Is The Melting Pot "Full" Now?

© Valley News, vnews.com

The United States of America recently celebrated the 242nd anniversary of its Declaration of Independence from British colonialism. Since that time, our greatest assets have been the individuals and families from less fortunate nations that we continue to welcome, and a collective sense of empathy and compassion. The "rude" French even sent us a statue commemorating our ability to embrace everyone regardless of economic circumstance, religious belief, race, or gender. What happened to that?

We are suddenly a nation of intolerance, willing to literally wall ourselves off from the rest of the world, believing that what used to be our greatest strength is now our most pressing problem, our greatest weakness. We have already built walls around our hearts, hardened ourselves to misery greater than we will ever experience. We look around us and no longer see people who look like us. We no longer understand the words in conversations carried out around us. We feel eerily isolated in neighborhoods that have become unrecognizable. The houses look the same, but the occupants are different. It does not compute. Our accustomed level of comfort is becoming highly unstable, even if none of "them" are terrorists.

The extremely wealthy and powerful have taken note of our unease and amplified it into irrational fears as a way to manufacture an unnecessary political divide. This wedge being driven between us allows the continued redistribution of wealth to the very top of our economic food chain. We are told there is not enough to go around, and the problem is "those people" streaming across our border and "stealing your jobs."

No, the problem is in your corporate boardroom where you draw up plans to lay off your workforce if not take away their benefits, raid their pensions, and otherwise make the lives of labor intolerable such that your shareholders and executive officers reap obscene profits.

Those of us whole toil away at unpaid overtime, without union representation, doing the jobs of three other people whose positions were not renewed, are now left to our own devices. We are told we should get a second job, sell some of our belongings, continue to sacrifice for the good of the company. That is, after all, the kind of loyalty that built our most esteemed companies.

No, it is not. Henry Ford is widely acclaimed for having paid his employees enough that they could own the vehicles they were building. Loyalty is a two-way street. There is a reason there is an annual best-companies-to-work-for list.

So, given our personal economic woes, it is no wonder we are falling into a Kick the Dog Syndrome. Men, especially, want to express the pain and angst they feel, and do so inappropriately by inflicting pain on someone else. Maybe it is their spouse. Maybe it is their kids. Maybe it is the Mexican neighbors or those "uppity" Blacks down the street. We want to make tangible the intangible emotional pain that we carry hidden. How is anyone else to know our inner turmoil, our guilt at being unable to provide for our families, our utter failure to advance to the American Dream?

The answer, of course, is that the American Dream created unrealistic, if not outright false, expectations. The melting pot is only full if you believe that you are entitled to the spacious house, the white picket fence, the two-car garage, and all the other material amenities we were promised in the 1950s. We now have a segment of our population that believes they are entitled to mansions (several, in fact), private jets, private banking, and luxury at every turn. They "earned" that, naturally, from your labor, your blood, sweat, and tears. They hardened their hearts to you long before you hardened yours to today's brand of immigrants. Remember that. Stop participating, as much as possible, in the system that is disempowering you. Look for employers who are interested in seeing all of their employees prosper, not just the ones at the top. Become your own employer. Drop your bank for a credit union. Stop aspiring to excessive affluence and invest in organizations that help the less fortunate, protect consumers, the environment, and all of those things we hold valuable above money.

We need all the allies we can get to improve our collective society and culture, and those fellow soldiers are the new immigrants you want to blame for everything. Recognize your misplaced resentment and hostility. Channel it into something better for yourself and the other downtrodden.

The Last Bastion of Legal Discrimination

A video making the rounds through social media these days asserts that "Diamonds Are a Lie." It points to propaganda by the diamond dealer De Beers that artificially inflated the value of the stones. This hit home for me for a number of reasons and reminded me to write about my long-held perception of the perils of wealth inequality as a whole.

My father earned his affluence by creating high end custom jewelry for wealthy clients in Portland, Oregon. This of course included diamonds and gold and other "precious stones" and metals. There is no question that our society has ascribed arbitrary monetary valuations to certain gems and other natural resources. It is perhaps a logical extension in our evolution for male individuals who want to set themselves apart from competing males by demonstrating financial richness in addition to physical prowess, intellectual superiority, and other characteristics attractive to females. Still, it has to stop.

Status has come to mean one thing: relative financial wealth. It is putting our entire human species at risk. We now have the human equivalent of the peacock, only instead of feathers it is funds, stocks, bonds, yachts, luxury cars, second and third homes, exotic vacations, designer fashions, and yes, pricey jewelry. We celebrate and idolize these people, mostly White males, in the Fortune 500, Forbes, and other periodicals devoted solely to wealth and how to achieve it.

Interestingly, we assign dollar values chiefly to inanimate objects, and non-living natural resources. Living creatures we conveniently refer to as "priceless." The insinuation is that people, other animals, plants, and other organisms are so valuable that it is pointless to put a figure on their worth. The reality is that the convenient priceless tag permits us to devalue life when it stands in the way of resource extraction or our personal ascent up the ladder of wealth. We have no trouble turning our backs on our brothers and sisters, let alone other entire species, if profit is to be had.

What is most staggering is the almost complete success of the brainwashing campaign that has convinced us that great material wealth is something we should aspire to. Why? Well, it is the carrot held before us so that those who are already wealthy can beat us with the stick. Drudgery is supposedly the price we pay for our income. We have apparently resigned ourselves to accept this scenario without complaint, even without union representation. We literally slave away so that company shareholders can reap ever bigger profits and reward the executives with bonuses.

We still believe that if we work hard we will one day own a home, be able to retire to a leisurely lifestyle, and still put our kids through college, too. No, we cannot. Wealth is now inherited far more than it is earned. We can always borrow, because the interest rate is so low. We no longer have a middle class, we have a debt class masquerading as the middle class. We used to be able to get ahead by saving money, but no bank product pays worth a damn because of the low interest rate. Your life is reduced to your credit rating, your ability to borrow.

Should everything be free? No, of course not, but there are entirely too many things we do not need at all. I speak again of objects and accessories that do nothing, or next to nothing, but flaunt our personal affluence. Why must we measure ourselves by dollars? Why do we continue to tolerate, even endorse, discrimination against others based on their inability to pay exorbitant amounts of money for exclusive this, or chic that? It is nothing short of shameful.

What interests me is not the prime rate, it is your willingness to share what you have. It is, as the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. decreed "the content of (your) character" that should define you. Your currency of thought, and empathy and humor and empowerment of others is what interests me. Your refusal to judge others, or assume the worst without knowing them, is what sets you apart and makes you my friend. I have no desire to burden myself with material goods, or surround myself with elitist, snobbish friends. Neither do you, right?