Go Back Where You Came From

And Other Helpful Recommendations on How To Become American

Wahahat Ali 2022 CedarMillLib 921 ALI

This book started out well. Funny responses to bigot emails, interesting childhood in the US, amusing anecdotes about cultural adjustments. Author was born in Fremont California, back when it was affordable for his parents. No longer, hence modest-income author cannot afford to move back to where he came from ... though he can shop and eat and visit wealthier friends in Fremont.

Then come the complaints. And more complaints. I understand the motivation to complain, the author is a public person mixing with 300 million other Americans, most of whom are less intelligent and educated than he is. If he was better educated and even smarter, he would encounter even more stupidity. I'm third/fourth/Nth generation US, and I encounter too much stupidity. I would rather learn about things that he likes that I might like as well.

I stopped finding enough amusing/educational stories after page 100 or so, and encountered more complaints.

• Page 104: "Krugman must have forgotten the 481 hate crimes recorded in the year after the attacks, and the real figure was likely much higher considering that most cases are not reported or documented".

  Citation Needed, cite a statistically defensible source of much higher, and compare it to the 1.4 million violent crimes committed in the US in 2002. I don't know for 2002, but in 2017 the US was 1.1% Muslim. If the Muslim fraction was half that in 2002, and Muslims were treated no better or worse than the other 99.5% of us, we could expect 7700 violent crimes against Muslims, not including all the other ways that Americans abuse each other besides violent crime.

That said, it is very likely that Muslims, and Blacks, and Chinese, and many other "muhnoreetees" (redneck pronunciation) are abused more than middle class suburban 3+ generation mostly-Caucasians like me. If I see abuse near me, I'll jump into the fray and protect the victim, hopefully gaining an interesting new friend. My bruises heal as friendships grow. Note to thugs: I think and I cheat; fists lose fights with five thousand volts.

But I don't go out much, and I don't live in a neighborhood with frequent "free crime delivery". I'm not even sure how many Muslim acquiantances I have, only a few "for sures" because they choose to discuss their fascinating background with me. I'm usually more interested in the things people know and do with physical stuff, not the labels they use for their invisible friends in the sky.

Note: I learned about the 9/11 attacks in a Sunnyvale motel room, before a business meeting with my colleague Hossam H. I delayed the meeting, called around until I arranged a rental car I could drive home to Portland, then met with Hossam. He was sure he would be deported or worse; that's what they did to outsiders in his native Egypt. I told him most Americans respect the law, including the laws that protect him as a soon-to-be citizen. The same laws that protect millions of other soon-to-be citizens, including Muslims, and protected my immigrant grandparents. He might be mistreated by morons, but that's what morons are for.

If you want a more perfect union, labor hard to make it so. You will be opposed by many idiots, but supported by the same systems and processes that support the rest of us ... most of the time. The systems fail often, but if we work and THINK together, they will fail less often. That is how we replaced a nation dominated by slave-owners with a nation dominated by creators and thinkers.

And if you disagree with "thinkers", look around you. How many of the objects around you were invented and designed by non-thinkers? I can imagine that is not as comforting to a wordsmith like Mr. Ali, whose opponents also include wordsmiths, many with larger audiences. Truth to Power nourishes the spirit, but gadgets to millions nourishes income, and pays for websites like mine, as well as the time to fill them with drivel like the above.