The Day After

The DREAM ACT didn't receive cloture on the senate floor yesterday. Most of you already know that. While the journalists might be somewhat disappointed, their job is to find the stories, so there isn't time or need for grieving. For the politicians, surely Durbin feels something, at least disappointment that his political clout wasn't strong enough to overturn the current anti-immigration sentiment. Sessions and McConnell are probably happy today.

The real question is: how are the DREAM ACT students? Some are in shock, some cried, some were angry; others couldn't sleep last night- they wonder what could happen next.

This might have felt like a last ditch effort. We may want to be optimistic, but the current political climate has made most American voters and their representatives blind to anything or anyone that was not Born in the USA. That is their only criteria.

Unfortunately, the DREAM ACT kids weren't born here, and we can't magically go back in time and change their location of birth. This isolated criteria is making our country look like something medieval, where only those born to the nobility count, and everyone elses life means nothing. We have gone retrograde to a time where logic and reason have been lost. Ideology now determines the future of the country.

What people don't understand if the bill were passed, the DREAM ACT kids would be the ones to lead the way. The paradox is that they would feel more American than those of us lucky enough to be born here. Who else works so hard, uses all resources available, respects societal rules, and would have such a bright future? Talk about the American work ethic - they are the prime example of what many of us don't have anymore.

We are producing kids that believe that World of Warcraft is more important than food. The high achievers are programmed like robots from an early age, with their own appointment books so they can list their daily classes or instructions. Even their play times have to be scheduled.

For the rest, its World of Warcraft or some other video game, floating through high school, coming to love their computer more than the people around them.

DREAM ACT kids are different. I can say that because not only have I had many as students, but also because I've been working on a book about the DREAM ACT for the last 18 months. Its been a revelatory experience.

The students I know are telling me to finish the book quickly; maybe it will help get the bill passed. Perhaps it would, but more importantly, for anything to happen the U.S. will need to have sometype of brain shift - The problem is that there is no model to follow from the past. This type of globalization is new, as are recent societal movements, practices, and rapidly changing technology - America is reacting to this by hiding its head in the sand - and when it does look out at the world it hallucinates monsters and destruction.


photo: WWI, http://www.mises.org/images4/CenturyOfWarCrop.jpg