I appreciate the time my readers spend analyzing my reflections on the world each week. I also value the time when I get to invest in family and friends, particularly during the holidays. So, I’m taking a break to be fully present with the people I love until the first Sunday in January 2026 this year. If you’re looking for something to read, please use this time to read or re-read one of my many past posts.
Misplaced Resentment
It’s human to pursue a comfortable and fulfilling life. It’s also human to want to pass on a good lifestyle to our children and grandchildren. I think humans are very basic in their needs as Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs posits. Once our basic needs for food and shelter and safety are met, we seek connection to others and personal fulfilment. I’m thankful that my basic needs are comfortably met by the grace of God, my own hard work, and the lucky time and place in which I was born. Of course, it helped to have a warm, smart and supportive mother who convinced me that I could succeed and who sacrificed much to ensure that I had opportunities. She went to bat for me on several occasions to ensure I could go through certain doors.
I wasn’t born a slave like my close ancestors and legal segregation was just ending as I grew up. Even though I was a top student, it took Affirmative Action to open the previously closed doors to prestigious universities and professional employment. It took an end to housing discrimination to allow me to purchase a home in a safe and high economic growth area with excellent schools. These are all required to build a comfortable and prosperous life in this country. I enjoyed connections and personal fulfillment. Building generational emotional and financial wealth is a top priority for me, so I invest heavily in the futures of my children and grandchildren.
The troubling thing is that too many people wish to return to the days when opportunities were reserved for white men only and when talent, ambition, and a great work ethic mean less than the whiteness of someone’s skin color. If we were to deport all the smart, hardworking, talented and creative non-white immigrants and dry up the opportunities for ambitious women and people of color, this country will collapse under its own incompetence, ignorance, and lack of talent.
It was our diversity and immigration that built this country. These have been our strengths. The white pilgrims wouldn’t have survived without the help of the native people already living here when they arrived. Innovation, intelligence, problem-solving skills, a great work ethic, and competence exist within all skin colors and so does ambition and the pursuit of a comfortable and a fulfilling life. Our superpower as a nation has come from attracting the most determined among humanity to live and work within our borders. Just getting here is an act of courage, tenacity, and faith. I wouldn’t be so quick to turn people like that away.
The only people who are angry about immigrants are the under-educated, under-motivated, and the lazy. They are the people unable to compete, so they want to eliminate the competition. Politicians have convinced them that all their problems will be solved if they get rid of the immigrants who came here seeking a better life and who willingly employ their hard work, innovation, and skills that make this country stronger. Many even serve in the military. Whether they are here legally after navigating a ridiculously laborious and expensive (and broken) immigration system or they are here illegally by crossing the border or overstaying their visa, on the whole they contribute more to the country than they are taking from it. They pay taxes. They commit far fewer crimes than the general population. They start and support businesses. And they don’t collect from the public safety pools they pay into like Social Security or Medicare. My solution is not an open border, but a smart and reliable, fully funded immigration system that has more immigration judges than ICE agents.
It is in our collective best interest to educate immigrant children and to provide basic healthcare. The very people who complain about immigrants have forgotten that legal immigration is a relatively new process and has always been riddled with racism, fraud, and inefficiencies. Elon Musk broke the terms of his visa and Melania Trump wasn’t even eligible for the visa she obtained. Our immigration system has never made sense, but it has served the wealthy and the white businessmen who covet cheap exploitable labor. They have kept it that way by buying lawmakers.
When they arrive, new immigrants come with a plan. They will work their fingers to the bone in menial jobs with the understanding that their children will be U.S. citizens who will get an education and become professionals. I have yet to meet an older immigrant family with a son or daughter who isn’t college-educated and working as a professional. This has been my experience for years. All of my doctors are either first or second-generation immigrants. My dentist is a naturalized citizen. Many of the researchers and professors I worked with at the University were first and second-generation immigrants. The tech bros that so many admire are almost all first and second-generation immigrants. Trump finally acknowledged that most native-born Americans lack the math, engineering, scientific and technical skills needed to carry modern industry forward.
Only the insecure who are unable or unwilling to complete support immigration policies that kidnap people without due process and lock them up before deporting them. The brain-drain at our universities has begun and the days when wealthy people with actual criminal and corrupt ways can buy their way into the country and a path to citizenship for $1 million dollars is here. The best and the brightest are finding their way to other countries where education, research, hard work, and innovation are valued. As we cut education and research funding while also cutting immigration, the U.S. will soon find itself with a shortage of doctors, engineers, scientists, and other professionals who provide the services we all depend on. These are the children of immigrant farm workers, brick layers, taxi drivers, and manicurists.
While ignorant Americans applaud cruel immigration raids, degrade education and expertise, gorge on Fox News, and abuse drugs, they are failing to realize that AI poses a real threat to their emotional and financial well-being if it is not regulated. As prices soar, jobs disappear, services become scarce, and the social safety net is removed, they will wake up to discover that their resentment was misplaced. The jobs immigrants took didn’t go to them, but to AI robots. The schools, housing, and healthcare they thought immigrants stole from them are unaffordable. They’ll find that their voices of dissent have been silenced and no legitimate journalist will tell their story. They will discover a true lack of freedom to pursue the life, liberty and happiness upon which our country was founded and they will remain at the bottom of Maslow’s Hierarchy scrounging for food, shelter and safety.
Unregulated AI will certainly worsen the plight of many Americans, but the under-educated xenophobes who struggle to meet their most basic needs on Maslow’s Hierarchy today will have an even harder time tomorrow. I wonder how long it will take them to finally realize that immigrants were never their problem in the first place.
American Angst
I have one of those friendly faces that encourages people to open up and spill the beans about their lives. And what I’ve learned lately from my daily encounters is that people are anxious, angry, and aware that things are going south very quickly. This past Wednesday, in the nail salon, I had some brief conversations that exemplify some of the issues people are worried about. That was followed by a lengthy conversation in Costco on Thursday and a complaint session lead by my game partner that lasted the entire hour and a half of Bocce on Friday.
On Wednesday, the first thing I noticed, but didn’t address as soon as I sat down at my usual nail station were the ring cameras set up all around the salon. I had long been concerned about their “cash only” operation and the potential for robbery, but I can only guess that fear of desperate people because of the economic downturn or the potential for an ICE raid of a shop employing Vietnamese immigrants must have motivated this drastic change. I didn’t ask for an explanation. Just a few months before, I’d unsettled the peaceful nail spa when I expressed my annoyance that they had Fox News on their large screen television. I, along with several other customers, convinced them not to trust Fox News and they haven’t had it on since.
On this day, the owners of the salon had on a compilation of 80’s music accompanied by video clips of beautiful scenic roads. Having traveled to places like Hawaii, Alaska, Switzerland, and Canada, I knew firsthand that such idyllic scenes existed. I commented how much I appreciated the beautiful scenes and that I wished there was a label identifying the locations of each of them. The owner doing my nails casually replied that they might be AI generated. The customer beside me expressed her confusion and disappointment that we could no longer tell the difference. I agreed and shared that I recently heard an AI engineer say that soon we will only be able to trust the things we see in real time with our own eyes. We all expressed great disappointment in that kind of future.
As previously mentioned, the owners of the salon are Vietnamese immigrants. For a few minutes, the husband turned the channel to watch a Vietnamese immigration attorney. I couldn’t understand what was being said and turned my attention elsewhere. But within minutes, the husband turned to me and said that he just learned that Trump was no longer going to allow people like him to have more than one passport. Apparently, they have dual citizenship. He asked if that meant he would have to obtain a visa to travel back to his home country. They travel to Vietnam frequently and he was concerned. Our conversation turned to the newly announced immigration bans, the removal of protective status, the ICE raids, and Steven Miller’s push to revoke green cards and even citizenship. There was a collective sigh throughout the salon. The angst was real.
I’m always shocked these days by how quickly most conversations turn into a litany of complaints about the Epstein files, illegal bombings of fishing boats by the Navy, brutal ICE raids, blatant corruption, the outrageous pardon of yet another criminal, some revengeful firing or prosecution of anyone who tried to hold him accountable, funding cuts to education, research and public programs, higher prices, the revoking of the professional status of professionals, the rolling back of environmental protections, the ballroom, and the lining of his pockets. The corruption, cruelty, and incompetence are unlike anything we have ever seen, and people are beside themselves with anxiety and anger mixed with a feeling of hopelessness. My husband’s anger and anxiety are no longer tempered, but on fully display as each new outrage crosses his news feed.
I feel those things, too. I just try to remind myself that it is my duty to resist. I resist by not ignoring the wrongdoing and acknowledging it. I resist by supporting candidates at all levels who will oppose his policies, hold him accountable, and do what is best for the country. I resist by participating in protests, boycotts, and writing campaigns while also supporting the organizers (like Indivisible) with donations. I resist by subscribing to reliable online journalism like NPR, More Perfect Union, and The New York Times. I resist by donating to organizations that defend our Constitution in court like the ACLU, Democracy Forward, and the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. I resist by using my small social media presence to post my disapproval of current events. And most importantly, I resist by being a good human in my community and by encouraging others to do the same. I realized on Friday that I resist by talking about it, listening to others vent about, and encouraging participation in resistance efforts. I will no longer shy away from public conversations. Gone are the days of polite conversation when our country is on fire.
With an approval rating of 36%, it is evident that we still need to convince Americans who are either unaware, apathetic, or complicit that this current state of affairs is not only indecent, intolerable, and destructive, but it is unstainable for a nation to thrive with lawlessness, cruelty, a lack of investment in its people, and total incompetence. I’m convinced that the power of the people is greater than the people in power when we rise up together.