Robert Reich: "I wonder who these angry Americans are"

[babylonsister]

Robert Reich
4 mins ·

I’ve been watching media coverage of angry Americans at our southern border waiving signs and yelling slogans, insisting that the children – most of whom are refugees of the drug war we’ve created -- “go home” to the violence and death that war has created, and I wonder who these angry Americans are. I also wonder where their parents or grandparents or other ancestors came from, and what they were fleeing from or hoped for when they landed in America. I’m not suggesting we allow in anyone who wants to come here, but these are desperate children. Whatever happened to the generosity, decency, and big-heartedness of this country? Emma Lazarus’s poem engraved in 1903 on the Statue of Liberty reads: “Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of our teeming shore. Send these, the homeless tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!” Why are we now allowing the hateful side of America to take center stage?

[Fred Sanders]

1. The stage was given away to media corporations, now they decide who gets in the play.

[freshwest]

5. Agreed. And I'm finding the bleating about it disingenous. As if they didn't know.

[lunasun]

2. If you break it you need to pay for it - does not matter what the color is - The angry crowd looked

mostly of European descent
Refugees are mostly Indigenous Americans

Screwed victims of free trade and drug wars created to get US military bases in resistant SA & CA .....results of that came back to the USA now and ....Horrors !! Outrage!!!

[freshwest]

4. And would've preferred their homeland if they could make it there - just like the haters' ancestors.

Our foreign business interests made all of this happen and too many Americans just looked the other way while the money flowed in. Now the others have reached the breaking point, so they are coming to reclaim what was stolen from them. It was always going to happen, and no one can stop time.

JMHO.

[pipoman]

3. Perhaps some are those who's job Robert supported

The export of. ...

[Populist_Prole]

11. Blunt; but you've got a point there

I remember his views in the past on globalization as well.

[Hekate]

6. KnR.

I also wonder where their parents or grandparents or other ancestors came from, and what they were fleeing from or hoped for when they landed in America.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

7. It's the "I got mine" culture without the white sheets. Same song different different music.

[Snarkoleptic]

9. You beat me to it!

Spot on.

[Snarkoleptic]

8. I believe the "I've got mine, screw everyone else" mentality is at work here.

That plus racism, xenophobia, opportunistic/pandering politicians and Faux Newz hype.

[hfojvt]

10. "these are desperate children"

Too bad they are coming to a country where there are already 11 million here illegally.

"I'm not suggesting we allow in anyone who wants to come here"

but then he closes with a poem suggesting just that, and there do seem to be people quite willing to allow the 11 million (or so) who already came here illegally to stay here, just like we already did in the 1980s.

Then what happens when another ten million come here illegally? They certainly have an extra incentive to come, because they can expect to become legal citizens in ten or fifteen years, just like the last batch of illegal immigrants.

Robert Reich, of all people, is supposed to know damned well who those people are. They are the ordinary people who have been getting squeezed and stepped on over the last few decades. They are people who are afraid of the future for their very own kids and grandkids.

[Martin Eden]

12. "Why are we now allowing the hateful side of America to take center stage?"

The hateful side are free to express their hate, and they should be exposed to the light of day.

The real question is:
Why are so many other Americans nodding their heads in agreement with the haters or just apathetic to the plight of these children?