Shit Holes and Shit Heads

Disclaimer: I generally work to avoid this kind of language in my writing (if we're having a conversation, well, fair warming, that might be a different story and I make no promises), but in the spirit of the current occupant of the White House, "He started it. Nyah, Nyah, Nyah."

I have been fortunate to travel a lot since my retirement, including to some “shit holes,” as well as some places that apparently are more worthy to send us their citizens. Like there’s a lot of Norwegians who would give up their universal health care for our crap shoot system.*

It doesn’t take much, if any — what do call that process of investigating for facts to back up an opinion? Oh, yeah, research — research to compile a list of successful people from the so-called “shit holes” who have enriched our lives, country, and culture. One of the great things about the USA is that we never know when or where those contributors will emerge, (immigrant or not) or what their back story will be. It’s impossible to predict. 

Recent case in point: Two weeks ago a 26-year old soldier raced repeatedly into a burning Bronx apartment building, saving four people before he died in the flames. His name was Pvt. Emmanuel Mensah and he immigrated from Ghana, a country Donald Trump apparently thinks produces very subpar immigrants. (source: neo-conservative Bill Kristol – editor of The Weekly Standard)

That’s the danger of stereotyping and over-generalizing: it is not a reliable predictor of, well, anything for any individual. Pretending some level of superiority based on birthplace (and I’m not even specifically referring to country of origin, here; it could be a municipality or even a neighborhood) is incredibly arrogant, as well as wrong-headed and unrealistic. And probably, in many but not all cases, racist.

 It truly irks me when President Trump and the other drum-beaters for “American Exceptionalism” fail to realize that most people, or at least those with a sense of country, believe that their country, too, is exceptional. Those same, exceptionally loud, voices are also critical of the trend to eliminate winners and losers, the trophies for all attitude. “We can’t all be winners.” That may be true, but in the drive to make this world a better place for all of us and our children, we can’t afford losers. We do, in fact, need to find a way for everyone to, if not be a winner, have a fair chance at winning at some point.

Comparing my country to yours isn’t even a good parlor game, and what rules there may be come from those who want to stack the deck so that their homeland becomes the winner.  (The winner of what, exactly?) National pride can’t only be good when it’s ours. Who is to say that we’re better than anyone else? If we cannot have a sense of national pride without it involving crushing others, then I would suggest such pride will definitely “goeth before the fall.” (Proverbs 16:18; you might make note of a blog post from me that cites both the Bible and a pre-eminent neo-con. Time to start prepping for the apocalypse!)

I’d suggest we’d be better off with an attitude toward our country like most of us have toward golf (or any other solo activity), and working on just being the best that we can, knowing there is always room for improvement, without the need to “beat” some other country or person. In the unlikely event that I could beat you (or anyone) in a golf match, it still wouldn’t mean I was any good.

Being better than the competition doesn’t mean you’re good. Being louder than the other side doesn’t mean you’re right. Bob Dylan long ago (1965) got it right when he said, “Not to climb up any higher but rather drag you down the hole that he’s in.” (Restoring order to the universe: It’s Alright Ma, I’m Only Bleeding) We should be cheering (and helping, when possible) these countries as they work to develop their economies, education, social services, etc., even if not always by the methods we would prefer. Instead, American Exceptionalists seem to want to put a ceiling on others’ ambition so that we can continue to wave our flags and foam fingers and shout, “We’re #1!” to justify any action we take. Let’s at least not be offended or surprised when we get a different finger in return. Your foam finger doesn’t make some other country a “shit hole,” but it kind of does make YOU a shit head.

* Apparently, despite the fact that most young Norwegians speak English and virtually no young Americans speak Norwegian, there is a net migration imbalance TO Norway from the USA; in other words, more Americans move to Norway than vice versa.