The placid surface of a lake
may be an idyllic view that a poet championing peace and serenity, would find
both useful and pleasing, but is something that a scientist would not find
useful for his research.
That's because science learns
and progresses when abnormal disturbances create ripples on the surface of the
lake, thus create opportunities for the forces of nature to be measured and
studied.
When the study of natural
phenomena was a philosophy before it became hard science, the philosophers
relied on ripples forming spontaneously to study them and formulate theories as
to how nature works. But as technology advanced, tools were invented to help
scientists disturb nature and measure the response they cause in relation to
the size of the disturbance.
Believe it or not, those ideas
correspond with the way that truth is sometimes revealed as we study human
affairs. You can see it at work in the article that came under the title:
“Ungrateful Omar seeks 'dismantling' of US political and economic system,”
written by Monica Showalter and published on July 8, 2020 in The American
Thinker.
To Showalter, a normal
situation exists when immigrants come into the United States and show gratitude
toward the country that took them in and gave them more than they had before.
On the other hand, an abnormal situation would be one like that exhibited by
Ilhan Omar, which Monica Showalter describes as follows: “Instead of looking on
the United States in awe, as normal immigrants do, she stands in judgment, and
the US is just not good enough”.
It appears, therefore, that
the American lake of politics and economics, which used to look placid, has
been disturbed by the advent of Ilhan Omar. The ripples she has created are
felt by people like Monica Showalter who is very much a political animal as
well as an investor with a keen interest in maintaining a status quo that
serves her well. So, the question is this: What is there to learn from all
this?
Because the Showalter piece
looks more like a disorganized piece of rant than a well-structured essay, the
way to find out what goes on inside the head of the writer, is to pick the
relevant pieces of information where we can find them, and stick them together
as coherently as we can. Having done so, we can safely say that from what
Showalter has said and what she quoted others as saying, she believes that some
immigrants come into America, do well and seek to preserve the status quo.
Other immigrants do not do as well, and they seek to destroy the existing
system.
All of a sudden, the analogy
of the placid lake proves inadequate to explain why immigrants behave the way
they do. This requires that we find another analogy, and so we use the one
about the airplane that's in the process of taking off and fly into the sky.
To get up there, an airplane
must pick up speed as it accelerates on a long runway. Once the wheels break
contact with the ground, the plane is airborne, and the sensation felt by the
passengers, changes drastically. What also changes, is what the passengers see
looking out the window. Where they could feel the plane vibrate as it gathered
speed, and where they could see the scenery rush to the back as the plane moved
forward, they now feel the placid sensation of a craft that's gliding through
air. When they look out the window, they barely see that they are moving at any
speed.
This is a good analogy to what
happens to the immigrants who come to America and play their role according to
the script. At first, they are shaken as they feel the ground beneath them
while trying to pick up speed. But when their life takes off, they feel the
serenity of having made it. Generations later, those like Showalter, who were
born on the shores of a placid lake and never knew what it was like for their
ancestors that ran to pick up speed before taking off, the sight of an Ilhan
Omar who could live the good life by keeping her mouth shut, yet refuses to do
so, disturbs the lake, crates ripples and frightens them.
Given that the intent of the
revolutionary founders who created the American Republic, was to have a perfect
union, can we now say that they succeeded? The answer seems to be no, the
founders have not succeeded. As the evidence suggests, this is due to the fact
that every step, taken over the decades, and meant to cause change, has been
resisted with such ferocity, it required a new revolution to complete the step.
But by the time this was achieved, the resulting damage would have taken the
Republic at least one step backward if not more. The net effect of every such
battle, has so far been that the more things changed in America, the more they
remained the same.
But can someone such as Ilhan
Omar and her like-minded colleagues rewrite the American script and produce an
outcome that will be so different and lasting, it will truly be progressive?