Re: 1 OZ pendant -- Davide? anyone? - POSERs R US
>> "Hispanic street slang, one wonders if you're actually a Mexican
>> illegal instead of a genuine U.S. citizen."
> WTF? You are English and living in the US, and you have the nerve to raise
> the issue of Mexican illegals?
Well, I am an American citizen so I don't think it's unreasonable for me to be upset at Mexicans who figuratively flip the bird at U.S. federal law by streaming across the border illegally. The operative word in "illegal immigrant" is "illegal." As in, they broke the law and their very presence in this country is illegal. Why do so many people prefer that criminals go unpunished? The U.S. House of Represenatives just passed a bill a week ago that seriously cracks down on illegal immigration, so even they (finally) recognise how big a problem it is. Sensenbrenner introduced the legislation, but it was Tom Tancredo (R-CO) who was the driving force behind exposing the dirty truth of how both multicultural-worshipping Democrats and greedy big-business Republicans encourage illegal immigration for completely different reasons.
> When you are done teaching English (a noble cause, I'll admit) you should
> look into history, particularly if you are in Texas, and find out that the
> land you are living in was once Mexico. It is in the history books that
> war was provoked so that the land could be taken from the Mexican people.
Yes, this is true, I won't deny that. But consider this: the Spanish from whom we violently took Texas are hardly innocent folk. The Spanish themselves violently and forcibly took the landmass of modern Mexico from the Aztecs via all sorts of pillaging and plundering and raping and killing. Neil Young did a nice expose of this in "Cortez The Killer" off his 1975 album, Zuma. So should we really feel sorry for the Spanish when the English give them a nice taste of their own medicine?
Frankly, isn't this how pretty much every single nation-state in the world today got created? The Romans invaded England (Hadrian's Wall, anyone?), England invaded France, Japan invaded all sorts of countries in the Pacific rim, Russia has been battling China for centuries.... I mean, if you really boil it down, one could demand that pretty much every single citizen of every single country apologise for his/her ancestors' involvement in the killing of people to get land. That's hardly plausible, or reasonable. And the U.S. is hardly unique in having done the same with Texas.
Not that I'm condoning that sort of violence, mind you. I'm just saying, it's in the history books. It was part of our "Manifest Destiny" mindset of the 1800s. And Spain was no different that England and the U.S. were. Just ask the tens of thousands of murdered Aztecs.
> "In 1845 Polk sent federal emissaries...
[snip]
> Congress approved Polk's decision, and the Mexican War began."
That's a fascinating historical tidbit, one I recall learning way back in grade school, but it's the kind where the details get hazy as one grows older, since our jobs and careers rarely afford time for history reading (which is a shame, methinks). i certainly wouldn't deny that that's how things went down, however --- in fact, it's quite probable.
> Although I can't find it now, I remember reading letters between Polk and
> Taylor where the topic of sending the soldiers into the territory
> specifically to provoke war was explicitly discussed.
Yeah, I'd believe that. It was a different day and age back then, for better or worse. This country is awfully well-to-do and rich right now, and a lot of it is because we killed Indians, killed Mexicans, enslaved Africans, and started pillaging North America's natural resources. Hardly the sort of thing one would find in a fairy tale.
But... we're all byproducts of this. I'm sure many of us own our own homes in nice new clean affluent communities. Who here among us is willing to just give that up because the U.S. became as rich as it did due to the blood of Indians, Spanish, and Africans? Not many, I don't imagine.
At some point, you just have to acknowledge that this stuff is in the history books, and you can't keep going back in time and making everyone today apologise for what happened hundreds of years ago. The U.S. is an independent nation-state with its own borders and laws, whether Mexico likes it or not. And I'm simply asking, as a U.S. citizen, that anyone who breaks U.S. law by illegally entering the country... be punished and deported. In short, I'd like U.S. laws to be upheld and enforced -- not exactly radical or hateful views, methinks...
> I realize that this is far off the topic of you getting your necklace but
> you should try to be careful about the offhand remarks.
Duly noted. My comment was less offhand, and more of a playfully caustic response to an individual who was quite curiously bellicose towards an original post of mine that was 100% about a Morrissey neckchain. But yeah, perhaps I let my illegal immigration pet peeve bleed through in my response a bit more than was necessary. But hey, sometimes ya gotta spice things up occasionally
Cheers to you,
J.T.