

The Senate has passed immigration reform.  Before all blathering and joy and despondence, I will take a look at the truth about immigration.  This may take more than a few blogs.  First, we are a nation of immigrants, that and seventy five cents will get you a doughnut.  Immigration policy from when sea pirates started to decimate the indigenous population of North America was designed to grab the land by filling it with Europeans.  That policy continued into the early twentieth century to populate the country and continued  after every square inch  the territory of the United States had been legally acquired by individuals or the government.  There has been little change in immigration policy even though we have plenty of people.  The politicians and the business leaders who own them apparently think we still do not have enough people.  I won't go into the minutia of the immigration laws sufficing to say that they define the word "incoherent".  Patched together to meet various interest group needs, lightly enforced, and mostly detrimental to goals of a rational immigration policy.  See part II.   

Perception is not Reality

In live in California, and for about nine years will continue to do so until I can retire.  At that time, I will leave vapor trails due to my hasty exit.  (That was a metaphor)  The main reason  is that Jerry Brown in his State of the State address declared that "California did the impossible" by meeting this year's obligations.  I am overcome by nausea by his hyperbole.  But he is a politician and while I understand that he is without remorse in regaling the masses with such mythical statements, I cannot just let it slide.  Firstly, anyone who uses impossible and  modifies it with the word did in the same sentence does not  understand the meaning of either.  Secondly, California is no where near being out of debt save for raising taxes and challenging New York for the highest tax rate in the nation.  We simply did not have a tragic year like the last 5.  The looming retirement, social, health, and infrastructure costs will keep California in perpetual debt.  But that's OK, Jerry says we have done the impossible.  Pass the Cool-Aid and start spending.  

Inauguration; i.e. Coronation

The spectacle that was the inauguration was a glaring, albeit unnoticed example of the reason we are in decline as a society.  Obama was hired, not consecrated.  He now has a job which we pay him to do.  All of the nonsense and all of the rhetoric of the inauguration day served only to entertain the masses and suggest that Obama is anything but a man hired to do a job.  The masses love doing this.  They love taking someone with one set of talents and endowing them with god-like attributes.  They do it for sports heroes, pop stars, actors, and politicians.  The True Believers lie salivating at the altar of the cult of personality: They love Big Brother.     

Decline of Infrastructure

One of the most distressing effects of the government debt is the effect it is having on infrastructure.  I counted 47 potholes on my 7 mile drive to work today.  The money from gasoline tax, car tax, and commercial trucking fees designed to keep roadways gets diverted in California to pay for loans and government worker salaries, healthcare, and retirement.  The lack of money leads to less maintenance which leads to road decay which is patched rather than fixed and leads to more repairs down the road.  Down the road should be the state motto for California because none of the fiscal calamities sure to come are being addressed at this time.  They are pushed down the road with temporary fixes now.  We will pay eventually.  I pay now with higher maintenance and a shorter life for my vehicle because I hit potholes and cracks when I drive.  When the levee system in Northern California fails for lack of maintenance and improvements, we will fix them by going further in debt, to be paid down the road, hopefully by another generation, hopefully wiser. 

Ominous

spengler
"What luck for rulers that men do not think".  - Adolf Hitler
This quote I came across today has an ominous feel to it.  I hate to bring Hitler or Nazi into any discussion because of the voluminous popular culture nonsense on both subjects have obscured any actual historical reference.  But Hitler, if anything else, was a master propagandist whose words more than actions motivated a nation into insanity.  It was his ability to make men feel and act rather than think and act that gave him the opportunity to invent the Third Reich.  Today, the same quote resonates, but I would alter it slightly.  "What luck for rulers than men cannot think."  There is more propaganda (advertisement)  than at any time in our history and the issues we face are more complex.  The salivating masses are, while more literate than in Hitlers time, are less inclined and less capable of analytic thought.  A good thing for the ruling class.

Persuasion

When my wife and I take trips, we have a perpetual joke that we use to amuse ourselves on long drives.  The temperature indicator on our vehicle is fairly prominent, and while driving my wife will remark on either the unusual heat or cold outside.  I always drive and by the time I can divert my attention to the temperature, it will very often have moved up or down one degree.  The joke is that I will tell my wife that she is wrong and state the current temperature.  She now finds this behavior humorous.  I have to go through life not with approximations, but with a certain exactness because the rest of the world is so inexact.  Language itself is an approximation and while some of that ambiguity is harmless, most of it is not.  It is persuasion and it is the very essence of our society.  Politicians speak partial truths, advertisements bombard us with misleading imagery and verbiage, and our co-workers and friends use the ambiguity of language to persuade us against using our own intellect and empirical evidence as our means of discerning reality.  Words are not reality.  In this case they are black lines on a field of white.  Vigilance to the truth defined through empirical evidence is our only defense against persuasion.  

The Salivating Masses

Writing last time about the student athlete misnomer, I was not suggesting that there was a solution to the problem or that people were even aware there was a problem.  Americans love to be entertained.  To the determent of public discourse or intellectual curiosity.  Americans are largely innumerate, only vaguely grasp the scientific method, and unable to make discerning choices in regards to their lives.  A terrible thing in a democracy.  

Student Athletics Misnomer

With the end of the college football season, it is time to evaluate the concept of the student-athlete.  The concept is barely recognizable from the pre-entertainment era.  The University is an intellectual enterprise, not a commercial one, in principal.  All student-athletes should be qualified to be at the university, take the necessary coursework for their major, and graduate with a degree.  Some do, many do not.  They are admitted and their education paid for in expectation of their entertainment value. The institutions of higher learning have been corrupted by the money available from the entertainment provided by so-called students. It is a pretense and a farce to suggest that schools have the same standards for athletes and non-athletes.  Professional sports should take the responsibility for generating players, and colleges should educate young minds.  Athletes we have plenty of, intellectuals are in short supply.  

Title Game

This blog is dedicated to the truth, and the truth of the matter is that the College football game tonight is entirely for entertainment purposes only.  If it were not played, we would find our entertainment elsewhere.  People in the United States are both easily entertained and have ample entertainment resources available to us.  It is important to distinguish entertainment from real world concerns, which we have a hard time doing.  If Notre Dame loses tonight I will only be temporarily devastated and if they win, I will be temporarily elated.   That is the nature of entertainment.  The students of Notre Dame and Alabama will not have their GPA's increased or decremented based on the game.  The fans will not receive a raise if their team wins, nor will the government become fiscally responsible at the game's conclusion.  We over-value and misunderstand the nature of entertainment because it is internalized by our brains as though we were playing the game.  The emotions are real, but the effects are what we make of them, to out detriment.   

Fiscal Cliff and DoubleSpeak

The media has been pounding home the message of a fiscal cliff arriving January first.  No such cliff because it didn't exist.  The politicians put it off for two months and will soon vote to increase the debt ceiling.  There was no finality, no penultimate event.  They make up the rules as they go along and the blathering fourth estate comes up with these ridiculous non-sequiturs to sell commercials.  Here is the reality:  We are in a perpetual cycle of increasing debt that will never be resolved because the voters are selfish and ignorant.  The debt crisis will simply be renamed and repackaged ad infinitum  until the country defaults on its obligations and human voices wake us, and we drown.