Illegal, ergo criminal

Your paper was merely trying to elicit the sympathy of our community with your front page story about the Shaw graduate who is facing deportation. He apparently suffered as a 13-year-old when he was surreptitiously brought across our border, and he appears to have been a good student in one of our schools. I think that’s admirable.

However, he is simply another illegal alien, and he finally got caught taking advantage of benefits that should only be available to our country’s citizens. He claims not to be a criminal, but that’s just not true. He was arrested in Harris County, while violating both federal and state laws. Not only was he speeding and driving without a license, but as an adult for the last two years, he was in violation of our immigration laws. Therefore, he’s a criminal.

Many do-gooders, which I suspect includes members of your staff, want us to ignore our immigration laws to allow anyone to come and be a part of our American family. They think illegal aliens have a right to be here, and from reading your article it appears that several of our local citizens have been assisting our young alien to subvert our laws. When I was a law enforcement officer, we called that “aiding and abetting” the commission of a crime. My grandfather broke no laws when he came here from another land, and because of that fact, I am a legal American citizen. If our former “student” wants to be an American, he should first be deported. Then he can legally apply for a visa in his home country and return.

This Memorial Day

On Memorial Day many of us turn our thoughts to those men with whom we served who will never grow old.

On Armed Forces Day, my thoughts turn to those wonderful guys who did come home.

The young Americans I served with when I was young are now in their sixties. The young Americans I served with at the end of my service are about to retire. I wonder if their children and grandchildren have any idea what they did for their country. More specifically, I wonder if their families know what they endured, because we asked them to.

This old soldier would give anything for the opportunity to tell the families of my comrades about the old guy they call Dad or Granddad.

Perhaps some of the young people who read this will take a moment to ask the old veteran in their family about his service.

Not ‘conservatives’

According to incisive articles in New York Magazine, the alt-right has subsumed the once-conservative Republican Party. It is less a movement than a counterculture, and it primarily appeals to young males. It arose as backlash against a black president, a woman candidate, and major social movements of the previous century.

These radicals believe social progress by minorities and women has come at the expense of males who were previously “kings of the castle.” The internet has amplified their worldview of resentment and hate.

Even as the Tea Party previously hijacked the GOP, the alt-right has steered the party by focusing obsessively on the aspects of its platform which appeal primarily to its ever-poorer, uneducated base. What it won was “anti-Enlightenment, anti-democratic, anti-equality politics.”

The disaster of 9-11 caused a rise in jingoistic nationalism, leading to an erosion of our liberties. Consequently, the young believe that democracy is compliant. This group represents a return to reactionism, which surged after the Reformation, after Civil War Reconstruction, and after the success of the civil rights movement.

Pat Buchanan, who first tested the appeal of overt bigotry in his presidential campaign, was the proto-Trump. He called AIDS the Lord’s retribution against gays, approved rounding up the homeless, and even proposed what he called “the Buchanan fence” – a U. S.-Mexico wall.

These reactionary white nationalists view with alarm the government’s shift from the “melting pot” mode, in which immigrants assimilate to our American culture, to a multicultural model, where different languages and ethnicities celebrate their diversity.

We are now ensnared in a presidency which has degenerated from democracy into tyranny. A partial answer may be, not diversity, but a return to the melting pot.

Naked reality

It’s amazing how people can look at the same thing and get entirely different impressions. The Trump supporters are steadfast in the face of a dysfunctional president riddled with inconsistencies and incompetence. Can’t they see what a boob he is? His syntax is like some babbling child’s. His ego knows no bounds. He changes positions in a heartbeat. He is just plain uneducated.

Trump’s staff must constantly correct and clarify what this administration is saying and doing to the point that you don’t know what to believe. And poor Mike Pence and others must clean up after the president who blunders along like a drunk on board a ship in high seas. These poor associates are like the fellow cleaning up after the elephants in some circus.

Someone once said, “If you don’t believe it, you won’t see it.” And apparently that’s the case for about 40 percent of the population.

Well, I’ve got news for you people. Open your eyes and see … the emperor has no clothes.

This story was originally published May 23, 2017 at 3:54 PM with the headline "Illegal, ergo criminal."