by Nate Andrews

Steve Osborn ends his latest Jeremiad about government intrusion into our lives saying, "Meet you in the camps". Meet in the camps? Probably not if you're an American citizen.

I think people miss the fact that there are two parallel oppressions happening in this country.

First, there's an oppression of non-native and minority groups aimed at keeping white people from having to compete with or even see people that remind them that the whole world doesn't look like them. Those are the people that meet in the camps, whether they're Japanese living in California post-Pearl Harbor, or Jews living in the wrong neighborhood in Poland, or Mexicans who happen to be born on the poor side of the border.

The two most noticeable incarnations of this first oppression are the War on Terror (or rather, War on Brown People) and the War on Drugs (War on Black People).

Guantanamo Bay is the most-talked-about manifestation of the War on Terror, but other manifestations include the outcry against selling Unocal to a Chinese company and pompous talk about the "national security implications" of America's not-so-impenetrable border with Mexico.

National security? My ass.

Unless it's a threat to national security that your kid's best friend might be bilingual. The horror.

And the "War on Drugs" is almost geonicidal in its focused destruction of African American communities. Sure, drugs can be dangerous when people get out of control with them, but so can anything else. And instead of trying to create an intelligent (i.e. non-criminal) response to modern drugs, white America has pushed all the negative consequences into the inner city ghettos.

It's fine for white people to smoke their crack in the suburbs, but God save you if you happen to be the black man handing baggies of powder into the Priuses cruising through your neighborhood.

On the other hand, the oppression of citizens looks so much more benign -- a big car, a big television, a Big Gulp, and a big ol' "whatever you say" response to what comes out of Washington D.C. I don't even think it's a conspiracy -- people would quit voting for it if they didn't want it.

Fortunately, America is going to run out of foreign creditors before the latter comes true. Unfortunately, that's just going to make the former case so much more likely, as the natives get ever more bitter about how little their worthless dollars can buy.

In short, if you read the inscription on the base of the Statue of Liberty, and think that phrases like "your huddled masses" might apply to you, start thinking hard about real estate in Canada.

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