The Earth Hearing

by Daniel Plonix

  For a moment, no one had anything to say.

  Susan turned to her friend. “Mass immigration—yes or no?”

  Lee chewed thoughtfully. “Well,” she said mildly. “One thing occurred to me. Do you guys wait hours in an emergency room wistfully thinking, ‘If only it was more crowded’? Or drive down the freeway wistfully thinking, ‘Won’t it be wonderful if there was more traffic on it’?” Lee put the now-empty paper plate on the table. She rubbed her hands on her jeans. “In the last twenty years, the United States went from about 266 to 321 million people, and the increase has been almost entirely due to immigrants and their offspring.”

  Galecki and Susan were listening intently. Lee was surprised Bran­don did, too. She shrugged. “Looking into the decades ahead, I find nothing appealing about swelling the population by another one hundred million newcomers and their descendants,” she said, her voice subdued. “It would mean laying further waste to the remaining pristine areas owing to the need to convert more open spaces to strip malls, agric­ultural fields, power plants, landfills, and roads. There is nothing appealing about accelerating the pace in which we exhaust the Central Plains aquifer.”

  “It’s pretty selfish outlook, Lee,” said Brandon. But he seemed unsure.

  “I suppose.” She tucked her long legs under, staring at the pool outside. “And I suppose if I weren’t selfish, I would have invited a few homeless families to move into my big-ass house, too.” And that summed it up, Lee thought in wry amusement. Susan and Galecki were the Old Guard: shuffling toward the exit. Brandon was the new face of America: born in a country already devoid of true communities, had never known hardship, and lacked cojones, no balls. Heather was way out in the left field: borders did not even register with her­—that is, when it came to those in Western countries. And all of them operated from within certain narratives: acknowledging supporting facts and air-brushing inconvenient and troublesome ones.

  “David?” Susan turned to the old man. “You have been quiet. I am curious about your opinion on this.”

  “Well,” David said. “I have mixed feelings.”

  “You listen to what he has to say,” said Mr. Galecki. “His people have come together from the four corners of the world, yet within a few decades melded into one cohesive, distinct nation of Israel.”

  Heather gestured toward David. “There’s an example of diversity being a strength.”

  But David shook his head. “Diversity has been a weakness and a hurdle. One which we eventually overcame. Mostly.” He grimaced but then returned to his point. “Here is what you need to understand. We did not go around parading ourselves as Romanian-Israelis or Yemeni-Israelis—much as you do. If you ever want to be more than a disjointed collection of communities sharing little more than a vague sense of economic opportunity, drop it.”

  Heather narrowed her eyes but held her tongue.

  “What do you think about the situation at present?” inquired Susan.

  David said, “When I lived here in the early sixties, you spoke one language, cherished the same heroes, and believed in your country.” He was silent for a moment. “Your loss of confidence in your own Western heritage and national identity, coupled with the prevailing multicultural doctrine, unravel your society. You have lost the common ethos, common founding myth, common first principles.” The old man’s smile held a touch of sadness. “I can think of no worse timing for a country to have its gates flung wide open for millions of foreigners to pour in.” But he sensed his message was coming too late. Decades too late.

  All the same, he looked up. “America is a nation, not an idea or a medley of abstractions. America is made up of people connected by a web of associations, attached to their land, and share an inherited reservoir of assumptions and sensibilities. Cultivate this.

  “Absent an overriding sense of national identity, you leave the ground fertile for internal unrest and disarray—attested by Libya, Yugoslavia, and India. As one of your people wrote, Having a functioning democracy requires a people who feel attached to one another. National loyalty gives everyone in society a common interest that transcends internal power struggles. Only on this basis is it possible to have citizens with equal rights and reciprocal obligations, living together under the rule of law. This arrangement, in turn, makes possible the social trust that lubricates everyday life and the market economy.”

  David went on, “I strolled once in Nuevo Laredo, just south of the border. It felt like being back in Israel, people walked in the streets with a distinct feeling they belong to one large tribe. In contrast, your ever-more divergent population groups seem to be held together with spit and baling wire.”

  “Assimilation is the key,” announced Susan.

  Galecki shrugged. “With tens of millions of members, the Latino community is a bloc onto its own. And let us be honest here,” he said. “With a sense that a part of our territory rightfully belongs to Mexico, at least some of them arrive with the attitude of reclamation rather than assimilation. It’s intimated by the waving of Mexican flags during certain protests and by singing the Honduran national anthem by migrant caravans working their way up to our border.”

  “I’d a related experience,” David chimed in. “A few years back, a friend of the family in Los Angeles took us to a match between the US and Mexican national soccer teams. The crowd booed and catcalled during the US anthem. Not only did the Hispanics in attendance cheered wildly for the team of their native, former country, but also seemed to derive joy in having their own country, the United States, take a beating. I was sitting there wondering, beyond a haven and financial benefits, what does the United States mean to these particular immigrants? What message do they impart to their kids?”

  “Say what you will, I love the growing diversity in our country,” declared Brandon.

  “Bully for you,” said Galecki dryly but stopped himself from rolling his eyes. “But it appears diversity doesn’t love itself all that much—at least not in the massive doses we have had in the last generation or two. Seems to me that substantial ethnic diversity and lack of common culture and outlook within a given area degrade communities and inhibits deep social bonds—the little we still retain. People tend to withdraw from community life and cooperate less. Social trust goes down. Since when having less cohesiveness, less common values and shared outlook been a strength for society?”

  They were so not getting it, Heather thought and took pity on the old people in the room, people who were stuck in outmoded notions. “It is simply time to move on to a universalist society upholding the right of human mobility,” she said quietly. “Down with the gated communities of the world.”

  “And you think we will get there by making people of European stock minorities in their own countries?” inquired Susan.

  “It’s a start,” Heather replied. “Their reigning hierarchy of power and privilege is over.” She looked at Mr. Galecki and her smile held a note of mockery.

  “You would have looked more convincing wearing a Lenin cap,” he told her.

  She ignored this. “America is finally becoming the multicultural nation it was always meant to be. And the torch is being passed on to people of color, who make up most of humanity.”

  “The last days of majority white America.” Galecki regarded the woman with the short, boyish haircut. “As from this year onward, white non-­Hispanic babies are in the minority, so yes, at this point, it is already inevitable. It won’t be long before all of us in this room will be a racial minority in our country.”

  “Yup,” announced Heather. She helped herself to a kiwi on the gleaming tray. “You old crackers will never change. Doesn’t matter. Soon enough your generation will come to pass and clear the way.” While I play a sad song for you on the world’s smallest violin, she thought and smiled inwardly.

  Galecki climbed to his feet. “And on this cheerful note, you will excuse me, I am going out for a sm
oke.” He opened the glass door and went to the broad terrace. David rose, murmured something, and went outside, joining Galecki.

  Doesn’t Heather’s view offer a way out and forward—a global, cosmopolitan society? transmitted Lee.

  Things are not what they appear, came Aratta’s response. Dig a bit under the surface of what she is saying and I suspect you will find something far more narrowly construed, less benign, and not thought-out.

  Chapter 22

  Galecki offered David a cigarette. The older man accepted, lit it, and puffed a few times. They both admired the view, enjoying the fresh air and the serenity of it all.

  “Tell me,” prompted David, “what does the public wish in the matter of immigration?”

  Galecki gave a little shrug. “Throughout the seventies and eighties, almost all surveyed Americans opposed increased immigration—yet the rate more than doubled during that period.” He blew out smoke. “What the public may or may not want is moot. After all, this is not a democracy; congressmen take their marching orders in critical numbers from those who fund their reelection campaigns, or potential employers once they leave office.” He noted David’s skeptical expression. “And when it is not a career move by politicians, it is the activists. They know how to work the Byzantine, bureaucratic state organ and coax the desired results.” He added, “Can’t forget inertia, either; it’s all but impossible to make real changes, of any kind.”

  David considered this for a moment. “Aren’t you overstating things?”

  “I don’t think so,” replied Galecki. “A recent study tracked policy decisions of the government for the last thirty-five years and their corre­lation to the wishes of the average voter. Whether 10 or 90 percent of the average voters wished something, the chances of a policy being adopted did not change—unlike the wishes of Big Business. Things nudge their way.”

  “And what of the activists you mentioned?”

  Galecki said gruffly, “From Abolish Ice and Antifa to Pueblo Sin Fronteras and the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops—it’s a constellation of hundreds of organizations that provide political air cover, medical care, food, and shelters to migrants who work their way up to our border. Volunteer social-workers run soup kitchens and first-aid stations. Volunteer lawyers host law seminars, helping migrants to game the system or sue the US government. For all intents and purposes, these organizations and networks operate under the banner ‘No borders, no wall! Sanctuary for all.’”

  David muttered something to himself in Yiddish. He then walked over and sat down on a wood bench. Galecki joined him.

  “I must say, I appreciated back there your forthrightness about immigration,” the older professor commented. “This is still the land of the free and home of the brave.”

  Galecki’s laughter was tinged with bitterness. “I am afraid we are neither free nor brave, myself included. This kind of talk would have landed me in heaps of trouble with HR at work and got me hazed online—had I still been employed or had a social media presence. Righteous mob is a force to be reckoned with, once again. More-enlightened-than-thou heresy hunters and Maoist PC brigade members can materialize like mushrooms after rain, calling one’s employer or vendors.”

  “Is it really as bad as that?”

  “I exaggerate. But there is always the possibility.” His expression grew thoughtful. “For one, every few months there is a major show trial where a prominent person is targeted and brought down—canceled, ghosted.” In the grand scheme of things, the number of such “show trials” was nil, but coupled with lower-profile more frequent online mob attacks, they had a chilling effect on the general population. Ever since the Great Awokening, no one failed to note the speed with which organizations caved-in to mobs wielding a PC cudgel.

  “A show trial?” David looked at him quizzically.

  “Parties with vested interest comb through what the target has ever written or said—hunting for any evidence of wrongthink or of taint by association.” Galecki’s mouth turned downward in distaste. “Once the person is unmasked, it’s fun and pitchforks time: everyone, from the media to celebrities to keyboard warriors, is asked to partake in a collective gleeful outrage, calling for the person’s head via tweets, letters to stakeholders, and online petitions. Employers, affiliated organizations, sponsors, and colleagues all start to distance themselves from the target least they will draw the attention of the swarm. The subject is made to publicly abase himself, after which he is professionally shunned, excommunicated, marginalized. This Cultural Revolution has no word for ‘forgiveness.’”

  The professor was listening intently.

  Galecki gave a resigned shrug. “We have a dictatorship of the proletariat. So why speak out and risk getting in the crosshairs of the PC commissariat? Who except for retirees and the independently wealthy can afford to indulge in courage and idealism? Who else can afford to risk being unmasked as a nazi-racist-bigot-homophobe-sexist-transphobe, or otherwise be savaged by an army of righteous crybullies?”

  “Being unmasked as a Nazi, huh?”

  They both chuckled at that.

  Galecki shrugged. “The closest most of them have ever gotten to see Nazis was watching First Order officers in Star Wars. They have no clue. At any rate, for them ‘racist’ or ‘Nazi’ are just smear words, divested of any real meaning. Much as ‘Trotskyite’ or ‘wrecker’ during Stalin’s time.

  “From their parents’ basement, they unleash chest-thumping, brave online posts. And while seated on the toilet, they rain fire-and-brimstone tweets. Those are coddled people who’ve never experienced chronic acute hunger or crushing oppression. They negotiate the feverish social injustices they’ve dreamed up in the virtual world they spend time in. Playacting a starring role, they enact and reenact inflection points from the past when oppression and discrimination was overcome.”

  He grinned savagely. “Just the other day, a crowd of middle-­class whites in Bristol, England, toppled a statue of Edward Colston, a philanthropist English merchant involved in black slave trade over three hundred years ago. They stomped on the fallen statue with rage and glee, in a scene reminiscent of the toppling of Saddam Hussein’s statue, symbolizing the end of his tyrannical rule. These intrepid freedom-fighters in Bristol would blanch at the thought of publicly criticizing, let alone doing something, about the black slave auctions ran by Arab Muslims that are happening right now, down south, in multiple towns—from Zuwara to Gadamis—across western Libya.”

  He glanced at the old man next to him. “Perhaps you, David, maintain a free country, where you can shout from the rooftops unsanctioned views. I wouldn’t know. But here we hunker down and self-censor.

  “In a recent purge of undesirables, an LA Galaxy player lost his job over a couple of ‘racist’ and ‘violent’ online posts made by his wife in reference to some looters and rioters. He formally and publicly disavowed his wife’s posts, but to no avail. A UBC assistant basketball coach lost his job because he liked a post on Twitter that sought to discredit the Black Lives Matter political movement. An editor at the Philadelphia Inquirer lost his job over a headline that read, ‘Buildings Matter, Too,’ written by him in the heels of buildings destroyed by rioters. An NBA announcer lost his job in a sports talk radio program after tweeting ‘all lives matter.’ Former cabinet minister lost his job as a CBC commentator and in two major companies after saying he didn’t think Canada was systemically racist.”

  “Others observe and take note of it; they thread cautiously and speak measuredly.” Galecki sighed. “We discussed immigration. Well, no white I personally know of wants to live cheek by jowl with Guatemalans or Salvadorans, aspires to have them in large numbers in their kids’ classrooms, or desires to bring them into the country by the millions. Yet, people won’t speak up about it. Instead, they pick up the flute and play a loony tune along with the rest of the band. As someone noted, We live in an era where truth is not determined by
objective reality, but by fear of consequences from the mob if you don’t accept and amplify their version of it.”

  He added softly, “One must also be careful what is said around the kids at home; they may inadvertently repeat some of it in school. Hell, in today’s world, university students are advised to purge their social media pages from wrongspeak long before graduation.” People self-censor long enough, thought Galecki, and the untruths get internalized. They become one’s reality.

  The two smoked silently for a while.

  David remarked, “I take it, immigration is the big thing individuals self-censor around here.”

  Galecki chewed on this for a second, then shook his head in the negative.

  “There is something bigger?”

  Galecki took a drag on his cigarette.

  David waited patiently for the other to speak.

  “Three weeks ago, over fifty blacks rampaged through the Midget Football Carnival in Pennsville, New Jersey.” He sighed. “They beat parents, and they beat their kids. Two days ago, yet another large mob of black teens, at the Florida State Fair in Tampa, destroyed property throughout the fairgrounds. Kids got punched in the face, pushed down, stomped on.” He regarded David through a haze of cigarette smoke. “Think of these episodes as recreational violence by blacks. It is taboo to speak out about such things or think about them for too long.”

  David cocked his head. “Blacks, you say?”

  “Some blacks,” Galecki said immediately. “Some other blacks are police commissioners, judges, architects, engineers, and scientists.” He had always felt frustrated trying to describe the group in question. “When we speak of hooliganism among black Americans, we really think of some segments of the Ebonics subculture.” He grimaced. “But in America, whether a person is a recent Igbo immigrant from London, or adopted and raised by a white family in Montana, or lived all his life in Baltimore, well, in America they are all just ‘blacks’: members of a monolithic culture that never was, people who are alleged to share similar behavioral traits and outlook due to their race. It maps poorly on reality.” He glanced at David apologetically. “Yet, I am afraid that, like most people here, I’m too entrenched in the existing lousy linguistic framework.”