doesn't mean it's understood

Do you hate traffic jams? Sure, we all do!

But did you know that congested highways are just one symptom of a larger problem?

Now while some would blame overdevelopment and poor civic planning, the willingness of health care providers to boost profits at the expense of patients, and the widespread reluctance to invest in public transportation and infrastructure, others see a different cause...

Yep, overpopulation is the problem, but lest one misconstrue this as advocacy of a pro-choice, pro-contraception platform, some clarification is in order...

It's not a question of too many people, but of too many of the wrong type of people. While it would be gauche to state outright the definition of such, there's a reason the Pew Hispanic Research Center is cited in the body of the text, and not relegated to an asterisked footnote like the other data cited was.

These veiled words of caution came courtesy of the following coalition....

...consisting of various interrelated "astroturf" organizations and a publishing house (whose biggest claim to fame is releasing an English-language edition of this charming piece of psuedo-literary agitprop), most of which are linked to this bunch of fun lovin' folks.

Interestly enough, this attempt to put a more socially and environmentally palatable face on nativism and xenophobia ran in the June 23, 2008 edition of The Nation, the venerable progressive periodical which claims to be "a wholly owned subsidiary of [its] own conscience." I guess the question is "at what point does the need for advertising revenue override moral integrity?" Especially when one considers that this isn't the first time the publication has cut such a deal.

The Specials - Doesn't Make It Alright (from The Specials, 1979) - At least I can depend on these purveyors of fine two-tone not to disappoint.

is it really so strange

On the heels of Mitt Romney's and Rudy Giuliani's ugly "more nativist than thou" showdown comes this news article (pointed out to me by pal Dorian) where the Prince of Morose Pop channels the spirit of Enoch Powell. I'd point out the quasi-hypocrisy of a child of immigrants bitching about immigration, but it's a fairly common phenomenon.

"They come over here and don't bother to learn the language or culture!"

"Oh, you mean like your great-gran, who has picked up maybe a dozen words of English since she stepped off the boat from Palermo seventy years ago?"

"Well that's different."

The unspoken difference being that the current wave of immigrants has a different skin tone than their predecessors who left their native lands in search of a better life. Just like draconian welfare reform and urban policing policies, just like the notion of the "sanctity of traditional marriage," the immigration debate is just another means of dollying up old school bigotry with euphemistic policy-speak. (I don't recommend this, but try reading the comments on any immigration-related news article or commentary for a first-hand glimpse at the twisted pathologies at work in the anti-immigration crowd.)

The same people who argue about the diversion of tax revenue and educational funds toward services for undocumenteds and their families tend to have acute myopia over the trillions of dollars being pissed away in the quixotic efforts to bring "democracy" to the Middle East. Meanwhile, the punitive approach toward dealing with immigration involves all sorts of cash-intensive and ludicrous schemes with the net effect of exacerbating the problem by creating a permanentally marginalized shadow population. Hey, but it plays well to the lumpen-ignoramuses, and that's what really matters. Plus, becoming a permanent problem means that it can also be a reliable means to rally support for decades to come!

The whining about cultural integrity is obnoxious in the extreme. The bottom line is that things change, with or without an influx of the foreign-born. The North Woburn I grew up in is gone, as is the Woburn High I attended, and so are most of the places I hung out in during my college and immediate-post college years. That the local convenience store I'm a regular at is now run by South Asians doesn't bother me one bit. (Davis and Central Squares going unrecognizably yuppified and upscale? That's another matter.)

If one's sense of identity -- cultural, social, or national -- is so fragile that it can't bear the presence of new accents, new sounds, new cuisines, then it wasn't worth having in the first place. If the new is that threatening and unbearable, the problem isn't with them, however you define the other, the problem is with you.

(It's not like the situation Moz is whining about is anything new. Colin MacInnes documented it in his "London" novels fifty years ago. Elements of it weave through the early UK punk scene Morrissey sprung out of. Christopher Priest wrote of an England overrun by non-natives in the disturbing 1973 sci-fi novel Fugue for a Darkening Island.)

Oh well, Moz. Maybe your fan David Cameron and his cronies will take power in a couple years, and restore the Thatcherite paradise you seem to miss so much.

Dread Zeppelin - Immigrant Song (from Un-Led-Ed, 1990) - Oooh-ahhh-ah-AH! I really don't hear the "reggae" part of the "reggae Led Zeppelin cover band fronted by an Elvis impersonator" conceit here. I recall them being pretty hot stuff for a while back in the early 1990's, though the buzz turned out to be very short-lived.

Manic Hispanic - Get Them Immigrated (from The Recline of Mexican Civilization, 2001) - A topical revision (and vast improvement) of Offspring's "Come Out and Play," courtesy of Orange County's tongue-in-cheek Latino punk supergroup. Blast it at the next neighborhood meeting of the Minutemen. Or not. Racist yokels with guns and poor senses of humor can be unpredictable.

it’s not about my politics

How desperate for ad revenue does the self-proclaimed “flagship of the left” have to be in order to run this ad on the back cover of the May 17, 2007 issue? I’ve been reading The Nation on a regular basis for over a decade now, and I thought I had gotten used to the eccentricities of their usual gang of advertisers: the classified ads for progressive dating services or pamphlets definitively disproving the existence of a higher power, full-page spreads hawking the latest Bose’s latest compact sound system or “the accumulated sum of Western knowledge/philosophy/literature” on tape, even the non-compromising rants from FLAME (which the editors later apologized for running). The magazine even ran a couple of ads for the Fox News Channel on their back cover a few years back, which could been taken as a case of taking the money and running or a breach of principles born of financial urgency, depending on one’s mood.

Magazine publishing is a tricky business these days, especially when the purpose of the publication is to take to task the same entities (big oil, big pharma, defense contractors, the automotive industry) who help prop up more mainstream magazines via advertising revenue. So I’m usually willing to cut The Nation some slack when it comes to their ad clients.

The ad in the above link, though? That’s just inexcusable. For the record, the spokesperson for the Coalition for the Future American Worker is part of a network of questionably “grass roots” immigration reduction organizations with some rather unsettling ideologies in play, according to this report by the Southern Poverty Law Center. Cute, eh?

It’s no surprise. The anti-immigration movement is predicated on a sanctioned racist subtext in much the same fashion as the “Defense of Marriage” movement draws support from not-so-thinly-veiled homophobic sentiments. The issues surrounding illegal immigration are many and varied, and interwoven within larger economic, social, and political questions, but an opportunity to scapegoat “the other” will trump nuanced debate every time. Border fences, “English only” laws, and other manifestation of the persecutorial impulse are viscerally “sexy.” Drug War-styled forfeiture of asset laws, with no wiggle room for plausible deniability (i.e. subcontracting through straw bosses), targeted at American firms who profit from the influx of illegals? Not so much. (Not that I endorse such a plan. I’m merely positing a more holistic policy than the typical “let’s crack some skulls” approach.)

It’s all just pandering, anyhow, part of the Grand Distraction policy of the moneyed interests, playing up to social conservative bugaboos to keep a grip on reins of power, secure in the knowledge that no one will notice their ongoing smash-and-grab-athon. Does anyone think for a minute that should the flow of immigrants to the country stop, these people would start offering living wages or reinvesting in impoverished communities? The old rules of wages based on available labor versus demand don’t apply in the freewheeling realm of modern global capitalism. For the jobs that can’t be outsourced, there’s always the zero sum rule of pay rates versus warm bodies to keep the profit margins nice and healthy. It’s easier to ignore disgruntled customers than jittery stockholders, after all.

But hey, there’s an election coming up next year, and with the Democrats undergoing a tentative resurgence, buoyed by high levels of support from African-American and Latino voters, a wrench tossed into the party’s traditionally fractious coalition could work wonders. It infuriates me that The Nation, for whatever reason, made the decision to aid and abet this disgusting little sideshow. I know, based on the FLAME response that The Nation sees it as a free speech issue, but it's hardly "free" when money changes hands. I wouldn't be as bothered by a letter to the editor or opinion piece uttering similar statements (though I would grit my teeth and shake my head, as I did with Alexander Cockburn's recent pooh-poohing of the human causes of global warming), but I'm less charitable where commercial considerations are involved.

Hüsker Dü – Divide and Conquer (from Flip Your Wig, 1985) – I know I posted a Dü track not that long ago, but it was just too perfect for today’s topic to pass up.

Depeche Mode – People Are People (from Some Great Reward, 1984) – I can’t listen to this song without remembering my wife getting misty-eyed while watching the video for it right after 9/11.

Brian Ferry – Let’s Stick Together (from Let’s Stick Together, 1976) – At least until we can wrest the Oval Office from the Republican assholes, ok? Then what passes for the left wing in America can get back to the customary infighting and pointless bickering with my blessing.