Illegal Aliens

The ones who stole it from Iroquois and Seminole, Choctaw and Cree, then forced Black slaves to work it till they bled.

The ones who “appropriated” from Toltec and Olmec, Aztec and Maya (when they had made a new country), then broke the new country on an anvil of iron, taking the best, “removing” survivors south of the river to the hardscrabble country of sagebrush and cactus, in the land without borders.

The ones who made a Declaration and a Constitution arrogating to themselves the right of rebellion, the right of election, but to those outside of their silk-stockinged class—the right of obedience, the fealty of surrender.

The “Captains of Industry” who herded the masses into drudgery factories, shops built on plunder, despoiling the wonders of canyons and prairies, giving back sustenance while hoarding and building Potomac mansions, Hudson castles.

Cattlemen and rustlers, hired guns, Pinkerton goons, G-men and “revenooers,” cavalry coming in the hard nicks of time, roughshod-riding sheep-men and farmers, injuns, wetbacks, the abandoned, the desperate.

Politicians and lawyers spinning silken webs from embouchures of mealy mouths, embezzling the simple, the uninformed, the hard-working, the trusting–of scraps of life’s savings, their holdings, the runes of their ruins.

Flak-men and flak-women knowingly contorting, packaging air, wrapping dreams in tissues of promises, poisoning, defrauding, lollygagging, Jim-crowing, filibustering, carpet-bagging, stealing airwaves, vision-impostors, re-shaping, repossessing.

Haters, liars, shape-shifters, refashioning dreams, grotesqueries of power, wealth, arrogance, murderers awarding themselves the right to kill millions, seize gold, oil, water in other lands from other people in the name of the country they stole from the Red man, the Black man, white workers, the indentured, day-laborers and children.

Wily, clever, sinuous, slanderous drum-beaters for false causes, warmongering slumlords, dumb lords of the manor robbing health, education, living wages, dignity, history from the hearts of the people, from the minds of the people, from the souls of the people.

Scribblers of borders shipping jobs over borders, imprisoning those within and without, separating, fragmenting, scattering, obviating.

Prison guards, security guards, cops, militia, national guards in the service of the State, the elite, the decadent, the abhorrent, the whoring.

Illegal aliens: takers, heart-breakers, despair-makers, fakers at the top of their dung heaps, burying hope in their dung, burying home, family, beauty, innocence, friendship, community,—until the dead awaken, until the dead say No, seize back, and blood pulses in cadaverous veins, and the clay gods break, and the shallow icons are trumped and broken, the chained knees unchained and the chains broken, the murdochs of murkiness broken, and love is reborn in the world again, the possible flourishes in a heap of old bones, language ignites synapses of power, and courage reigns in the world again under the eye of old wisdom.

Poet-playwright-journalist-fictionist-editor-professor, Dr. Gary Corseri has published work in Dissident Voice, The New York Times, Village Voice, CommonDreams and hundreds of other publications and websites worldwide. His dramas have been produced on PBS-Atlanta, and he has performed his work at the Carter Presidential Library. Gary can be reached at gary_corseri@comcast.net. Read other articles by Gary.

12 comments on this article so far ...

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  1. Jenny said on November 17th, 2007 at 8:35pm #

    Gary Corseri can’t be bothered with the truth.. because it hurts, doesn’t it, Gary?

    His revisionistic history doesn’t wash.. we (and I include my own people, Native Americans in the collective, “we”) know who committed genocide against the Aztec, Inca and Mayan peoples… and they weren’t English. The ancestors of the people Gary needs to exploit to promote his racist, elitist agenda.. of course, Gary’s ancestors are European as well. They were the people who created fascism (here’s a hint for the spoiled, rich “activists” out there who are no different than any neo-con like George Bush or Hillary Clinton, you’re nothing new.. oinks like yourself have been attempting to impose slavery the world over and it’s blown up in their faces… but the inbred keep repeating history, don’t they?) and played the same game in ancient Rome. Seeking to replace citizen workers with lower paid foreign nationals to create a slave labor class, as well as to more easily dominate and control their own fellow citizens. It’s the reason the majority of Americans ignore the fascistic left, and have no interest in being duped by the fascistic right any more.

  2. Lilathe said on November 17th, 2007 at 9:32pm #

    Let me see if I understand what you are saying in spite of the bleeding heart liberal flowery overly descriptive English language.
    1) Americans killed the Iroquois and Seminole, Choctaw and Cree, then forced Black slaves to work it till they bled. Is that “all Americans”? How about Americans that originally came from Haiti as free people? Do they fit in your idea of Americans? How about Americans that were themselves originally American Indians? Or legal immigrant Americans?
    From your point of view Americans are “the devil” because of their past. An extremely large percentage of Americans immigrated after the whole “American Indian” fiasco. Does just being on American soil make each person responsible for the past acts of all Americans? Well then every single illegal alien invader is responsible as well. They too are on American soil.
    You can’t play the race card or the “oh the poor illegals” card unless you truly look at the entire world and see who needs to immigrate the most. It definately would not be Mexico, the 6th richest country in the world. How about let’s import 20 million people from India? They are much more deserving of our compassion if we are going by poverty levels.

  3. D. R. Munro said on November 17th, 2007 at 10:03pm #

    It’s good to see that practitioners of sensationalism are alive and well outside of national news groups.

    Fight the good fight, keep yellow journalism alive!

  4. sk said on November 18th, 2007 at 8:42am #

    It’s all relative folks! Nazis could have pointed to supposed or actual historical transgressions of Jews, Poles, Roma, etc. and proceeded in good conscience with ethnic cleansing.

  5. Dennis Brasky said on November 18th, 2007 at 8:51am #

    Thank you Gary for a magnificent work, laying out what America means to the people of the world. And to the right wing trolls on this list who insist that most people in this country came here after the extermination of the original inhabitants and are thus completely innocent – I offer the same reply as for those who insist “my family never owned slaves” – with our longer lifespans, better access to quality education, jobs, housing and healthcare, higher income levels, relative freedom from police harassment and imprisonment whites in this country are all accomplices to the crimes of the past which are still being perpetrated today, both here and around the globe. We have clearly benefitted materially from the immiseration of people of color, but at what a price! To support the status quo, we must acquiesce to war and war spending, the refusal to develop and tap into the creative potential of tens of millions, to periodically wreack havoc with the economy and to destroy the only planet we have. For moral and ethical reasons as well as for the long range best interests of all of humanity and Mother Earth we are duty bound to fight to end these injustices and try to create a better society based upon human solidarity and not racism, sexism, mindless greed and endless war.

  6. AJ Nasreddin said on November 18th, 2007 at 11:54am #

    This is a good rant! Very poetic.

  7. HR said on November 18th, 2007 at 7:38pm #

    It only takes a little dose of guilt-inducing truth to bring out the “best” in racist, Reagan-worshipping, yuppie quasi-liberals. I’ll bet that you who are bellowing the loudest still believe in the right-wing (fascist) revisionist myth that anti-Vietnam War protesters were spitting on service members, and you probably believe that Vietnam is still holding U.S. prisoners, even as you conveniently forget the torture, other mistreatment of prisoners, and murder that we committed in that atrocity. I also suspect that you worship the likes of Lou Dobbs. You who chose to live in denial (or maybe it’s secret yearning) are the main reason this country is rapidly moving back to late 19th Century feudalistic social conditions.

  8. Lloyd Rowsey said on November 18th, 2007 at 8:25pm #

    Come on, sk. Nazi concepts were to man’s inhumanity to man in 1941, as Hubble and Einstein’s concepts were to space in 1936, and Lyell and Darwin’s concepts were to time in 1870. Incomprehensibly different from what went before.

    And regarding your Tom Tomorrow cartoon link? Whose tortures did Vlad’s impaling hundreds of enemies on stakes — at a time — pale before?

  9. sk said on November 18th, 2007 at 9:25pm #

    Nazi concepts were to man’s inhumanity to man in 1941, as Hubble and Einstein’s concepts were to space in 1936, and Lyell and Darwin’s concepts were to time in 1870.

    I came across that conceit at a war memorial in Berlin itself last year. The text said something to the effect that Germany had become “decivilized” during the 12 year Nazi reign, but had safely reverted to civilization upon the death of Hitler in his bunker in 1945. The text’s incongruence struck me as the process that led to the genocide of possibly 10 million people in Central Africa in the late 19’th century–where “the barbarity and savagery of colonialism found its peak of expression”–was legalized in the most “civilized” of settings at the Berlin Conference of 1884. Although, lately there has been some expression of regret from individuals on that score.

    Enzo Traverso put the matter (hopefully for the edification of a denier like yourself) this way:

    Liberal 19th-century Europe–the heartland of racism, imperialism and colonial war–was the cultural and ideological laboratory in which Nazism developed.

  10. Lloyd Rowsey said on November 19th, 2007 at 8:01pm #

    Could you rephrase that, sk?

  11. Edward Campbell. said on November 22nd, 2007 at 2:39pm #

    Illegal Aliens; Indeed! Spotted the above together with (some)
    of the adverse comments on your article, left me wondering if some of those comments, had in fact, missed the point/s.?
    To me, your (at times) devilishly, advocating for a thought for (at least), the oppressed, downtrodden, ignored and unknown, throughout Man’s expansionist histories, echoing John Donne’s
    “For whom the bell tolls…”

    Likewise, their descendants , probably suffered the syndrome of;
    “The sins of the fathers” . And so, to today’s dilemmas.
    The recurrent commemorations for the ‘fallen’ (11.11.) with ‘poppy’ displays. The “Poppy”, could represent the flower of youthful virtues, yet at the same time, (Red) has been the color of war, and the opium, a poison for the mind and body.

    The ‘Illegals’ of today are challenging the ‘territorial imperatives’ of their ‘oppressors’, who in turn are suppressing
    their own kind.

    In short, to myself, your words reminded me to know history better; “Lest we Forget”.

  12. hp said on November 22nd, 2007 at 3:04pm #

    The Nazis were lightweights compared to the Jewish Bolsheviks. And no doubt the greatest tool ever implemented for the purpose of propaganda.
    Never ending propaganda which never never ends, I might add.

    Also, if the Crows had cluster bombs, do you really think they would hesitate to drop them on their hated enemy, the Sioux?