Copyright © 2018 by Thomas Gangale
White anxiety? Are you serious?
Sounds like the title of an old Mel Brooks movie. Praise the lord and pass the
Xanax.
Will someone please explain to me
why I should give a damn about "massive demographic changes?" My
great-grandfather came from Ireland as part of a "massive demographic
change" which flooded the unskilled labor market and depressed wages, not
to mention the "drinking and brawling" his people brought to this
country. My grandfather came from Italy as part of a "massive demographic
change" which flooded the unskilled labor market and depressed wages, not
to mention the "noise and crime" his people brought to this country.
Come to think of it, the native Americans of the Hudson Valley probably weren't
too wild about my Dutch ancestors moving into their neighborhood in the 17th
century.
If the America Laura Ingraham once
knew and loved doesn't exist anymore, sucks to be her. She never really loved
it because she never really knew it, what she thought she knew was just a sad,
narrow-minded, WASP delusion.
The America I know and love does
indeed exist. It is the America which is always changing, always re-inventing
itself, always struggling to become more inclusive, always searching for new
rights to be won, always striving to form a more perfect union. There was a
time when the idea of an Irish American like Jack Kennedy running for president
would have been unthinkable, or a Greek American like Michael Dukakis, or an
Italian American like Mario Cuomo or Rick Santorum, or a Mexican American like
Bill Richardson, or an African American like Barack Obama or Ben Carson, or a
Cuban American like Ted Cruz or Marco Rubio. Does Laura Ingraham have a problem
with the prospect of Nikki Haley, a South Asian who was born Nimrata Randhawa,
running for president someday? Put that name on a lawn sign and tell me how
white she is. The America I know and love welcomes the good and the
hard-working from wherever they may come.
That is our strength. America can
take whatever, Russia, China, Iran, North Korea, the Arab world, or any other
would-be adversary may care to bring at us. Laura Ingraham may fear them; I
don’t, because we are Russians, we are Chinese, we are Iranians, we are
Koreans, we are Arabs. All of these angry lands have American branches in their
family trees. That is what makes America an unstoppable force of history. We
are the world. We will add your biological and technological distinctiveness to
our own. Your culture will adapt to us. You will be assimilated. Resistance is
futile.
And that goes for you, Laura.
