Trump and immigration (why I cannot agree to kick everyone out)

On Tuesday, the greatest American patriot ever, President Donald "He is Jesus--and he is going to save us from the wrath of God!" Trump is probably going to do his best to turn the United States of America back into the all-white 1950s version of America that his supporters voted for.

Yes, he is going to look at the Dreamers, those immigrants who were brought to this country as kids by their illegal immigrant parents, and say, "Yes, I realize that you have been raised in this country, and that you consider yourselves Americans, but my voters want a completely white America, so you are going to be deported. But don't worry, my supporters are also going to demand that blacks be sent back to Africa, and Asians sent back to China, and I bigly support the idea that they should be because none of them voted for me, and I must make America more white if I want to ensure that I am President-for-Life."

Or something like that.

(By the way, there are actually Trump supporters who want to deport all black people back to Africa, even though some of their families [black families, that is] have been living here since before the American Revolution....because you can't be a real American if you are not one hundred percent white. Exactly where in Africa, Trump supporters want to deport blacks to, is a little fuzzy.)

The idea held by Trump supporters, or at least this particular sub-set, is that illegal immigrants (and legal ones for that matter) are taking good paying jobs from honest white Americans.

Having worked alongside those in the Dreamer category, I have a bit of bad news for these white Americans---you didn't want the jobs when we offered them to you.

Yes, I said that white Americans will not accept the jobs that immigrants are doing. Or at least, not the type of jobs that I was trying to fill.

For the one person who does not know, I used to manage a restaurant of the fast food variety ("not fast food--good food fast" as one of the owners used to say).

I started out working in food service after failing high school (because my mom insisted that babysitting my siblings was more important than my homework), after being discharged from the military (because my father died in a truck accident, and I was supposed to go back home and take care of my siblings), and having no other option.

It was a horrible job. The hours were bad. You reeked of grease and smoke (and possibly onions). The pay was low as minimum wage law allowed. Your schedule could change at a moment's notice. ("Punch out--labor is too high, but don't leave--you will need to punch back in once the dinner rush starts.") And no white person with decent chances at better employment would ever take the job.

I worked alongside of people whose parents were illegal: some of which who were born in this country, others not. Many of them couldn't speak a word of Spanish. And they consider themselves Americans, not Mexicans.

Often I was the "token white guy," the only white guy working in a crew of forty or so. The other occasional white person often fell into a category that your typical stereotype Trump supporter would like to outlaw: poor college students, art school graduates, gays and lesbians--you know the type. 

And when I became a manager, quite honestly, I filled the jobs with who I could. Given the restrictions on pay and benefits, and the delightful working conditions, it was seldom that a white person would apply for a position that I was trying to fill.

(And I was trying to find employers for fast food--don't get me started about lettuce and fruit picking jobs that no white person is ever going to be willing to do.)

Plus, a good percentage of my customers were immigrants or children of immigrants--the non-white type.

(One of the reasons that I do not hold 9/11 against all Muslims is that I was managing a Greek restaurant at the time--and my Middle Eastern customers were more horrified by the terrorism than my white customers.)

So that is reason one about why I am automatically against kicking all the nasty immigrants out.

(By the way, one of the reasons that people insist that we must get rid of all the immigrants is that their neighborhoods are crime filled cesspools. I somehow missed all the crime--the worst danger I faced was that a girlfriend might insist that I become a Catholic. Oh wait, some "real" Americans consider being Catholic a crime, much like being a Muslim or a Jew, or for that matter, being a witch and pagan.)

Second reason is that I grew up in mixed race neighborhoods. Outside of visits to my parent's hometown in Nebraska, a brief stay in a trailer park (before I was seven), and five years in a northeast Colorado town (the whitest place I have ever been), I have always lived in mixed neighborhoods.

(The northeast Colorado town is why I was confident in my prediction that Trump would win the election--I lived with those people who embraced Trump--it was only a matter of time before they tried to stone me to death for my odd beliefs in diversity and religious choice.)  

For instance, when my father brought a place in the Five Points, there was two Hispanic families, two black families, a Polish family, a Chinese family, and us (German-Jew)--all within an one block radius. It is hard to embrace a pure white America when one spent most of one's afternoons at the black neighbors house (who I knew better than my own biological grandparents) watching reruns of Star Trek.

(Yes, Star Trek...one can assume that did not help any when it came to my adult views on immigration.)

And that level of racial diversity was also seen when my father took me to construction job sites.

Essentially, my life experience says that neighborhoods are supposed to be mixed race and culture. Yes, I know that I am committing a great sin not viewing all non-whites are the enemy, but what the heck, it is not like me being a German-Jew is a mark in my favor on the real white American scorecard.

Third and the most important reason that I am against kicking out all the immigrants (legal, illegal, Dreamers) and closing the borders to further immigration is: My wife is an ESL teacher. 

(ESL: English as a Second Language)

My household's bread and butter comes from the existence of immigrants in our society. My wife is working a second Master degree in this field. And she makes far more money than I ever will (because I chose to be a writer in a time where writing is no longer a viable career choice--if it ever was).

You kick out all the immigrants, and close the borders, to save American jobs--and my wife, a white American, loses her job. And that is just the tip of the iceberg of the effect that removing immigrants from the economy will have. (I could go into horrific detail....but if you are a Trump supporter who believes that your job went away because of an immigrant, nothing I can say will change your mind.)

And that reason alone, all by itself, is reason enough for me to be opposed to Trump's vision of a pure white America without immigrants in it. After all, all politics are local--and my own local household economy depends upon the existence of immigrants.

But my wife losing her livelihood is probably ok if you are a Trump supporter who hates and fears immigrants....because I imagine that if you desire an all-white immigrant-free America, then I also imagine that you want to burn me at the stake for not being the all-white church going Christian that all Americans should be--something about me being a pagan witch and the grandson of German-Jew immigrants that needs to be arrested and deported back to Germany, despite the fact that I have never lived in Germany--all because America is about white America, and not about the dreams of non-white immigrants seeking a better life. 

This is what America is supposed to look like according to Trump.

I teach GD over coffee

One of the things that I occasionally have to remind myself is that I am not typical of the majority of the Golden Dawn community. The way that I was initially taught affects the way that I teach; it also affects the way I think about the system. For instance, outside of a few isolated bits, such as what ended up in Kraig's book, most of my initial Golden Dawn training happened in working lodge...or over coffee.

It is the "over coffee" part that you want to play attention to. Because I was taught in informal conversations, I tend to do my best teaching during informal conversations. A lot of people think that I am joking when I announce that I am willing to try to explain what Golden Dawn does over coffee, but it is actually true. Outside of the lodge work, more of my training happened during informal, friendly conversation than it did from books and secret documents and the official lecture hour.

And when I teach...I mean truly teach...it is in the same envirnoment. You are either working or having coffee...lecture days tend to not be very educational.

I have been being reminded of this lately. One of the Sorors from my lodge recently have been dealing with me in "coffee" mode. Over the past month, she has gotten more information out of me in informal conversations than she has in formal lodge lectures (outside of actual work sessions...which is ritual work and not lectures). By the way, this is always true for me. If you want information from me, lodge is necessary; but you really want to make time to "socialize" with me, if you want me to really explain what is going on.

I just don't function properly in a strict envirnoment where you only deal with your superior during lecture hour.

(The odd thing is that if you can get me to write about the system, you also get more out of me than during a spoken lecture...I am not sure why.)

{By the way, this is one of the reasons why I could care less about the HOGD/A&O claims. Strict secrecy implies that you NEVER about talk Golden Dawn over coffee or deal with your superiors and lessers outside of a strict controlled envirnoment. Because of that, it would be pointless for me to join that system...no matter how true their claims are or what secret information that they actually have.}

In love with being an authority

I had an interesting conversation with one of my fellow lodge members the other day. We were putting back together the pillar that I had to take apart during the last heavy snow day---yes, I know that it is bad to leave the pillar undone that long, but it is a two person job to get it back together. We found ourselves talking about one of the local members of the esoteric community and his recent behavior.

There were the standard sexual no-no that was committed, just one more proof that perhaps sex and esoteric traditions have no place standing by one another. Or perhaps it is proof that we need to understand these energies in an esoteric content; it is easy to mistake certain types of links between people as being sexual in nature.

Personally, I have mixed feelings about the whole sexual mystery issue. Nevertheless, you never want to suspect that someone set up their group merely so that they could get laid.

Important fact---this person is not a member of Golden Dawn. In fact, they feel that Golden Dawn has nothing to offer them which brings us to the behavior that they indulge in that I want to talk about.

They have a bad case of being in love with being an authority.

For those of us in the esoteric field, this is not a good disease to catch. We have enourgh temptations already without this one, temptations that threaten to bloat up our egos like sickly toads.

In the case of this person, he is arrogant already (not as arrogant as the person who told me that he was the only person in Colorado qualified to teach ceremonial magic, but close). He has bounced from one tradition to another. And he always ends up starting a group, to teach his lastest passion to others.

A few years ago, I rubbed shoulders with him in a group; we were briefly members of the same system for awhile. I decided that I could not work with him for extended periods; the feeling was mutually returned. In my case, he was teaching that any technique not in the original documents was improper. Being a modern student of the mysteries, I was using some techniques that I picked up elsewhere; as long as they produced results, I could care less if people a thousand years or more ago did not know or use the techinques. He also has never mentioned a single living teacher...his knowledge is all his own brilliant decoding of old books.

(I am not sure why he does not want to work with me...class clown, dangerous experiments, the willingness to question and talk back---take your pick.)

And being arrogant, he believes that his knowledge about one system qualifies him to criticize another tradition. He has actually walked out of public rituals, during the middle of them while loudly saying that the people doing the ritual knew nothing about the system that they were working. This is one of those people who do not realize that it is near impossible to raise a decent amount of energy in public ritual, and that some of us do not care to become a Ph.D. in the history of our traditions---sometimes you just want an entertaining ritual and could care less if one of the Ancients would understand it.

But talking to my friend, I realized that I had misjudged the man. I always thourght that he was smarter than I was (though I managed to aviod the icky sexual misbehavior), and perhaps more spiritiually advanced. This is what I had been blaming his behavior on; I thought that he had higher standards than I did. Now, I realize that his behavior can be explained by him simply being in love with being an authority.

The sad part is that I know several other teachers and leaders that also fall under the same disease. Well, I guess it takes all types.

And for the record, I am not in love with being an authority. I am just a hack writer, who loves the sound of their own voice. I am happy being a follower as long as I am allowed to exhibit my ADHD in a loud and obnoxious manner. For me, the height of the estoeric tradition is being a student---it is just too much work to be an authority figure.

Gathering cardboard

I am in the midst of collecting cardboard for the creation of some new teaching aids. Or rather the creation of some better teaching aids...I have used the technique before; I am just upgrading my props.

With the cardboard, it is a matter of beating my wife to it. Much of our cardboard goes towards supplying an elementary school art room (usable cardboard that is, the rest goes into the recycling bin).

I am particularly interested in the round cardboard pieces from the pizza boxes.

A few years ago, I used some pastels and paper to create a set of small sephiroth floor markers. The goal was to have the spots on the floor labeled as per the Tree of Life/Grade ritual diagrams.

At first, they were purely for my own personal use. When I started using them, I was working in less than ideal conditions (ritual in the living room of a very small apartment); anything that would help remind me that I was working in sacred space was a good thing.

Then when I ended up in Bast Temple as training officer, I brought the technique over into lodge.

I am not sure if any of the current members have seen me use them; but then again, the current membership has seen things that former members have not seen. Let's call it even.

Anyway, I am hoping to make a new set of sephiroth floor markers. I am kicking around using them at the June Open Full Moon ritual to illustrate something, and I definitely need them for an upcoming lodge session.

So here is hoping that I gather enough of them before my wife decides she needs them, for around here recycling occasionally means supplying material for elementary school art projects.