There are deep emotions related to our President and the shootings in Texas and Ohio, with different perspectives from both sides, but what’s best for our country?
So that nothing is hidden on my end, I did not vote for Donald Trump, but since he became President, I opened my heart to accept him. I don’t agree with him or like what he is doing, but I wholly believe you should keep the President in your prayers, meditations and your thoughts.
We all have issues with how we interact with people and life in general, and Donald Trump is not immune to this. Quite the contrary, he appears to excel at ruffling the feathers of the population and has many agendas that are divisively viewed upon as well.
The bottom line, whether you agree with him or not, extending hate or resentment to him or fellow Republicans and Democrats, will never solve anything. Hate never solves anything, it just perpetuates and feeds on itself to create more hate. It’s not helpful at all and will never lead to a circumstance where anyone benefits.
Right now, the best thing any of us could do for our President is to quiet our minds and extend to him, love, peace and compassion. Extending thoughts like this will benefit him and all of us. Extending unhelpful thoughts will only make his unhelpful characteristics more concrete and this helps nobody.
A theme throughout this whole article will be that blame never resolves Anything. A friend of mine (Doug) once told me that whenever you point a finger at anyone, three of them are pointing back at you, meaning we are often just upset at ourselves, but attempting to project this onto somebody else as blame.
With the shooting in mind, I would like to look at how gun control and the NRA has been made a focus. I am more Democrat than Republican with respect to guns and I don’t see the need for anyone to have assault rifles that can cause quick and massive destruction. That being said, it is just a distraction if you blame guns or the NRA for the shootings that are occurring in this country.
The source of the problems is not gun control, although I do believe better gun control will increase our overall safety by making it harder for some people to access guns. The source of the problem is the racist based hate and blame associated with immigrants and Hispanics overall, a circumstance our President has embraced, endorsed and continues to perpetuate.
The Presidents obvious advantage with so many people is an underlying seed of racism that still exists within this country. I had no idea how deep and wide this ran until Donald Trump came into power.
This President gave license to be cruel to people you do not like, and so the masses who would have normally hid this hatred, felt comfortable coming out of their closets to also proclaim their hatred as well. You don’t have to call it racism, but you can’t get past that it is hate.
What astonishes me is how zealous or right-wing Christians also embrace our Presidents behavior where almost nothing he represents is in any way Christ Like. Actually, in most cases, our President is doing things that are the total opposite of what Jesus would do, and yet many Christians defend him. Do they love their newly created right to be openly hateful while saying they really are not? (note, this only refers to the “Christians” who openly express their anger about “illegal” immigrants)
I know that many of you will say you don’t care what color somebody is, you just want all the illegals to leave, but you are lying to yourselves on so many levels, and if you sit quiet with yourselves for a moment you would see that. A place to start is to stop referring to all immigrants as “illegals”. Most are here legally, but it is necessary for people tell lies to others and to lie to themselves about it so that their right to hate remains validated.
According to The Department of Homeland Security:
In summary, DHS estimates that 12.0 million illegal aliens were living in the United States in January 2015
See Full DHS Report
In summary, an estimated 13.2 million Lawful Permanent Residents lived in the United States on January 1, 2015, 9.0 million of whom were eligible to naturalize.
See Full DHS Report
About 2.0 million non-immigrant workers, students, exchange visitors, and diplomats and other representatives resided in the United States in 2015
See Full DHS Report
The statistics show over 15 million residents here legally, and 12 million illegally. It would appear that almost half of our Hispanic immigrants are here illegally until you look at this next two pieces of data:
In 2017, non-immigrants here legally to work or tour through legal visas totaled 77,643,247. Of that amount 45.6%, or 35,530,000 came from North America (Mexico and Canada).
See Full DHS Report
Then finally, we want to add in Hispanics that are full citizens and are not counted as immigrants at this time.
2018 census shows an overall population of the United States as 327,167,434 . Of this 18.3% or 59,871,640 is Latino/Hispanic.
United States Census Bureau
The bottom line is that most of the individuals you believe are here illegally are natural citizens or have received the right to work here legally with I-94 and I-94W Visas. If you combine the 59.8 million natural citizens, 13.2 million legal immigrants, the 2 million exchange residents and the 35.5 million visas, there are approx 110.5 million Hispanics here legally and approx 12 million who are not, for a total of 122 million. That would indicate that at most, 1 in 10 or only 10% are likely to be illegal.
This is no invasion
With this new data in hand, what would you recommend anyone and everyone to do to help heal the situation in our country? Honesty from our news providers and President would be a good start.
Alternatively, if you refuse to look at government publicized true facts, you could instead choose to riot, extend more hatred, bash the Democrats, build a wall and embrace news stories that are fabricated entertainment and not true at all. But none of this will heal the circumstance.
Many also embrace the idea of nationalism, which is defined as:
“exalting one nation above all others and placing primary emphasis on promotion of its culture and interests as opposed to those of other nations or supranational groups.”
Merriam-Webster Dictionary
By it’s definition, if we pursued nationalism, we would exclude all others from our country and only provide for our own needs and desires. This nation had been defined as the “melting pot” because of how uniquely broad our acceptance of others had been, and it is why we became the most powerful country in the world. Diversity is not something to fear. Our own history proves that this is why we are as strong as we are, not the other way around.
If we really want to heal our country, we need to let go of the hate and division. There should be nobody or no race that is hated. This is the United States of America where every single one of us (excluding native Americans), are immigrants or descendants of immigrants. Unlike many of the immigrants that legally enter this country today, we were all illegal immigrants hundreds of years ago .
Today, the Mexican’s, Dominican’s, Chilean’s, Guatemalan’s and more, are not an “invasion” as the President has stated. In most cases they are either fleeing a persecuted or endangered circumstance, or are just people looking for work and a better life for their families. They are people, just like you and me, and we need to find a solution that works for us all. Barring them is not an answer. Hating them is not an answer. Blaming them is not an answer. Fabricating lies about them is not an answer.
I have an answer. Let go of your hate. Let go of your fear of what you think they represent. Most of it is not true, but just fearful thoughts and ideas that have been embedded into your minds over and over again, but that does not make them true. It just makes them unhelpful lies.
Ask yourself why you don’t want the immigrants here and let’s take a look at the real source of the problem. If you truly want an answer, take a moment to be open to find one.
Excuse #1 – They are taking our jobs
Many of the jobs being taken by immigrants are farm related jobs that many Americans do not want to do in the first place. The immigrants are actually a blessing in disguise in that respect because their lower wages help keep food prices down. Bottom line, you are able to eat more and are healthier because of immigrant workers.
With respect to immigrants taking construction and factory jobs, the hatred for them is partially based upon a fearful knowing deep within some people that they did so little with their lives in this land of opportunity. The fact that a third world country immigrant that can’t even speak English can threaten their job is very unsettling to them. What have they done with their life that they can be so easily threatened by an illiterate person with little to no skills?
Their dissatisfaction and anger isn’t with the immigrant, but with themselves, so they either accept this and find a way to increase their skills and education, or do nothing and project the blame onto the immigrant. If they view this as an attack, they will project hate and blame on the immigrants, but if they use this as motivation to improve themselves, they could choose to expand their ability to do higher grade work that a third world immigrant can’t compete with.
Consider typewriters and tube TV’s. Over time, computers became popular and replaced the typewriters and tube TV’s usefulness with other technology. Manufacturers of typewriters and tube TV’s could choose to hate the computer industry and lay blame at their feet for this change. They could refuse to change and demand it go back like it was, but this will never happen and they would just go out of business, because that is what hate offers … if offers nothing but loss because it sucks energy from everything and gives nothing back, to anyone on either side.
Alternatively, they could embrace the change, choose to evolve and see there is something different they could do, and eventually find themselves doing better than they did before … thanks to the demise of the typewriter and tube TV.
Likewise, a person who feels their job is threatened by an immigrant could choose to evolve and go in a new direction where they find they are working smarter, not harder, and doing better than before … thanks to the immigrants who took over the labor intensive jobs.
Excuse #2 – They are costing us money with free benefits
The welfare system in this country is broke, but that has nothing to do with the immigrants. I don’t fully understand how our system got to where it is today, but anyone, immigrant or not, that either does not have work, can’t work or does not want to work, can often receive benefits that the rest of us pay for.
According to statistics provided through the Bureau of Labor and the KFF, almost 1 Trillion dollars was spent on Welfare in the United States in 2018. Of this 76% is consumed by the combination of Medicaid(49%) and Family and Children Assistance(27%), and is distributed like this:
- White: 44.5%
- Black: 21%
- Hispanic: 30%
According to the 2018 Census our population by race percent is roughly:
- White: 68%
- Black: 13%
- Hispanic: 19%
The numbers do show a higher percentage of Hispanics using aid at this time as compared to Whites (when considering population levels), but practically equal to Blacks, although you should consider that most Hispanics had much less opportunity for formal education than did Whites who were raised with significantly higher education standards and opportunities, so a higher percentage of Hispanics would be inclined to be eligible for assistance.
If you want to rant, you could instead see that Whites are responsible for almost half of the welfare costs, and they are the ones who had the greatest capacity to take advantage of all the opportunities this country has to offer, so put your rant there.
The Answer
I’ve already said it … let go of the hate by looking inside to find the source for your hatred and work on that. In most cases people will find that their true source of anger has to do with things they did to put themselves in the situation they are in, but if not, then simply accept that you are racist and stop pretending you are not.
If you do realize you are racist, I would suggest you don’t embrace it because the hate it creates does more harm to you than to the immigrants you hate. Your blood pressure rises, your digestion system gets compromised, your sleeping patterns become affected, your moods are unstable, relationships become strained, and your health overall falls, and you will likely die earlier than normal … because of your hate. Just let it go because it doesn’t help, has never helped, and will never help.
How do you give up the hate? Whether you realize it or not, we are all naturally inclined to be loving and caring. You are going out of your way to use your energy as hatred. That’s why it eventually destroys you because it only takes and gives nothing back. Being loving does not take energy, it absorbs unlimited universal energy and extends it outwards to all. It’s your natural state of being, and I can prove it.
To let go of your hate you must embrace something else. If you think or know you can’t feel love for our immigrants, you are mistaken. You can. Imagine you are walking along a path in the woods that follows a river and you hear somebody call out. You go down the bank to the river and see a person along the edge of the river frantically holding onto a log. It’s a Hispanic man. What do you do? Your first natural response is to help because you do not naturally have an issue with race. Hate is a forced layer you placed on top of your capacity to love and be caring. And so you wade in and grab the mans hand and help him ashore, because love is at the heart of who you really are.
Being loving doesn’t mean you are going to have to go around hugging everyone and smiling all the time (although you could), but being loving can simply mean you are a little more willing to see people and things for who they really are, and not what the hate of somebody else has defined for you.
To finish off, let’s get back to our President. Set aside any thoughts, either good or bad about President Trump and accept that nobody may really know what is best to happen in this country. Set aside what you think is required or necessary and be willing to accept that a higher power sees a much bigger picture and would have a better idea of the best path to take.
I’m going to suggest you join me in a quick meditation about our President and country overall. Since it is performed with eyes closed, perhaps read the next paragraph a time or two before entering the meditation.
Close your eyes and take a deep breath, hold it for a second or two and then exhale. Take another deep breath, hold it for a few seconds and then exhale. Imagine a white light at the center of who you are. This light is you. This light is love. Picture your President and picture your country and send this white light out to them. Fill everything with this white light and simply say, “Father/Creator/Spirit, I am open for whatever is best for myself, my President and my country.” Just keep extending your light for a few moments to allow yourself time to truly mean what you are saying, and when you are finished simply say, “Thank-you, and so it is“.
Namaste
