Michael Blowhard writes:

Dear Blowhards --

What an evocative description of some appalling South American desert slums David Kelly has written!

Half-naked children toddle barefoot through mud and filth while packs of feral dogs prowl piles of garbage nearby. Thick smoke from mountains of burning trash drifts through broken windows. People -- sometimes 30 or more -- are crammed into trailers with no heat, no air-conditioning, undrinkable water, flickering power and plumbing that breaks down for weeks or months at a time.

Too bad anyone has to live like that, eh? Thank god our own country has managed to pull itself out of such miseries. Let's hope that poor countries improve their conditions too, and the sooner the better.

Oh, whoops: wrong. Actually, these desert slums aren't in South America at all, they're in California. And they're ours to deal with now thanks to our nutty immigration policies.

Best,

Michael

"...and they're [desert slums] in the U.S. thanks to our nutty immigration policies."

No. These slums exist as a direct result of the nature of the immigrants themselves.

I grew up in close proximity to a neighborhood in NYC, Ridgewood, Queens, that was primarily German-American. These were people, most of them tenants, who washed the stoops of the buildings they occupied. They were not well off economically. Not by a long shot. Then "Latinos" started to move in. Garbage on the streets. Litter everywhere. Less and less maintenance of property. Urine in the halls. Smells unimagineable. A slum was born.

No. It was the people. And it is the same crew in the California desert slums today.

Posted by: ricpic on March 28, 2007 12:25 PM

It won't be too long before you see outbreaks of various, nasty, highly infectious diseases there too, which will be easily transported to the rest of the american population.

Posted by: BIOH on March 28, 2007 12:40 PM

Michael, I am a huge fan of your work. And you always do a great job of making me interested in topics I would normally care less about (i.e. Publishing Industry). And you have taken a smart stance on immigration, but for some reason, you can hardly get anyone to comment on the subject.

A quick glance shows over 30 comments for the Clinton Speach-Giving piece, and, well, 2 here.

Some day, hopefully, you will be able to get people talkin' about the important stuff as well.

Until then, keep up the great work.

Posted by: Ian Lewis on March 29, 2007 10:13 AM

It's rare to see a comment thread really take off when the first comment consists entirely of racism. People say "oh well, I'll just wait for the next one."

Posted by: Cryptic Ned on March 30, 2007 7:02 PM

"Racism" is a bogus word made up by leftists. But it's running out of its old punching power so they're switching to "bigot." How's that for continuing the thread?

Posted by: sj on March 30, 2007 7:16 PM

So types socialist Cryptic Ned, living securely in his white neighborhood...

Posted by: BIOH on March 30, 2007 9:53 PM

I'm sure a visit to the slave quarters on many plantations in 1845 would have revealed something similar. Of course, like this situation, the inhabitants were "mud people" not truly humans like their white European rooted betters. Also like now, the name of the game is how to get the greatest economic benefit from the labor of these animals for the least amount of cost. To acknowledge that these beasts are actually human would lead to all kinds of awkward ethical difficulties. To avoid this distasteful examination of our complicity in their plight a full set of exaggerated stereotypes maintaining their "otherness" is employed. THEY aren't like US ... WE are clean and good and love our children and work hard for the right reasons .... THEY are dirty and evil and breed indiscriminately and lazy. And so it goes.

Posted by: Chris White on March 31, 2007 7:48 AM

It's relatively easy to take people out of the ghetto; it's much harder to take the ghetto out of people.

Posted by: Narr on April 1, 2007 5:13 PM

Sorry, Chris, but the people who want "to get the greatest economic benefit from the labor of these animals for the least amount of cost" are the Open Borders-Wall Street Journal capitalists, not the immigration critics.

Posted by: fwood1 on April 1, 2007 6:38 PM

The only problem with Mr. White's analogy is that the illegal aliens of today have chosen their own situation freely, nothing has been forced on them. Also, their squalid conditions are not a result of forced poverty, but again a product of their own creation. Slight difference.

Liberal Credo: All people are equal.

Reality: All people are not equal.

Liberal Response: What are you going to believe, my credo, or your lying eyes?

Posted by: BIOH on April 2, 2007 9:50 AM






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