Local Opinion: The American puzzle

A thousand miles south of Tucson, a trickle of immigrants begins an inexorable march toward our border in the hope of sharing the American Dream. Brave men, women, and children scale mountains, ford rivers, and chance deadly slogs in desert heat with their possessions on their backs. If they fail, many try again — and again — to walk in our shoes. Too many will pay evil coyotes and die along the way.

It speaks of America’s continuing promise that we remain, as we always have, a magnet for extraordinary outsiders, even as today chaos stirs within us. It also speaks to how miserable life is in many parts of the Americas, where poverty and tyranny go hand in hand. Those who make it will surely be surprised to encounter political leaders here who are pursuing the same policies from which their perilous journey freed them.

They will also encounter a society of 330 million people who by most accounts are unhappy. Despite being by far the richest country on Earth, on the measure of happiness we rank 19th according to the annual World Happiness Report. Gallup confirms that our national mood has soured dramatically in the last four years, following an uptick attributed to the development of the COVID vaccine. Annual measures of the direction of the country are nearing an all-time low.

So there we have the American puzzle: Why do thousands every day risk life and limb to join our kvetching culture? One obvious answer is that life is worse, much worse, elsewhere. The mass migration from Central America we are witnessing is caused by poverty, famine, and fear. The homicide rates make ours look like a Disney movie, and starvation is subject to the whims of the weather. I have seen native women no taller than five feet hoist hundred-pound bags of fertilizer on their backs and carry them up the sides of mountains and till fields of vegetables that are nearly vertical.

These often-demeaned peasants are strong and hardworking contributors who deserved a better break in the birthright lottery. They require the attention and help of the U.S.; instead we spend more money each year building two fighter jets than aiding Central America.

Seeds for a Future is that kind of program, if run on a large scale, might put an end to their famine. Run as a charity in rural Guatemala by an Arizona couple, Earl and Suzanne DeBerge, it teaches the basics of modern mini-farming and thus self-sufficiency. Imagine the positive impact of spending half of the approximately $300 billion three administrations have doled out so unsuccessfully to protect our borders to build better agricultural practices that would multiply by many times the food available in the villages.

The second reason they come is the enduring greatness of our nation and its ability to right itself even in the worst of times. There is in our representative system of governance a malleability that allows America to reshape and modernize without armed conflict. We have arrived again at a moment that tests that capacity.

By what would qualify as normal measures, the United States is in fat city. Wages are up; profits are near record highs, the unemployment rate is nearing historic lows, and the number of workers who like their jobs pushing an all-time high. Inflation provoked by many factors including the pandemic and money spent (some say overspent) to avoid a deep recession is a major negative. But even that seems to be subsiding. All that having been said, our country is experiencing a traumatic time that has sprung all manner of emotions generating strange behavior, not unlike adolescence. I believe the cause is demographics.

America has historically been dominated by white males. Thankfully, we are in the midst of a rapid evolution to a multiracial nation with increasingly diverse influence. One of America’s two great political parties has, like plowing the sea, dug in to defeat this inevitability. In their desperation to hold on to power, the Republican Party, which at its core has always been about business and defense, turned to fringe groups to win close elections — which they then mostly ignored while governing.

Playing ball with white supremacists and conspiracy spreaders went too far and now has turned into a kind of political herpes that cannot be made to disappear. In fact, the right-wing extremists are currently running the show and are blackmailing the GOP leaders into dangerous actions like failing to pay our debt. Also on their agenda are schools, libraries, free speech, and separation of church and state. No wonder so many are unhappy.

Add to that Republican economic policies. Since the Reagan deregulations, we have adopted a “trickle down” economic model which put all the money in the hands of rich individuals and corporations who proved to have deep pockets but short arms. Eventually, I believe workers will see the value in the Biden approach best described by the great novelist Thornton Wilder who counseled that “Money is like manure. It’s no good unless you spread it around.”

There are no simple solutions to the American puzzle. We seethe with resentment even as we are the envy of the world. We treat innocents reaching out for help as hostile invaders. Many Americans grow more resentful and alienated as their personal wealth accumulates. Meanwhile, the women, men and children who brave the treacherous journey to our southern borders are not so unlike the first European settlers of this country: unwelcome or in danger where they came from, resourceful and brave in their dogged pursuit of a better life.

To demonize them is politically expedient, but also a spiritually bankrupting affront to our fundamental values. It can be difficult to see past the toxic distortions of cable news and social media, and see the true reflection of our national character. But doing so will be the first step in solving the contradictory puzzle we’ve become.