We want our politicians
to lie!
James
R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.
©
May 11, 2015
After
sharing with readers my take on the exhaustive study a Canadian friend has made
on the Canadian Parliament and government, I reviewed what presidential candidates
Hillary Clinton, Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio have had to say on immigration. It is clear to me we force our candidates to
be people of the lie.
Candidate
Clinton has reversed herself coming out strongly for what amounts to amnesty,
paving a way for citizenship for illegal immigrants “because they are here and
contributing to our society.”
Rubio
has waffled just a bit but is far less enamored of the straight Yellow Brick
Road to citizenship that Clinton is only lately espousing, while Bush is even
right to Rubio in that his immigration policy, and is unlikely to generate
enthusiasm in the illegal immigrant community for his candidacy.
Who
is likely to win the Hispanic vote?
Why,
Hillary, of course. Her lie resonates.
While
she is closer in her immigration policy in actual fact to Bush than Rubio, she is
comfortable in the lie because she won’t have to eat it. When (and if) she assumes the Office of the President
of the United States, the Republican majority in the House of Representatives
and the Senate will not support amnesty, and so she can lie as a candidate with
impunity.
We
want her to lie. We want our politicians
to lie for we want them to tell us what we want to hear not what we need to
hear.
What
we need to hear is that we as voters have been ambivalent for the past
thirty-five years, the so called “boom and bust years,” not concerned with
illegal immigrants or other testy issues as long as it didn’t appear to hurt us
in our wallets or pocketbooks.
We
have taken comfort in the rhetoric we are a nation of immigrants, which we are,
and these illegal immigrants are like us, which they appear to be, and
therefore we should give them a free pass to citizenship because they are here.
My
family, that is, my ancestors came from Celtic country, Ireland and Norway via
the route of satisfying quotas. My Irish
ancestors were not lace curtain Irish but
shanty Irish. It might be useful to establish what this
means.
Lace
Curtain Or Shanty Irish -- Hoi Polloi or Hoity Toity?
All
immigrants have had major issues coming to America. There was no road paved in
gold, which they could follow.
There
was no road in fact, leading to a sure supply of food for their families. They had heard and believed their lot would
be better in the New World, America.
This is the rationale for all immigrants.
So
they came despite no roads paved in gold or caviar. Yet, in the end, all
immigrants from years back at least, embraced America and loved to become
Americans and they found their place. They didn’t try to make the United States into
the Irish Republic or Norwegian culture.
The
Irish gave up their Gaelic and learned to speak American. They allowed themselves to be integrated at
the lowest levels taking jobs, if they could get jobs that nobody else wanted. They
were waiters, bartenders, bell hops, domestics, ditch diggers, and fruit
pickers, policemen and firemen, priests and politicians, prize fighters and
criminals.
It
was people like this that bred the stock of the country we know simply as
America. The stock for the melting pot consisted of many types of immigrants.
The Irish were just one variety that melted in, not out.
As
the Irish were immigrating to America, like most newcomers in this new strange
land, most were poorer than dirt. As ship after ship came to America from
overseas, the Irish got numerous enough to form various sections, which today
might be called ghettos and they lived in small homes that were not more than
shanties. Some chicken coops might have been larger than the first homes of
these immigrants.
As
time went on, the Irish began to separate as to their degree of upward
mobility. When some Irish moved up the ladder of success into larger frame
houses for example, those still in the shanties saw this as taking on fancy
airs, and they were dubbed "lace curtain."
The
lace curtain Irish in turn, labeled their less fortunate countrymen as
"shanty" or sometimes "pigs in the parlor Irish." I come
from this stock. I know the feeling of
the lace curtain looking down on my type.
They were now attorneys and doctors and local politicians and union
leaders who thought their business no longer stunk; that they had left the hoi
polloi for good.
There
were yet other derogatory terms used. They were called “Micks” and “Murphys” and
“Cathlicks” for the Irish could not escape the tough times or the annoying
terms regardless of which side of the tracks they might be living on.
In
many cases, the "lace curtain Irish" were as poor as the shanty Irish
but they had their own notions that they were more respectable.
Novelist
F. Scott Fitzgerald lived in an upscale neighborhood in St. Paul, Minnesota,
but at the end of the block decidedly poorer and less well connected than his
neighbors down the street, many who were “lance curtain Irish,” a fact that he
never forgot and which bled into every word he ever wrote, best remembered in “The
Great Gatsby” (1925).
When
there was no frame house per se, some were called lace curtain simply because
they would put up lace curtains for appearances' sake, and dollies on every
surface in the sitting room. They would
do this even in a shanty town.
Thus
both the terms, lace curtain Irish and shanty Irish, are far from being
compliments to any Irish.
Yet,
over time, as food and jobs became more plentiful, the Irish overcame their own
labels and most today do not care whether they are shanty or lace curtain
Irish. Some might dispute this when it
comes to my written commentaries as I wear my shanty Irish roots as a badge of
honor.
Along
with the terms shanty Irish and lace curtain Irish we have the terms hoi polloi, a Greek term referring to the
many, i.e., the common people and hoity-toity, an adjective used to describe
those who would have others believe they are elite and enlightened.
It
has always amused me to see people who come from my stock, station and
circumstance who have somehow forgotten their Irish roots of poverty, neglect,
humiliation and discrimination.
Many
of us get the two terms (hoi polloi and hoity toity) mixed up and consider the lace curtain
Irish to be hoi polloi, thinking it means people who think they are big shots.
But, that is not at all the meaning of hoi polloi.
The
big shots, or big shot wannabes are the hoity-toity and if they are Irish, they
would be of the lace curtain variety.
The
common folk, as in we the people or the many, are the hoi polloi and if they
are Irish, they would be known as the shanty Irish. But, then again, who cares? We are Americans, right?
Well,
a lot of us that are Irish still wear the scars of that race and that distinction
as we cannot disavow our links to our ancestors any more than a zebra can deny
its stripes.
MY
PROBLEM WITH ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS
Only
Jeb Bush, for whatever reason, and he is married to a Hispanic, refuses to
lie. He would be relatively tough on
illegal immigrants, but not nearly as tough as I would like him to be.
That
more than any other reason is likely to derail his bid for the Republican nomination
for president.
Yet,
paradoxically, it is his immigration policy, which doesn’t include a free pass
to illegals that ultimately will be President Hillary Clinton’s policy. Not only is Bush not for a free pass, but for
deporting those who continue to flood our borders into this country, illegally.
It
is common knowledge that many illegals refuse to learn the American language,
insist on a dual language policy or at the very least have schools, churches, workplaces,
commercial establishments, medical facilities, and even the military be able to
relate to them in their native language.
Irish
immigrants, many of whom spoke only Gaelic, were at first hesitant to learn American
English their hatred of Great Britain was so visceral, but they did learn to speak
American. They got through that
barrier.
Early
Irish immigrants had an unsavory reputation, which included fighting, drinking,
brawling and crime. It was no accident
that many working establishments posted, Jobs
available, Irish need not apply!
So,
it wasn’t a smooth transition from one culture to another for them, but they
came to American – in the first and second quarter of the nineteenth century –
when the United States of America was not so soft headed. Bleeding hearts were in short supply,
especially for Irish Catholics in a predominantly Protestant country.
But
now the separation of church and state is more ambiguous and politicians are
more ambivalent, trying to please both sides of the street, but pleasing no
one, creating the mess that we have on immigration and on other fundamental
cultural issues such as the symbolic importance of Christmas and Easter and
Christian verities on our identity as a society.
People
now feel self-conscious saying “Merry Christmas” and “Happy Easter,” if you
have any doubt to how pervasive this absurdity is.
Being
born and reared as an Irish Roman Catholic, I know something of the experience
of immigrants that follow Islam and other religions and cultures.
But
at no time was I forced to become Protestant to actively participate in sports,
to get good grades in a public high school and a land grant university, or a
good paying job, or to be promoted.
As
readers know, I wear my culture on my sleeve and that has not been too
comfortable for many who have had to deal with me along the way, but no one has
ever attempted to change me.
If
I sound unsympathetic with illegal immigrants, so be it.
This
is America. This is not Cuba, not Mexico,
not Brazil, not Venezuela, not Russia, not Germany, not France or Spain, not
China or Japan, not Iraq or Iran, but the United States of America.
Come
here through legal channels, or don’t come at all! Then once here, become Americans! Don’t try to make America into what it isn’t
nor can it be.
Should
America lose the idea that is its only great distinction, God help the world!
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