Damn Foreigner

January 23, 2007
11:44 AM CST

Introduction

It was once said of me: ”Kim was born an American; he just happened to be in the wrong country at the time.” It’s hard to think of a better description.

Most native-born Americans are probably unaware that this description applies to countless millions of people all over the world.

While I suspect that most of these would-be Americans look with longing to the United States as a refuge from political persecution, or as an escape from grinding poverty, it’s more what underlies that longing which is important.

Freedom. It’s a word bandied about with, I think, too little understanding of what it really means. We read of “freedom to be educated” or “freedom of choice,” as though these are important.

But in the Land of the Free, I think that for native-born Americans, the basic freedom of the individual is so taken for granted that it’s ignored, and the “lesser” freedoms suddenly become important. So we say that we have a “right” to wear a T-shirt which proudly proclaims: “Born To Fuck” (even when worn by a young teenage girl), little realizing that the First Amendment which guarantees that right is not present in other countries. In those countries, wearing a T-shirt which supports the opposition political party guarantees arrest, a beating, or worse.

So to someone from such a country, America embodies a degree of freedom which is absolutely incomprehensible, and it’s little wonder that if they manage to actually get here, they are not only frightened by this freedom, but they try to regulate it – in other words, re-creating over here at least some of the same conditions which they were so eager to escape from, over there.

That is, I suppose, somewhat understandable. What’s less understandable is that these immigrants are assisted in this endeavor by many native-born Americans, who are either ignorant of the conditions Over There, or else knowingly wish to replicate those conditions in the United States either because of philosophy or because they envy the people Over There.

Did I say “less understandable”? It’s incomprehensible.

I once said to a friend, a later immigrant from my home country: “The central promise of this nation has been fulfilled. Everyone is free to vote; anyone can say whatever they want; anyone can find success with only intelligence, will and application. All the rest is just detail.”

What I did not know was how much “detail” there was, and how much this detail can inflame passions, ignite hatred and divide a people.

So what will be examined in the following pages will be just that: the gritty, grimy details of life in Hell and then life in Paradise, as seen through the eyes of its most grateful adopted child.