Commentary
“Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free / The wretched refuse of your teeming shore / Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me / I lift my lamp beside the golden door” –Emma Lazarus
Given the current state of current affairs, isn’t it sobering to note the poet’s last name? We can use a bit of resurrection. Of my America.
And yours.
I am the son and grandson of immigrants. My family’s name and those of my ancestors are all over the Ellis Island American Immigrant Wall of Honor, standing with Lady Liberty for more than a century. A cousin of mine visited there awhile back. She was moved to tears seeing our ancestors’ names listed in perpetuity.
As Norwegians gravitated to the frozen wildes of Minnesota, Italians headed for temperate farmland, including northern Nevada. My family followed the pattern of countless others. Work wherever you could find it, any honest labor. Move up to public service: cops, firefighters, trash collectors, postal workers, bus drivers, construction laborers.
Save your money. Start small businesses. Above all, send your children to school.
My grandparents, my mother, my father and all my relatives worked in the blistering heat of Fresno to provide for their families. My grandfather died long before I was born, driving a big truck home from the fields.
My father was a passenger on that ill-fated flatbed, along with many of his siblings, children and teens.
Alas and alack, the richest, most powerful nation in history remains so disappointingly tribal despite having one of the most educated populations on earth.
The myth is that America is a product of fortunate geography: “Surrounded on three sides by fish,” carped legendary German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck.
All we had to do to “settle” this rich wilderness was steal it from “Indians” who had been here just 20 or so millennia before Leif Erikson and Columbus “discoveries.”
Our natural resources are indeed tremendous. But luck is only one dimension. At the time of the American Revolution, we had a surprisingly educated populace. That’s the underlying reason why this fragile representative democracy worked.
“Democracy without education becomes tyranny without mitigation” an old professor of mine regularly quoted.
“Capitalism without regulation is tyranny,” as Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., often puts it.
Last week, sad new statistics showed that the top one percent, the richest of wealthy Americans, own more than the entire middle class.
Four decades ago, an obscure Democratic Nevada congressional candidate ran to help the shrinking middle class. By 1983, it had already dwindled by nine percent. A fair and equal society was always a goal, the American Dream. We never got there, but it’s now further away than perhaps it’s ever been.
Over the years, I’ve occasionally published a list of the top 10 things necessary to fix the republic. Every time I revisit the chart, nothing much has changed. (Barbwire 12-8-2021)
The 2020 election wasn’t rigged, but the economic system is damn sure stacked against us little people — all the way down to the prices of prescriptions, gasoline and groceries. (Barbwire 11-29-2023)
Even a frog jumps out of a pot of water when the heat’s on. Americans spring toward saviors, charlatans and poltroons.
All those thousands of unkempt travelers on our southern border are not our problem, they are our solution. Screen them. House them. Feed them.
Educate their children. They will make us prosperous and proud.
Sealing the Golden Door shut resulted in depredations like shiploads of Jews being sent back to Germany and Hitler’s ovens.
We are all cousins, descendants of the fabled Lucy and her ancient African ancestors. The differences between us are slight, almost cosmetic.
As the late Stanford University Prof. Luigi Cavalli-Sforza often said, genetically you can make a case for four, five or 15,000 “races.” The term is meaningless, just a bumper sticker way of pigeonholing “the other.”
Wise man George Carlin repeatedly admonished, “take care of each other.”
We fail to do so at our peril.
PAYBACK’S A BITCH. Trumpista Congressperson Elise Stefanik, R-NY, made worldwide press last week trashing three university presidents with a “when did you stop beating your wife” kind of question. Marjorie Taylor had to been green with envy.
“Ms. Stefanik is both a graduate and critic of Harvard,” The New York Times reported Monday.
“Several years ago, after student complaints, Harvard removed Ms. Stefanik from the board of its Institute for Politics over her repeated false statements about the 2020 election results. She charged her alma mater with ‘caving in to the woke left.’ And last week, she exacted a measure of revenge,” the Times concluded.
She has aced her audition for a second Trump term cabinet appointment.
THIS EXPLAINS IT. I’ve been tipped about local disappointment that Macy’s is no longer a purveyor of mid-priced stylish merchandise but has regressed toward blah Chinese imports. I think I know why.
A school of Wall Street sharks is willing to pay more than $1 billion above the chain’s market value to take the venerable brand private. Rape and pillage, one more time. Buy the horse, run it into the ground, sell the barn, then cut up the carcass for parts. (Kinda like what happened to the Reno Gazette-Journal and Harrah’s Auto Collection, among many others.) The nation’s largest department store chain has buzzards circling.
SAVE THE HISTORIC SPARKS RAILROAD ROUNDHOUSE from Union Pacific’s vultures, dammit. Reno incurred still-owed decades of expensive debt paying for UP’s $60 million money pit, the downtown railroad trench.
Isn’t that enough?
Hope you and yours are enjoying Happy High Holly Days Christmas/Kwanzaa/Solstice/Festivus/Chanukah/Thanksgibleting Feliz Navidad, próspero año y felicidad HAPPY NEW YEAR / Feliz Año Nuevo / Felice Anno Nuovo Frohe Weihnachten und beste Wuensche fuer 2024
Vaxx up, stay safe, pray for Ukraine and almost 100 other currently war-torn lands.
Be well. Raise hell. / Esté bien. Haga infierno.
Andrew Quarantino Barbáno is a 54-year Nevadan and editor of NevadaLabor.com/ Barbwire by Barbano has originated in the Tribune since 1988. E-mail barbano@frontpage.reno.nv.us
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