Certain concepts are so ingrained in the American character that we rarely question them. Among them is the idea that we’re tops in everything. We’re “the greatest country in the world.”
But the truth is that, in many ways, we’re far from the greatest. When it comes to education, for example, we’re average at best.
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So I recently watched the horror-comedy Attack the Block, a British movie about an alien invasion of the inner-city projects. Yes, it’s as preposterous as it sounds, and while far from brilliant, it’s a fun ninety minutes.
However, I made a classic internet mistake after I saw the movie: I read other people’s comments on the film.
Two recent polls caught my attention.
The first was taken at the height of Tebow-mania, when many otherwise rational adults believed that a mediocre quarterback could actually win the Super Bowl.
The New York Times recently reported on a small rural town where longtime residents complain about “young Mexican men working construction and driving down wages, the children of laborers flooding crowded schools…and strip clubs springing up on roads that used to be dark and quiet.”
Is the town in Wisconsin, Kansas, Alabama, or even (shudder) Arizona? No, it is “a precolonial Mexican village outside Oaxaca City, filling up with fellow Mexicans.”
It seems that the urge to hate immigrants — even of the same nationality — is universal.
