I’ve been working on something about the whole “I didn’t vote for this”/”yes, you did” conversation, doing my best to meet the always enthusiastic demand for more Niebuhr blogging, and was hoping to finish that tonight along with the rest of my sorely neglected laundry.
But instead I’ll be heading in to the Big Box on my night off because our crew is getting slammed with another of the ginormous trucks we’ve been dealing with ever since “Liberation Day” put the company’s supply chain and business model in jeopardy.
And also, I’m guessing, I’ll need to read up on the new SOP for how to respond if our location ever has masked federal goons launch so many volleys of tear gas at our store that we’re forced to close for the day, which is apparently a thing that sometimes happens now. OK, then.
And but so here on the first Monday of Pentecost, I’ll just quickly reaffirm the shared humanity of everyone in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth, Parthians, Medes and Elamites; residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya near Cyrene; visitors from Rome; Cretans and Arabs … everybody.
The international diversity there is all verbatim from the first two chapters of the book of Acts, setting the stage for Pentecost and its unambiguous message of everybody means everybody. The next several chapters of the book show the dazed disciples spinning around, still confused by this lesson, with everybody (except Philip) dithering and questioning, saying, “But when we say ‘everybody’ we obviously can’t really mean, like, everybody everybody, right?” and them getting divinely dope-slapped, repeatedly, until they finally come around to understanding that, yes, everybody means everybody.
And so, in the spirit of Pentecost, let me just point out again that immigration is good, actually. It’s a Good Thing and a Very Good Thing and we should have more of it. We should not just make it possible instead of deliberately impossible, but straightforward and simple and easy.
While it is also true, as we discussed here last summer, that anti-immigration ideology is always wrong — evil and stupid and self-destructive — the more important point is that immigration is, in itself, a positive good.
Seems like a lot of people have forgotten that or, at least, have forgotten how to say it, so we should make a point of saying it, bluntly and clearly and often.
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