But if we believe, having adjusted to
capitalism, that the only way poor people,
downtrodden people, people who have
suffered from the colonialism of the
United States (informal though it was for
the last 200 years in Latin America), if
we think the only way they can be lifted
up is if we are pushed down, then we
might be open to being told "You got to
keep them out. You got to push them back."
Not because we're under sympathetic to
their suffering but because we don't
want to join them. We don't want to be
the victims of a capitalist uneven
development that helps them at our
expense. If you listen to the rhetoric
that right-wing politicians use to
mobilize people against immigrants, you
will see, and you will hear uneven
development as the unspoken assumption
on which their right-wing activity is
based. All around the world you can see
that. The anxiety, born of capitalism, that
if you have something and people who
don't get some it'll be at your expense.
You know what's interesting about that?
It's that we don't think that there could
be, that there should be, a way in which
we can lift up the people who have been
unfairly pushed down so that they catch
up to us not that we are deprived of
what we have. Is that possible?
Of course it is
