[FRIAM] Los "países de mierda" le dejan millones de dólares a EE.UU.

[Steven A Smith]

Cody -

As Vietnam and the related Conscription of young men approached (like a
freight train) in my teens, I seriously considered self-exile from the
US to avoid risking becoming yet another trained/habituated killer (or
more likely but not mutually exclusively a PTSD-damaged Veteran for
life).   I have friends who managed to serve during that time and become
neither, but the risk WAS significant.

I was living on the border of MX and spoke passable street Spanish and
felt I knew my way around in MX well enough to go there (first).  I had
enough sense of idealism to believe that if I "fled" this "service" I
would be forfeiting my rights to citizenship and should not plan to
return as so many of my peers did.  I was honestly trying to face being
a (voluntary) exile for life.  It was a useful thing to consider, and by
a small measure could be considered "forced exile" given the choices
(conscription or incarceration).   They rescinded the requirement to
sign up for "selective service" 4 months before I turned 18, and active
conscription had not happened for at least a year by that time (1974),
so I "dodged that bullet".   Many others here (a few years my senior)
had even more acute experiences of this time, either serving in the
military or using a variety of deferments (educational most often) to
put off their conscription long enough for the war to end, I don't know
if anyone here left the country or gave up their citizenship or accepted
" conscientious objector
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conscientious_objector>" status

It was confrontational to  ask myself "who would WANT me, if I rejected
my country of origin?"  I had no reason to believe any other country
would grant me citizenship, and at best would "tolerate me", most likely
by living under the radar as so many Central American immigrants do here
today.   I did not feel that I "deserved" the welcome haven Canada
offered, for example... I felt that while avoiding conscription was the
"right" (only) thing for me to do, that I deserved to serve some kind of
penance in the shadow of it.   I felt somewhat like a political refugee.

While *I* was born and raised entirely in the US Southwest (AZ/NM) I
lived primarily among people who could claim significantly deeper roots
than I.   Native Americans who could claim lineage back for millenia,
Navajo/Hispanics whose legacy nominally begins in the 1400s/1500s in
this area, and in some cases (like Frank Wimberly), Anglos whose
grandparents were here.  While my most recent European immigrant
ancestor was a single great-grandmother from Poland (mid 1800s), my
parents moved west from KY after WWII.

As an adult, I have looked mildly at trying to emigrate to other
countries such as NZ/AU or Canada.   Even when I was relatively young
(i.e. under 40) I did not feel that welcome there... on the surface of
it, I felt that they considered *any* immigrant to be a potential
burden.  At 60, I have no illusions that any country (especially with
good socialized medicine) would want me to come and burden them with my
old age.   There are always considerations offered for people bringing
acutely needed skills and/or big piles of cash with them.   Many third
world countries DO offer permanent resident visas for "pensioners",
people who bring their retirement savings/income to their countries and
spend it there... and similarly most countries accept people who can
demonstrate their resources and ability to start up a significant
business there.   Gary Schlitz can probably illuminate us on this a bit
better from his vantage point in Ecuador. 

We may have a few other such "expats" in the crowd, as well as a number
of folks from outside the US.  I believe *most* of our constituency here
from outside the US is from Europe but at least a handful from
elsewhere.   It feels like the EU "solved" many problems with
Nationalism by adopting a common currency and lowering their borders to
work and trade, but are now suffering some of the dark side of it in
exchange.

As we continue to "automate" our labor, including many skills formerly
held to require humans (will machine-learning/AI deprecate programmers
in your lifetime?), it is more and more likely that many of us will have
no obvious skills to offer and will rely on the collective to agree to
provide access to goods and services as a "basic right".  

Even if we are not "deported" from our own homelands, we may be
"deprecated" if we do not work hard to shape our society around this new
reality.   The Industrial Revolution caused quite a stir, and folks like
the Luddites saw the writing on the wall of losing their livelihoods (
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luddite ).   Dystopian futures such as
Soylent Green caution us against building a future where *most* humans
are irrelevant and best considered a burden on the few who are not.  

This alone is good enough reason (to me) to fight against the
xenophobic, nationalistic forces afoot today who want to declare *some
humans* to be too irrelevant to be more than a burden.  Unfortunately we
also need to help shape a vision for a society which acknowledges this
shift in how humans can (and should or must?) participate in the larger
experience...   it isn't enough to demand "our rights".   While I do
agree with the realities/likelihood/undesirability of some of the
dystopian images that Conservatives and Libertarians caste of "nanny
states" and "welfare states", I don't agree with their implied
"solutions"...   I believe that humans are evolved to need meaningful
engagement in their lives, and the futures we are creating take that
away from most if not all, either through poverty or through "bread and
circuses".  

I fear that most of those who support(ed?) Donald Trump's ascendency do
not realize that the future(s) he offers are MUCH more dystopian for
them and their progeny than that offered by the dreaded "Socialists"
(Bernie) and "Bleeding Heart/Tax-Spend/Globalist Liberals" (Hillary) and
"Crunchy Granola Greens" (Jill).  If the "elitism" of being educated
scares them, the "elitism" of controlling the *only* means of
production/survival of controlling massive wealth should scare them much
more.   In my opinion FWIW.

- Steve




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