Why the hell do I care? I'm a white male in America. That's nothing to complain about. I haven't been exploited, oppressed, downtrodden, or discriminated against. I have been exploited, oppressed, downtrodden, and discriminated for.

And that really fucking bothers me. That, for my benefit, atrocities are committed daily the world over, whether it's to get me my gasoline for less that $4 a gallon or my t-shirt for less than $10. I am charged less because people I don't know half a world away are paid peanuts, uninsured and with no recourse to unions, as their air and water are polluted all in the name of American capitalism, or economic imperialism.

But why should I care? I don't have to pay so much for the things I like.

They want to keep the Mexicans out, say they're stealing jobs from us.

What jobs?

The jobs we've outsourced to China or India or those abysmal maquiladoras?

And what do I care anyway? I've got my job.

If I didn't have a job, I'd look for one.

If I'm overlooked for a job because someone else is willing to do it for less money, that's capitalism.

A competitive market. Right?

But what do I care?

If I get passed over for a job in favor of someone who barely speaks English, my shortcomings must have outweighed theirs.

That's the way it works.

All this bullshit about "illegal" or "alien" or "status" or "citizenship," so much fixation on where somebody is from, not where they're going.

I take it back, they don't care where somebody is "from." Ask any illegal Canadian.

They care that somebody is darker of pigment, speaks with an accent, can talk in a language that they can't understand. It makes them suspicious, paranoid, fearful.

Suspicion, paranoia, and fear make people stupid. Stupid as fuck.

Too stupid to see that they are trampling the beauty they claim to protect, corrupting what they want to keep pure, denying to others that same Dream they cling to for themselves, pissing on the graves of the noble spirits they invoke to defend their selfish ways.

Jesus was a hippie. Jesus was a Commie. There is no Christian Capitalism, not if you want me to believe those words mean what you say they mean. Pick a side. Make sense.

I love America, and I love the people who love America. I love the people who want to make this their home, and possess enough of the spirit of Civil Disobedience to jump over the fences and the frivolous and unnecesarily long and difficult process of legal immigration, thereby making proud Thoreau, Patrick Henry, Ben Franklin, or any of the rest of our Proud American Criminals.

But what do I care? I'm in. If they're in, or if they're out, what difference does it really make to me, to my life?

The worse things are for everyone below me, the better off I am. Right? Isn't that how it works?

Can we find some other way to make it work? Some way that involves compassion, cooperation, equality?

Some way that further elevates our species, past our territorial animalistic impulses and into our more human, more spiritual tendency to love one another unconditionally?

But what the fuck do I care? I'm doing well enough to be complacent.