All Hallows' Eve and the fall harvest are nearly upon us. 🎃🍂
There is something about this time of year that naturally lends itself to thoughts of darker things. The days begin getting shorter, the nights longer, the leaves start changing, and Halloween decorations gradually make their appearance.
Yet these days, we hardly need ghosts, goblins, or things that go bump in the night to give us something unsettling to think about.
We've been living through scary times—to varying degrees—for quite a while.
Economically, the country has undergone enormous changes over the past several decades. I tend to look back to the early 1970s, particularly the end of the dollar's direct convertibility into gold in 1971, as one of the major turning points in the modern monetary era. 🔗 Whatever one's preferred economic explanation, it is difficult to deny that many working Americans today feel increasingly squeezed by the cost of housing, food, transportation, healthcare, and practically everything else necessary for ordinary life.
One fear that has been weighing on me—as I mentioned briefly in my previous post—is the uncertainty surrounding my employment. I worry not only about whether I’ll be able to keep working, but also whether I have enough money to get by during what could be a lengthy period of evaluations, while I wait to learn whether any assistance may be available to me. The uncertainty itself has been difficult to live with.
Meanwhile, surveillance technology continues spreading into everyday life. License-plate readers such as Flock cameras are only one example. Technology that might have legitimate uses can also create an infrastructure capable of tracking people's movements on a scale that previous generations would have found extraordinary. Convenience and security should never become excuses for treating an entire population as though it needs to be continually watched.
Data centers aren't good either—or, at the very least, their rapid expansion raises serious questions about electricity demand, water consumption, environmental effects, and the burden placed upon surrounding communities. 🔗
But the brokenness isn't merely economic or technological. 🔗
Men and women have increasingly been encouraged to view one another as opposing camps rather than partners. Stable families have become less common, and many people who did not grow up in intact families now struggle to establish lasting unions of their own. The consequences ripple outward. When families become unstable, communities eventually feel that instability as well.
Socioeconomic engineering isn't some mystical conspiracy theory. Governments, corporations, institutions, advertising, public policy, economic incentives, education, technology, and mass media all influence how societies develop and how people behave. Sometimes those influences are deliberate; sometimes they're simply the cumulative result of countless decisions and incentives. Either way, they help shape the society in which we live.
And somewhere along the way, our sense of community seems to have become badly fractured.
Immigration is another subject that cannot simply be declared off-limits because it makes people uncomfortable. A country has every right to debate how many people it admits, what skills it needs, whether immigration is suppressing wages or displacing domestic workers, how newcomers are assimilated, and whether the existing population is actually benefiting from the policies being imposed upon it.
This is also an area where I find the conventional Left-versus-Right political divide increasingly inadequate.
Parts of the political Left have embraced extremely permissive attitudes toward illegal immigration and border enforcement. Meanwhile, parts of the political Right—particularly its corporate and business wing—enthusiastically support programs such as H-1B visas when they provide employers with a larger labor pool. 🔗
The rhetoric may be different, but ordinary Americans can reasonably ask the same question of both sides:
Where exactly do we fit into the equation?
A country's immigration system should first consider the long-term interests of its existing citizens: their employment opportunities, wages, housing, infrastructure, culture, communities, and social cohesion. Newcomers should likewise be expected to make a genuine effort to integrate into the society they have chosen to join, and likewise respect the descendants of those who actually founded the nation and helped make it what it is.
Immigration is another subject where neither side seems particularly interested in asking how the people already living here are affected. The Left often favors permissive policies toward illegal immigration, while the corporate Right supports programs such as H-1B visas that allow employers to bring in foreign workers—sometimes instead of hiring, training, or properly compensating American workers. We should be able to discuss reasonable admission levels, genuinely needed skills, wage suppression, worker displacement, assimilation, and whether these policies benefit the citizens already here. When both political sides seem more concerned with importing additional labor than protecting people presently struggling to find decent work, many of us are left asking: Where exactly do we fit into the equation?
This leads to a more difficult and politically incorrect question concerning loyalty. A nation that deliberately treats its own historic population and the descendants of its founders as replaceable—bringing in people from elsewhere while disregarding the interests, continuity, and future of those already here—cannot reasonably expect their unconditional loyalty or patriotism. Neither can a society that remains complacent about such policies or, in many cases, actively celebrates and assists them. Loyalty is not merely something a government can demand; it must also be earned through a reciprocal commitment to the people whose loyalty is being requested.
If that reciprocal commitment is abandoned, those descendants—particularly the men who would most likely be expected to defend the country in a time of crisis—should not automatically be considered morally obligated to protect a system that has been working against their legitimate interests. A law may attempt to command obedience, but it cannot manufacture genuine allegiance. People cannot continually be told that their heritage, communities, livelihoods, and future do not matter, only to be informed later that they must sacrifice themselves to preserve the same arrangement responsible for pushing them aside. The appropriate response is not violence or hostility toward ordinary migrants, but the withdrawal of automatic loyalty from institutions that no longer demonstrate loyalty to their own people.
Excuses are often made that employers cannot find enough workers or that large numbers of newcomers are necessary to keep society operating. Yet there are more than enough natural-born citizens who are willing and able to contribute when they are offered reasonable wages, proper training, humane schedules, and a genuine opportunity to build a stable life. Before importing replacement labor, the country should invest in its existing citizens and give them the chance to work for their own benefit as well as the betterment of society at large.
This brings up something else worth adding, although it may not be comfortable for many to hear: a system that deliberately denies people the freedom to associate exclusively with their own—whether on the basis of religion, political affiliation, ethnicity, or other freely chosen associations—is, in my view, not only contrary to natural law but ultimately undeserving of their respect or defense in a time of crisis. Some might find that statement offensive, and that's okay. I find it equally troubling that the freedom to choose one's own associations should itself be considered offensive. 🔗
That doesn't require hatred toward anyone. It requires acknowledging that a nation is more than an economic zone where interchangeable workers happen to reside.
And this is yet another reason I have increasingly rejected what I consider the false Left-Right paradigm. One side doesn't automatically become correct merely because the other side is wrong. When stripped of partisan branding, policies championed by supposedly opposing political factions can sometimes produce remarkably similar consequences for ordinary people.
🔗
If one road takes you over a cliff and another road takes you to the same cliff from a different direction, arguing endlessly about which road is superior misses the larger problem.
With all of that stated, perhaps the strangest effect these unsettling times have had on me is making me more appreciative of what I still have.
Friendly acquaintances matter.
Having a quality family member or two matters. Less is not always more, but in some cases it is.
The people who genuinely care whether you're around tomorrow matter.
And I'm grateful for whatever health I still have.
Maybe that's one lesson worth carrying into the fall season. When so much of the larger world feels increasingly artificial, divided, surveilled, economically precarious, and disconnected, the few genuine things remaining in our lives become considerably more valuable.
Halloween gives us imaginary monsters for a night. 🎃🧛🧌🧙👻🕷️
The more difficult task is recognizing the very real problems around us without allowing them to make us incapable of appreciating whatever good remains.
🎃🍂 📻
