So Ye Have Done It to Me

 Mike Johnson became the 59th Speaker of the House on October 25, 2023.
When questioned as to his world view, Mr. Johnson commented that all one needed to do to understand him was to read the Bible.
I hope he was referring to the New Testament, and not the Old.
The New Testament contains less contradictions on what constitutes good behavior.

It’s always interested me that the Bible says many contrary things, but people still use the Bible to prove their points, ignoring the conflicting material.

In the American South of the 1800’s, Protestant ministers (and Roman Catholic priests) used passages from the Old Testament to justify slavery.
They quoted Ephesians 6:1: “Slaves, obey your earthly masters.”
However, they ignored Exodus 21:16, about putting one to death who “stealeth a man and selleth him.”

Oxford student Lord Fancourt Babberley (Jack Benny) dresses up as Charley Wyckham’s aunt, and accepts a kiss from Miss d’Alvadorez (Kay Francis), in 1941’s Charley’s Aunt—a slapstick comedy in which the joke is men wearing women’s clothing.
(The Brandon Thomas play was originally performed in 1892.)

Although Jesus famously said that clothing is unimportant (and to look at the lilies of the field), there are sartorial proscriptions in the Old Testament.
These include: not wearing a “garment mingled of linen and woolen” (Leviticus 19:19 and Deuteronomy 22:11); not wearing the apparel of the other sex (Deuteronomy: 22:5) and not trimming hair in a round shape (Leviticus 19:27). 

The Old Testament contains various dietary rules that have long been ignored by European and American Bible-readers.
According to Leviticus 11:3-7, people shouldn’t eat the meat of camels, hares, or swine.
Leviticus 11:10 says not to eat shellfish.
Yet, pork is a common protein, and mussels have been sold as a street food in cities (like London) since the 1600’s.

Carl (Rod Steiger) in a poster for 1969’s The Illustrated Man.

According to a 2023 Pew study, 32% of Americans have at least one tattoo, ignoring Leviticus 19:28 which bars printing any “marks upon you.”

Leviticus 18:22 says “thou shalt not lie with mankind as with womankind.”
However, Leviticus 18:19 also forbids sex during menstruation; “pulling out” and not completing the sex act (Genesis 38:9); and not immediately cleaning up semen stains (Leviticus 15:2-13). 

Indeed, Leviticus proscribes many behaviors, but gives little information on which actions are worse: putting “a stumbling block before the blind” (Leviticus 19:14); going “up and down as a talebearer among the people” (Leviticus 19:16); or “seeking after wizards” (Leviticus 19:31 and 20:20).

The one issue that the Bible seems very firm on, in both the Old and New Testaments, is treating strangers well.
In Leviticus 19:33-34, the reader is told to not vex strangers, and “love them as thyself.”
In Matthew 25: 40, the Bible says “as ye have done it unto the least of my brethren, ye have done it to me.”
How does this square with declaring the U.S. is closed, and Governor Abbott setting up a 1,000-foot floating barrier in the Rio Grande River?

A political pin honoring Elizabeth Cady Stanton.

E.C.S. and her husband (Henry Brewster Stanton) had seven children.

Their 47-year marriage lasted until his death.

Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815-1902) was a leader in the U.S. Women’s Rights movement.
She was both a devout Christian, and a rationalist.
During her long life, she corresponded with various Protestant ministers: among them, Reverend Theodore Parker (an American minister, who believed that the Bible needn’t be taken literally) and Bishop John William Colenso (a Cornish cleric who preached that the customs of one society shouldn’t be imposed on all societies).

Eventually, she put together a committee and published The Women’s Bible,* when she was 80 years old.
One fact that E.C.S. points out in this work is that the punishments against women in the Bible are frequently much worse than the punishments against men.
(For example, a woman may be scourged, but a man just pays a fine, for the same sin.)
As E.C.S. comments on Numbers 12: “As women are supposed to have no character or sacred office, it is always safe to punish them to the full extent of the law.”

The Women’s Bible focuses on the many contradictions in the Bible.
A table on page 18 points out the two contrary descriptions of the creation in Genesis (the Elohistic and the Iahoistic), asking how both can be literally true.
Was land created after water, or before?
Were man and woman created at the same time, or was woman created after vegetation and animals? Which order was it?

German poster of 1949’s Samson and Delilah, which featured Victor Mature and Hedy Lamarr in the title roles.

Clara B. Neyman commented on Judges (in The Woman’s Bible), that: “The absence of moral traits is very evident in Samson, and this is the reason why he fell easy prey to the wiles of designing women.
One of the great charms of The Woman’s Bible is its’ sarcastic humor.
(Although there were more than 30 co-authors, two-thirds of book is by E.C.S.)

Poster for 1966’s The Bible: In the Beginning.

When God talks to Noah in this film, the Director (John Huston) played both parts.

Commenting of the story of Noah’s Ark in Genesis, E.C.S. says “the ark made by unseen hands, like a piece of Indian rubber, was capable of expanding indefinitely.”

Of course, there was an immediate outcry against The Women’s Bible, and this outcry effectively ended E.C.S.’s leadership in the Suffrage movement.
However, E.C.S. believed until the end of her days that although the Bible contained many redeeming passages, it was essentially made up of “‘religious superstitions’ which. . . perpetuated women’s bondage.”
As a mother of the Women’s Rights movement, she felt she needed to fight against a literal reading of the Old Testament for the ultimate good of “her girls,” that is, women.

*The Original Feminist Attack on the Bible (The Women’s Bible), by Elizabeth Cady Stanton, with an introduction by Barbara Welter, 1974, Arno Press.

Reframing Our Relationship to Life

Ismael (Richard Basehart) and Queequeg (Friedrich von Ledebur) in the 1956 film version of Moby Dick. “Heathen” Queequeg represented the goodness that Christianity preaches, but seldom obeys in practice.

Moby Dick, by Herman Melville (1851), is arguably one of the greatest works in literature, and the subject of many critical studies.
One of the clearest interpretations* I’ve found is that Captain Ahab represents the will to dominate the world (above all other considerations), while the white whale represents unpredictable Life.

Captain Ahab (Gregory Peck) dies plunging his harpoon into the white whale. Ahab didn’t care about his ship staying sound or the lives of his crew; he only desires revenge. (Does this remind you of a presidential candidate whose name begins with a T?)

Stories in which the creatures of the ocean fight back against humanity are also found among the first science-fiction tales.
In 1870, French author Jules Verne (1828-1905) wrote Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, in which giant squid capsize ships.

1912 book cover of Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea.

H.G. Wells (1866-1946) wrote the short story “The Sea-Raiders” (1896), about large predatory squid that creep ashore to devour human beings.
In 1936, Karel Čapek (1890-1938) wrote War with the Newts, a novel about intelligent salamanders who win primacy over the earth.
The Kraken Wakes, by John Wyndham (1953), is the story of entities from beneath the oceans attacking coastal towns, eliminating the glaciers, and sinking vessels.
In Frank Schätzing’s The Swarm (2015), a team of marine biologists are able to communicate with an amoeba-like intelligence that is attacking humankind, and has lived in the oceans for millions of years.
This memorandum compares the last three novels in the above list.

Book cover of Karel Čapek’s War with the Newts.

War with the Newts begins with a Czech seaman Van Toch “discovering” intelligent newts off the coast of Sumatra.
Captain Van Toch finds that the nearly human-sized black salamanders are “teachable” and willing to bring him precious pearls in exchange for human-made tools.
He travels back to Czechia to persuade a businessman (Mr. Bondy) to fund money-making schemes that use the newts.
For the first few years, their company just uses the newts to gather pearls.
(However, that industry merely reaps a 30% profit.)
Unsatisfied with those numbers, the company begins to use the newts for elaborate hydro-engineering projects.
During the next few years, humans become ever more dependent on the newts: as a free labor source, and as consumers for human goods.

Book cover of The Kraken Wakes by John Wyndham.

Wyndham’s The Kraken Wakes is told from the viewpoint of a married couple (Phyllis and Mike Watson) who are science writers for a British competitor to the BBC.
Another main character is a scientist named Alastair Bocker.
At first, Dr. Bocker believes that humankind can coexist with the beings from the deep, but he later realizes that war is necessary.
The mysterious entities begin to sink ships, and the observation chambers sent to investigate them.
Then, they send gigantic jellyfish-like beings to carry off humans, injuring those that they don’t absorb.
Eventually, the creatures melt the icecaps causing the sea level to rise, so that the earth population is reduced by at least four-fifths.

Original German book cover of Frank Schätzing’s Der Schwarm.

In Frank Schätzing’s The Swarm, marine biologists gradually begin to understand that attacks by sea creatures, worms that destabilize the continental shelf, lobsters that spread poison, and swarms of white eyeless crabs are all a connected strategy.
They’re able to communicate with the amoeba-like creatures (controlled by a collective intelligence, the Yrr) that attacked humanity.
The novel concludes with a seeming truce between humankind and the newly-discovered marine life-form.

Čapek’s War with the Newts deals with humanity becoming dependent on sentient beings that it considers “inferior.”
However, the “subservient” amphibians become the primary power on the planet, as they remake the globe to match their own needs.
In The Kraken Wakes, an intelligence comes from the stars, and proceeds to remolding the earth as its’ new watery habitat.
(In both novels, the battle isn’t so much a war against humankind, as gentrification.)
In The Swarm, the goal of the “hive mind” may be to increase ocean area, but its’ other goal is likely to stop humanity from harming the ocean ecosystems. 

Book cover of Out of the Deeps, the American (heavily-edited and shortened by one chapter) version of The Kraken Wakes.

Motivations aside, the actions of the creatures are similar.
The newts create earthquakes which result in tidal waves, causing great loss of human life, and many more livable shorelines for the salamanders.
The alien creatures, in The Kraken Wakes, melt the polar ice caps raising the sea level by 120 feet, thereby killing and displacing millions of humans.
In Frank Schätzing’s The Swarm, worms (created by the amoeba-like Yrr) destabilize the continental shelf, causing a massive tsunami, again killing millions.

One quality that the three novels share with Moby Dick is a dark view of human behavior.
In one segment of Čapek’s The War with the Newts, a German newspaper proposes that “because of its German environment that this [the German] newt had developed into a different and superior sub-species, indisputably above the level of any other salamander.”
The Kraken Wakes also points out human defects: the ridiculous infighting as human governments drop nuclear bombs willy-nilly, blame each other, and fail to cooperate against the deep-sea menace.
The Swarm finds comic qualities in the grotesque, nativist belief systems of U.S. government officials.

All three of the science-fiction novels deal to some extent with religion.
In War with the Newts, humankind’s cruelty to sentient creatures is on constant display.
(American Black ministers are among the few that show any compassion toward the enslaved newts.)
In The Kraken Wakes, Mike Watson (speaking of humanity and the creatures in the Deep) tells his wife: “We can’t both inherit the earth.”
In The Swarm, religious groups are thrown into chaos by the concept that humans aren’t the primary life-form on the planet.
(In the epilogue, a Catholic bishop sprinkles “the waves with holy water and ordering the devils to depart.”)

The Swarm is more driven by ideas on ecology than either War with the Newts or The Kraken Wakes.
In the earlier novels, the salamanders and the alien entities (that arrive on earth via fireballs) wish to remake the earth, to make it a better home for their species.
However, the hive mind in The Swarm—by sinking and disabling ships, disrupting deep sea cables, and starting epidemics—seems set on saving the marine ecosystem from humanity.
Only when the Yrr realizes that it may have some commonality with humankind, does it stop its’ onslaught. 

Although many passages in the Bible preach that humanity should live peacefully with nature, people seem most impressed by the line in Genesis 1:26 about humankind having “dominion.”
Most ignore Genesis 9:1-19 in which Noah promises God that he, and his progeny, will become good stewards for “every beast of the earth.”
U.S. history shows that although the first stewards of the North American continent—the 600 Native American tribes—wanted to live in harmony with nature, the conquering (European Christian) worldview was to use the earth as a wealth source: killing beavers and bison to extinction, searching for gold and other minerals, creating havoc in ecosystems.

According to an article in Hakai (hakaimagazine.com), and reprinted in Smithsonian Magazine, humans “kill, collect or otherwise use about 15,000 vertebrate species, mostly for nonfood reasons.”
According to Dr. Andrea Reid (a scientist quoted in *”Humans Take Out More Wild Species Than Any Other Predator on Earth”) “if we want wild species—fish and beyond—to survive, we need to reframe our relationship with them, perhaps from predator to steward.”

*War in Melville’s Imagination, by Joyce Sparer Adler, The Gotham Library, 1981, pages 55-78.

Pink Flamingos and White Eyeless Crabs

Babs Johnson (Divine) outside her trailer with pink flamingo lawn ornaments in Pink Flamingos.

The above title isn’t a reference to the 1972 John Waters film Pink Flamingos.
Instead, the title comes from a long-ago discussion, when I was fifteen.
I was walking (in a Michigan neighborhood) with a German foreign exchange student.
We passed by a front yard bedecked with pink flamingo* lawn ornaments, when my new friend commented that this was the way she expected all American homes to look.
I got it.
She expected all Americans to be vulgar, ignorant and low-class.
It’s just the way Europeans thought of the U.S.A.
(I tried not to take it personally.)

This memorandum compares the 2006 English translation of the German eco-thriller The Swarm, to the 8-part mini-series (based on the novel), which aired on European TV in March of 2023, and in the U.S. on CW (sadly, the lowest-rated American network).
A future memorandum will deal with science-fiction novels that deal with humankind’s relationship with nature, and the oceans.

The Swarm deals with humanity destroying the oceans—dumping radioactive and industrial waste; laying down deep sea cables with magnetic fields (that interfere with the homing instincts of salmon and eels); and laying waste to ecosystems and coral reefs.
As the result of this activity, entities in the oceans begin to fight back.
Although the novel is science-fiction, and not a scientific book, most critics say The Swarm presents marine biology and geology very accurately.

Board game for The Swarm.

The Swarm novel sold over 4.5 million copies and has been translated into 18 languages.
The mini-series has an international cast, and the mini-series was the most expensive German TV show ever made.
There’s also a popular strategy board game, based on the novel, in which each player sends scientists to confront the ecological catastrophes.

Frank Schätzing, creator of the novel, is of the same generation as the German exchange student I knew in the late 1960s.
In his novel, the U.S. President talks about the “ridiculous little countries” of the U.N., and says that “God’s still holding His protective hand over the West.”
CIA Deputy Director Jack Vanderbilt wears “a bright yellow T-shirt bearing the words ‘Kiss me, I’m a Prince,’ stretched over his expansive belly,” when he greets a team of scientists.
The U.S. Defense Secretary arrogantly says to the President: “We are the free world. Europe is part of the American free world.”
(Most of the American government officials featured in the novel are hyper-nationalistic jerks.)

While the basic plots are the same, scientists versus a higher intelligence—that’s existed in the oceans for millions of years—a lot of material couldn’t be used from the 881-page novel.
Some characters (Norwegian biologist Sigur Johanson, American astrophysicist Samantha Crowe, and Canadian biologist Leon Anawak) carry over from the novel, but they’re altered, both in appearance (age and ethnicity) and in personality.
New characters were created, and the novel’s main American villains—General Judith Li, and CIA Deputy Director Jack Vanderbilt—are completely erased from the mini-series plot (probably, because of misguided hopes for reaching the “American market.”)

Scientist Sigur Johanson (Alexander Karim) in the mini-series The Swarm.

At the beginnings of both versions of The Swarm, we’re introduced to several scientists as they begin to realize that a superior intelligence exists deep in the oceans, and is moving against humanity.
Whales overturn ships, and millions of white eyeless crabs invade the shorelines.
A species of marine worm (with teeth) destabilizes the continental shelf, causing a tsunami that kills millions in Northern Europe.
Eventually, some of the scientists are united on a big ship, and attempt to communicate with the intelligence (named the Yrr by Dr. Johanson).
In the novel, the scientists unite on a gigantic U.S. Navy ship.
In the mini-series, a Japanese industrialist finances the mission.

Despite calling out many countries (including Germany) for their non-ecological methods, the novelist does focus, in a few instances, on American actions.
According to one section on the Vietnam War dolphin experiments, the U.S. Navy created a:

Swimmer Nullification Program. . .Those animals were trained to tug at divers’ masks and flippers and disconnect their air-supply. . . The navy strapped hypodermic needles to their beaks and the dolphins were ordered to ram the divers. . . Our animals killed over forty Vietcong and two of our own guys by mistake.

While I’ve read that the U.S. Navy did use dolphins to blow up ships during the Vietnam War, the idea of dolphins being turned into “killing machines” is a bit hard to accept.

A beached orca in the mini-series The Swarm. Its’ brain has been tampered with by the Yrr.

Another sequence deals with the U.S. Navy Surveillance Towed Array Sensor System (SURTASS), and how its’ brain-damaging sonar makes whales beach themselves.
(“Evidently the Americans couldn’t pass up on the opportunity of putting 80% of the world’s oceans under surveillance,” says a Canadian character in the novel.)
However, the U.S. already has plenty to feel guilty about in terms of polluting the oceans with DDT, nuclear waste, and chemicals (in case you’ve never read Rachel Carson’s 1962 science book Silent Spring).

In the novel, the first “physical” interaction with the Yrr occurs when dolphins return to the ship hanger with Yrr and murderous orcas.
Alicia Delaware, and other crew members, die gruesomely, and she’s taken over zombie-style.

Mini-series episode 7 is far less violent than the novel.
In it, after oceanographer Charlie Wagner (Leonie Benesch) and a robotics expert return to the ship in a submersible, they unknowingly bring the Yrr along.
Later, Alicia Delaware (Rosabell Laurenti Sellers) is alone in the hanger, when she spots a strange glowing form in the water.
The Yrr hijack her nervous system (just as it took over sperm whales, orcas, lobsters, and crabs).
Delaware is the Yrr’s first human experiment, and rather than becoming a zombie, she goes into a coma.

The final chapters of the novel involve the heroes fighting (action-movie style) with part of the U.S. Government.
Aware that destruction of the Yrr might end in earth’s extinction, the scientists hope for co-existence.
However, the American officials just want to eradicate the Yrr. . . no matter the consequences!
(In an attempt to implement their plan, Li and Vanderbilt kill many of the hero-scientists.)

The cover of a new American edition of The Swarm.

The novel ends with the big ship going down, and journalist Karen Weaver traveling down 3,466 meters in a submersible and dropping off a corpse (full of pheromones), for the Yrr to examine.
Only a few scientists and crew members survive the sinking.
Canadian biologist Leon Anawak rescues Karen Weaver from the water in a helicopter.
A year-later, an epilogue reveals that the nations of the earth are slowly recovering from the tsunamis and the Yrr-created pathogens.
We don’t learn much about the Yrr, but they do give surface creatures a reprieve.
However, at the point that the novel ends, humankind has gone into in a deep funk over its’ “loss of primacy,” and armed conflicts are spreading across the globe.

The mini-series ending is not quite as dark as the end of the novel.
Episode 8 concludes with oceanographer Charlie Wagner traveling deep in the submersible (to show “good faith” to the Yrr?), communing with them/it, and (strangely) washing up alive on shore.
Even a comatose Alicia Delaware seems to survive!
Since the last episode was listed as a season finale, and not a series finale, there’s the possibility of a second season.

In Frogs,  millionaire Jason Crockett (Ray Milland) represents those who want to “use up” the earth’s resources, and nature photographer Pickett Smith (Sam Elliott) represents those who respect the environment.

Putting The Swarm into context, it’s in the tradition of eco-thrillers. The 1968 Japanese film Genocide, also released as War of the Insects, tells of insects attacking humanity because of humanity's nuclear threat.
(Brave scientists battle the unreasoning American military in that film, as well.)
In 1972’s Frogs, reptiles, insects and amphibians stalk rich patriarch Jason Crockett after he uses poisons against creatures on his estate.
In Phase IV, ants (taken over by a superior intelligence from outer space) wage war against humankind in the American desert. 

Phase IV was released in 1974 with a truncated ending. The “real” ending (“discovered” in 2012) shows people merging with the ants, and a new species being formed. (Paramount found that ending too disturbing to use in the initial release.)

*According to the Wikipedia article on pink flamingos, some U.S. homeowner associations forbid the placement of these lawn ornaments because they lower real estate values.

You Can’t Tell the Players Without a Scorecard

2009’s District 9 in which members of an extraterrestrial race line up for food in a militarized refugee camp.

The book Round Trip to America: The Immigrants Return to Europe, 1880-1930, by Mark Wyman, explains how millions of immigrants weren’t “immigrants” at all.
They were migrants.
Although there were 20 million migrations between 1890-1924, the return rate for that period averaged 35%, and many “immigrants” crossed the ocean back and forth several times.
Regions with the highest return rates were Southern Italy (60%), Romania (66%), and Slovakia (57%).
Between 1908-1923, 60% of Southern Italians returned to Italy (969,754 Italians out of 1,624,353).
Migrants labored in U.S. mines and stockyards, sweated in factories, and built U.S. transportation systems, but then traveled back home.
Many never considered living in the U.S. long-term, or becoming citizens. 

One reason for returning home was that although American wages were higher, the working conditions were worse.
In 1895, Chicago stockyard workers—mostly migrants—labored alongside children in rooms “flooded with water, foul smells, smoke, and steam” for 10 hours a day and 16 cents an hour (the equivalent of $5.86 per hour today).
Children made half that amount.
25% of the immigrant workers at the Carnegie Steel South Works (in Pittsburg) died or were injured between 1907-1910.
According to Round Trip to America, “travelers on returning ships were repeatedly struck by the large numbers of injured, broken, or ill immigrants on board and the multiplicity of widows.” 

Another reason for people returning home was nativist resentment.
One line from the poem by Emma Lazarus describes immigrants as “the wretched refuse of your teaming shore,” and that’s how migrants—especially those from southern Europe—were perceived.
An immigration inspector claimed in 1887 that the U.S. was “now receiving installments of the ignorant and degraded, a class that is little superior to the Digger Indians of the West.”
(“Digger Indians” is a derogatory term that was created to facilitate Manifest Destiny.)
More than 125 years later, former president Trump proclaimed (in 2023) that immigrants are “poisoning the blood of our country.”

As soon as many immigrants recognized what they were getting into, a good share (especially those who wanted to stay) stopped working for others, and became entrepreneurs.
The first millionaire American (from 1810 until his death in 1831) was Stephen Girard—a banker and shipowner who was born in France.
In the 1920’s and 30’s, many immigrants started their own grocery stores, bakeries and butcher shops.
Other immigrants founded small toy and food-stuff factories—idea-based businesses.
In 2023, immigrants are still the principal force behind new American businesses.

“Forgotten man” and former socialite Godfrey Park (William Powell) wasn’t an immigrant, but he was “down on his luck” in 1936’s My Man Godfrey.

As Alexis de Tocqueville noted in the 1830’s: “in no country in the world are private fortunes more precarious than in the U.S.
It is not uncommon for the same man in the course of his life to rise and sink again through all the grades that lead from opulence to poverty.”
Fortunes are still precarious, in this modern country.

Christopher Columbus (Gerard Depardieu) in 1492: Conquest of Paradise—a film that concealed (rather than revealed) many disturbing facts about his treatment of Native Americans.

The Columbus Day holiday had an interesting origin.
It began in 1891, when eleven dark-skinned Sicilian immigrants were lynched in New Orleans.
(There were false rumors that the Sicilians had been “let off,” after killing a white man.)
Italian consulates throughout the U.S. were incensed.
A year later, President Harrison helped create a holiday that would kill two birds with one stone.
It would honor the 400th anniversary of the “discovery of America,” and help Italians enter the mainstream of American society. 

A lobby card for 1944’s Fighting Sullivans, a film about five Irish-American brothers who died fighting for their country in WWII. It’s a myth that after the Sullivan brothers died, siblings were prevented from serving together.

During the Civil War, 25% of the men in the Union Army were immigrants, and another 25% were first-generation Americans.
During WWI, 18% of the U.S. soldiers were immigrants.
Detailed counts (on origins) weren’t kept for WWII.
However, Italian-American soldiers comprised at least 10% of the volunteers, and Polish-American soldiers at least 8% (far above their percentages in the U.S. population).
Scores of first generation Irish and German Americans volunteered to fight on the Allied side in WWII, seeking to prove their patriotism.

The current immigration policy is supposed to be based on three main factors—family reunification, labor market needs, and diversity.
The system is being overwhelmed, however, by asylum seekers (many bringing children).

According to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the U.S. has a labor shortage.
More workers—skilled, semi-skilled and unskilled—are needed in many fields: medicine, agriculture, hospitality, teaching, construction and manufacturing.
On the other hand, American business seems determined to widen the salary gap between upper management and blue-collar jobs, so many of the available jobs don’t pay very well.

Immigration is a very difficult issue.
An article by the Cato Institute in 2021 called the present system “archaic and barely coherent.”
An article on the Brookings Institute website, in 2023,* tells us that 80% of new technical jobs will go unfilled.
Are we allowing for asylum-seekers who may just want to work here, and find safety for their families?
Is it possible to recreate the immigration system so it isn’t tainted by nativism and prejudice?

* “Industrial Policy Will Require Immigration Reform,” Greg Wright and Emma Berman, September 29, 2023.

Gimmie, Gimmie, Gimmie—A Story of Entitlement

Alexander Hamilton (Derryl Yeager) and James Madison (Craig Wasson) in a scene from 1989’s A More Perfect Union: America becomes a Nation.

Article 1, Section 2, of the Constitution, stated which people would be counted to determine the number of Representatives (for each state) in the House, and for taxation purposes.
This was an important number because it gave states power within the Federal Government.
Southern states, with large slave populations, wanted extra power.
However, they didn’t want slaves to be thought of as more than chattel.
As a result, the “Three-Fifths Compromise” was devised in 1787.

The counted people were free (white) men, women, and children, including “those bound to service for a term of years.”
Thus, indentured (white) servants were considered “free.”
(Indentured servitude ended for the most part in 1864, but it wasn’t abolished until 1917.)

The people to be excluded were “Indians not taxed” (Native Americans living in tribal territories) and “three-fifths of all other persons.”
“All other persons” meant slaves.
Thus, a few free Black people were counted as people; but enslaved people were counted as three-fifths of one person, for House Representation and tax purposes.

The 14th Amendment repealed the Three-Fifths Compromise in 1868, but Native Americans living in tribal territories were still excluded from representation.
Twenty years later, the Dawes Act allowed citizenship to those Native Americans who owned land.
However, all Native Americans weren’t declared citizens until 1924.
According to Jefferson and the Indians, by Anthony F. C. Wallace, the Cherokees asked for citizenship as early as 1808.

Newton Knight (Matthew McConnaughey) shows his common-law wife Rachel (Gugu Mbatha-Raw) how to shoot in Free State of Jones.

Stephen Budiansky’s The Bloody Shirt: Terror After the Civil War, quotes an address by the Provisional Governor Benjamin F. Perry to the South Carolina constitutional convention in 1865—the early days of Reconstruction.
Perry proclaimed that “to be no longer a slave in no way made the Negro a citizen,” and “this is a white man’s government, intended for white men only. . . To speak of extending political equality to the Negro was nothing but folly and madness.”

Although Perry was mandated by President Johnson to end slavery in his state, he was making sure that the convention of “gentlemen” knew that only they were entitled to full political equality.
South Carolina remained a “white man’s government” for decades after 1865, because Southern men thought it “madness” to elevate Blacks “to the dignity of the white man.”

Panel from a comic book, approved by George Wallace, used to promote segregation in Alabama during his 1960 campaign for Governor.

In George Wallace’s 1963 inaugural address (as governor of Alabama), Wallace declared that “in the name of the greatest people that have ever trod this earth” he would protect “separate racial stations” with “segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever.”
(The libraries and schools for Black Alabama children would NOT be as well provided for as those for white children.
However, there would be libraries and schools of some mean sort.)
All over this country, there are still big differences between schools and libraries in exclusively Black neighborhoods versus those in White neighborhoods.

Ernest Burkhart and Mollie Kyle (Leonardo DiCaprio and Lily Gladstone) in Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon.

The film Killers of the Flower Moon (based on the David Grann book) is scheduled to be released on October 20th.
It’s about members of the Osage tribe being murdered for oil money.
I’ve read that David Grann outlines the back story.
The Osage tribes, and the U.S., made a treaty in 1808 in which they were to be protected on a portion of their own land.
A few years later, the Government broke its’ word and moved them to Kansas.
After Kansas became popular with white settlers, the Osage were moved (once more) to Oklahoma, where oil was found, making them wealthy.
The local white power structure, of the 1920s, felt that only they were entitled to the wealth of the land. Therefore, many people were murdered.

Although immigrants were categorized as “exotic novelties” down to “wretched refuse (of your teaming shore),” being an immigrant didn’t stand in the way of gaining wealth.
Between 1815-1860, the three richest men in the U.S.—Frenchman Stephen Girard, German-born John Jacob Astor, and Irishman Alexander Turney Stewart—were all immigrants.
Immigrants are still among the wealthiest people: Chinese-born Eric Yuan, South African-born Elon Musk, and Nigerian-born Tope Awotona, among others.
According to recent study,* immigrants are 80% more likely to found companies, than those born in the U.S.
(Perhaps, the main reason immigrants start new companies is because it’s impossible to get ahead working for others.)

Gordon Gekko (Michael Douglas) proclaiming “Greed, for lack of a better word, is good,” in 1987’s Wall Street.

For generations, there was more economic disparity between rich and poor in Europe, than in the U.S.
However, the balance shifted dramatically around 1980.
Wealth and Democracy: A Political History of the American Rich, by Kevin Phillips, analyzes how the superrich have harvested privileges—at the expense of the lower and middle classes—despite the U.S. being a democratic society.
Wealth and Democracy was written twenty years ago.
In 2002, CEOs made 145 times as much as a typical worker.
By 2022, CEOs made 344 times as much as a typical worker.
Now, the average Fortune 500 CEO salary is $15.9 million a year, while the average worker salary is $61,900 a year.

When people speak up for unions, parity, and a safety net, they’re dismissed as communists.
However, cut-throat Darwinian capitalism was never a good fit with democracy.
It dismisses the worker as just a cog, and raises up the “job-creators” above all others.
(Consumers are the true job-creators.)
This isn’t a battle between capitalism and communism; it’s a battle of entitlement. 

Eleanor Roosevelt, First Lady of the United States, 1933-1945. 

Former First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt died in November of 1962.
In one of her last essays “The Social Revolution,” published in Tomorrow is Now, she discusses issues that are still crucial today: 

It is this minority of strident and prejudiced people, with their unwillingness to accept race equality—at whatever cost—who provide the Communists with most of their ammunition against the democratic system, who are loudest in their expression of hatred for Communism. . .this recurring matter of labeling “Communist” anyone who does not agree with you is essentially an act of dishonesty and it should be nailed every time for what it is.

*”Immigration and Entrepreneurship in the United States,” Azoulay, Jones, Kim, and Miranda, Vol. 4, No.1, March 2022, American Economic Review: Insights.