Culture Shock

This is a series of comments of things that have come to the point of really giving me unease feeling about the American society today. But before you reject me as just another angry “old fart” doing a lot of complaining about the modern world that seemed to passed me by, you might want to consider that a great many good things were done for this country through the hard work and sacrifice of many millions of people who are now old and more than a "little restlessness discontent." At least some of us had intelligence, common sense, and a long series of educational experiences, so it’s quite possible that some of what I have say could have value.

Yes, I'm 74, who started my working career at age of 9 or 10 helping my Dad with his trailer house building business in Salem, Oregon - this was serious to my little family. Why? It put food on our dinner table every night. I worked through high school, and every summer vacation, painting houses, setting bowling pins at the neighborhood bowling alley, as quite a few did in those days. The Korean War was going on back then I joined the Army National Guard to stand guard against the Red Threat. I didn’t need a jaunt to Europe to find myself, I joined the Navy to travel and see the world. Most already knew a lot about who we were, and what we wanted to do. Although I didn’t vote for John Kennedy - I loved his inaugural address and cried like an Irishman that I am when he fell to an assassin’s bullet.

I'm fed up with people who are walking hair triggers, waiting eagerly for someone to say something that they can choose to interpret as a slight against their particular in-group, whether denoted by race, gender, religion, or any other characteristic. Our national motto is "E Pluribus Unum." This is how our Founders finally got 13 different and often fractious colonies to come together, in the idea that it is smarter and more effective to concentrate on those things which bind us together rather than those which separate us.

I'm fed up with immigrants who come to our country, but not to really become Americans and assimilate to some reasonable extent to the society as it existed here before they came. Instead, some insist on not only maintaining every bit of the culture and customs of their birth land, but also that this society must tolerate, support, and honor those customs no matter how foreign they are to us. In effect, they demand the right to transport their way of life here, and their true loyalties are to that way of life, that homeland, while they live a better life here than they ever could there, by taking full advantage of every facet of our society. All who came here in the past found it possible to maintain their cultures within the framework of our laws and social contract; you can find Italian, Greek, Polish, German, Cuban, Vietnamese, Filipino, etc, in neighborhoods scattered throughout our cities. In these places the people celebrate their native holidays, food, and social customs, without any conflict with the rest of society, and without any demands for special treatment. Anyone who has a heart they keep closed against America should go and live where their heart really belongs.

I'm fed up above all with the creation and growth of the all powerful, faceless, arbitrary bureaucracy. I’m sure everyone has a story or two of absolute frustration trying to deal with some federal, state, or local bureau, and how eventually they had to accept their own powerlessness and just endure the situation.

After all has been said and done, my great-grandfather come to America, through the system of the time, filling out the paperwork, sweltering in steerage, standing in line at Ellis Island and answering all the questions. His first job - he worked building railroads across the dusty plains of Texas. And he probably didn’t understand the American society at first, and was certainly subject to all the prejudices and discrimination that most Irishmen immigrants faced; yet he worked hard and prospered on his homestead in Kansas, and gave his children and grandchildren a much better life, and many more opportunities, than they would of had in Ireland. Here’s to Archy Brown my Irish great-grandfather!

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