Big revelations tonight– I see the whole picture now.
America is a country of immigrants. From the very first pilgrims, our country has always followed the story of `people from far away trying to make it in a foreign land. My own family came to this country a hundred years ago, fleeing poverty and crime in Europe. My father’s grandfather was part of the Italian wave, Catholics among Catholics trying to make a home in Boston’s West Side (demolished to make certain iconic highways). My mother’s great grandfather came around the same time, Ukrainian Jews fleeing certain death from Russian Pogroms. My father’s family sold fruit on the streets of the North End. My mother’s collected greasy rags in East Boston and tried to recycle them. It wasn’t glamorous. They were called criminals, they were harassed, and they were forced to live in the shittiest tenements in Boston. Then they got educated, their kids got educated, and they began to plan bigger lives. They fought for their country in wars across the sea and came home to open businesses of their own. The rest is history.
But history isn’t dead. In fact, the country hasn’t changed much at all. A new generation of immigrants, southern instead of eastern, still Catholic, is coming to roost in Boston. They are living in the same area too– East Boston is the stage again, as it always has been for time immemorial. They are working rough jobs and getting by. Their kids are going to school and hopefully learning something. Some of them will go to college and become our doctors. It’s always been this way. The cycle of immigration in this country is an endless stream. It is deeply, intrinsically, cosmically American. Trump is the son of immigrants. Obama was the son of immigrants. Biden was Irish. Even the Anglos came here on a boat and roughed it for a while, though they try to pretend this land was made for them!
Republicans can try to cause as much terror as possible, but the tide will not be halted. People across the globe will always swim that current in search of the shining beacon on a hill that is the United States of America. They are Americans.