It's the Little Things

I'm not actually that mad about taquitos

I owe some friends and family members apologies. In recent years, I’ve lost my cool over many things that seem little. A bad driver or offhand remark has occasionally ruined my whole day (and me, the day of the people around me).

And while I’ve always had an intense streak, it isn’t just my fundamental nature that sends blood-soaked wyrdpaths flittering across my neural network at minor offenses. It’s that so many of these annoyances are reminders of the dispossession our people have been subjected to. They are ongoing violations of Machiavelli’s maxim that a ruler must inflict his injury all at once.

If the CRA, mass immigration, overregulation, and globalization had wreaked their havoc once and been done with it, we would probably all get used to higher housing prices and move on. But when we are subjected to a daily stream of insults and inconveniences, it’s hard to let it go.

So when:

• I hear a phone speaker at a restaurant,

• I hear a bluetooth speaker at the beach,

• The hotel room is dirty,

• Everyone at the airport gate is speaking Spanish,

• The gas station convenience store is out of coffee,

• Somebody is wearing a sari,

• Somebody is wearing a burqa,

• Somebody is wearing a sherwani,

• A foreigner is running for local office,

• There is someone selling taquitos form a trunk in a parking lot,

• There is a new halal item at the grocery store,

• A foreigner leaves a shopping cart in the parking lot aisle,

• The cashier doesn’t speak English,

• I’m the only American in the Costco,

• A horde of burka’d children scare away the sleeping zoo animal my son was studying,

• A Venezuelan teenager scares my daughter off the kiddie skating rink because he can’t go in a vaguely prosocial circle,

• Indian kids cut in line at the children's’ museum,

• A Chinese restaurateur has the nerve to hang a No Guns sign,

• Traffic is obstructed by an Indian adult with a “Student Driver” sticker,

• There is a Mexican in an old truck doing 5 under the speed limit in the left lane,

• A Vietnamese guy on an electric motorcycle causes a traffic jam driving up the wrong lane,

• A Nigerian in a brand new Mercedes SUV has double-parked,

• The litter piles up on the side of the highway,

• There is litter in my neighborhood,

• I see somebody litter,

• The local park gets trashed by a Jamaican birthday party,

• My church is using my donations to comfort invasive young men,

• There is an Indian family swimming in a drainage culvert,

• Somebody says the Turkish guy is “just as American as you!”,

• I get undercut by a competitor using illegal labor,

• I get ripped off by a foreign subcontractor,

• I get rear-ended by a semi driver who doesn’t speak English,

• I get T-boned by a Korean driver,

…each of these things reminds me of ALL the others. And of the more subtle, macroeconomic symptoms like wrecked housing and labor markets that have plagued young Americans.

Just five short years ago, I would barely have noticed most of these. Now they often elicit a subsuming rage. All are a reminder that my country is no longer mine - and will not be my children’s, barring drastic change. All a reminder that we have been betrayed by two generations of leaders. All are a reminder that our norms are no longer normal, nor often even respected.

It’s not even like this an exhaustive list. The intrusion of foreign customs and people is so pervasive, so corrosive as to be completely inescapable. And this is before we account for the impact of our own domestic infections like DEI. And while, tongue-in-cheek heat aside, I normally do a pretty good job controlling my temper, I find myself exhausted trying to do so.

I know I’m not the only one who feels this way. Perhaps you, dear reader, have felt this yourself. You have felt your blood boil at something that - alone - would have been truly innocuous. A minor social transgression by a child or old lady has spiked your blood pressure. You’ve wondered if you are losing your mind. You wonder if the libs are right, that you are a xenophobic lunatic. You are not. Your anger is justified. The proximate stimuli is not the root cause.

To be angry at the loss of your culture, identity, and home is natural and right. We have a well-ingrained tradition of self-defense, but we must remember that the self is not the only thing worth defending. History is not short on stories of bloody, desperate fights for territory, kin, and tradition. Authority over these things is earned by defending them. Any government that will not defend its people has lost its legitimacy and will not long retain its authority. And power abhors a vacuum.

It honestly amazes me that there are not more people flipping out. The restraint shown by the West has been impressive. Perhaps a bit less restraint would even have done us good, but, the longer this goes on, the less likely that restrained equilibrium will hold in any case. Someone will step into the gap.

The current administration has made progress here, but it remains to be seen whether progress will be made fast enough to pluck the crown from the gutter. As many others have observed, Trump is the dam, not the river. As long as that dam is topped daily, spilled over constantly by alienation and degradation, its integrity will be at risk. The little things will continue to add up.