Posted by
Steve Smith on
Jan 22, 2018; 6:32pm
URL: http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/Los-paises-de-mierda-le-dejan-millones-de-dolares-a-EE-UU-tp7591128p7591150.html
Cody -
As Vietnam and the related Conscription of young men approached
(like a freight train) in my teens, I seriously considered
self-exile from the US to avoid risking becoming yet another
trained/habituated killer (or more likely but not mutually
exclusively a PTSD-damaged Veteran for life). I have friends who
managed to serve during that time and become neither, but the risk
WAS significant.
I was living on the border of MX and spoke passable street Spanish
and felt I knew my way around in MX well enough to go there
(first). I had enough sense of idealism to believe that if I "fled"
this "service" I would be forfeiting my rights to citizenship and
should not plan to return as so many of my peers did. I was
honestly trying to face being a (voluntary) exile for life. It was
a useful thing to consider, and by a small measure could be
considered "forced exile" given the choices (conscription or
incarceration). They rescinded the requirement to sign up for
"selective service" 4 months before I turned 18, and active
conscription had not happened for at least a year by that time
(1974), so I "dodged that bullet". Many others here (a few years
my senior) had even more acute experiences of this time, either
serving in the military or using a variety of deferments
(educational most often) to put off their conscription long enough
for the war to end, I don't know if anyone here left the country or
gave up their citizenship or accepted "
conscientious objector "
status
It was confrontational to ask myself "who would WANT me, if I
rejected my country of origin?" I had no reason to believe any
other country would grant me citizenship, and at best would
"tolerate me", most likely by living under the radar as so many
Central American immigrants do here today. I did not feel that I
"deserved" the welcome haven Canada offered, for example... I felt
that while avoiding conscription was the "right" (only) thing for me
to do, that I deserved to serve some kind of penance in the shadow
of it. I felt somewhat like a political refugee.
While *I* was born and raised entirely in the US Southwest (AZ/NM) I
lived primarily among people who could claim significantly deeper
roots than I. Native Americans who could claim lineage back for
millenia, Navajo/Hispanics whose legacy nominally begins in the
1400s/1500s in this area, and in some cases (like Frank Wimberly),
Anglos whose grandparents were here. While my most recent European
immigrant ancestor was a single great-grandmother from Poland (mid
1800s), my parents moved west from KY after WWII.
As an adult, I have looked mildly at trying to emigrate to other
countries such as NZ/AU or Canada. Even when I was relatively
young (i.e. under 40) I did not feel that welcome there... on the
surface of it, I felt that they considered *any* immigrant to be a
potential burden. At 60, I have no illusions that any country
(especially with good socialized medicine) would want me to come and
burden them with my old age. There are always considerations
offered for people bringing acutely needed skills and/or big piles
of cash with them. Many third world countries DO offer permanent
resident visas for "pensioners", people who bring their retirement
savings/income to their countries and spend it there... and
similarly most countries accept people who can demonstrate their
resources and ability to start up a significant business there.
Gary Schlitz can probably illuminate us on this a bit better from
his vantage point in Ecuador.
We may have a few other such "expats" in the crowd, as well as a
number of folks from outside the US. I believe *most* of our
constituency here from outside the US is from Europe but at least a
handful from elsewhere. It feels like the EU "solved" many
problems with Nationalism by adopting a common currency and lowering
their borders to work and trade, but are now suffering some of the
dark side of it in exchange.
As we continue to "automate" our labor, including many skills
formerly held to require humans (will machine-learning/AI deprecate
programmers in your lifetime?), it is more and more likely that many
of us will have no obvious skills to offer and will rely on the
collective to agree to provide access to goods and services as a
"basic right".
Even if we are not "deported" from our own homelands, we may be
"deprecated" if we do not work hard to shape our society around this
new reality. The Industrial Revolution caused quite a stir, and
folks like the Luddites saw the writing on the wall of losing their
livelihoods (
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luddite ). Dystopian
futures such as Soylent Green caution us against building a future
where *most* humans are irrelevant and best considered a burden on
the few who are not.
This alone is good enough reason (to me) to fight against the
xenophobic, nationalistic forces afoot today who want to declare
*some humans* to be too irrelevant to be more than a burden.
Unfortunately we also need to help shape a vision for a society
which acknowledges this shift in how humans can (and should or
must?) participate in the larger experience... it isn't enough to
demand "our rights". While I do agree with the
realities/likelihood/undesirability of some of the dystopian images
that Conservatives and Libertarians caste of "nanny states" and
"welfare states", I don't agree with their implied "solutions"...
I believe that humans are evolved to need meaningful engagement in
their lives, and the futures we are creating take that away from
most if not all, either through poverty or through "bread and
circuses".
I fear that most of those who support(ed?) Donald Trump's ascendency
do not realize that the future(s) he offers are MUCH more dystopian
for them and their progeny than that offered by the dreaded
"Socialists" (Bernie) and "Bleeding Heart/Tax-Spend/Globalist
Liberals" (Hillary) and "Crunchy Granola Greens" (Jill). If the
"elitism" of being educated scares them, the "elitism" of
controlling the *only* means of production/survival of controlling
massive wealth should scare them much more. In my opinion FWIW.
- Steve
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