1/ This is a thread on America, based on my thirty years being a student and permanent resident before returning home in 2019.
I have lived longer in America than India. I have a lot of friends and family in America.
This thread is based on my close and personal observation.
2/ America is the most open and friendly society to immigrants in the world, of every race, religion or creed. America is truly the land of immigrants.
Yet America is also convulsed by race, with a substantial part of the population believing it to be a deeply racist society.
3/ This seeming contradiction between being the most open society in the world and the self image on the part of so many of its people of being a racist nation cries out for explanation.
In agricultural terminology, I believe America suffers from “top soil depletion”.
4/ What does top soil depletion mean here? It is the tendency of America to use up its people and replace them with new people.
This creates a perpetual need for migrants, leading to a positive feedback loop: top soil depletion and being open to immigrants drive each other.
5/ When you understand top soil depletion, the tendency of modern America to use up its own people, you begin to understand the extraordinary angst about race in what is a very open society.
Black Americans ask “Why does America reward immigrants more than she cares about us?”
6/ America is clearly a far less racist society than it was in the 1960s and yet the race issue is more pressing now than ever.
Top soil depletion theory explains it: the anger that Black Americans feel of being left behind is also true among the bottom half of White Americans.
7/ America has used up people Black and White: rising gun deaths, drug overdose deaths and falling life expectancy all offer the clearest evidence of this.
It is no accident that the highest levels of immigration in a century has been accompanied by broad societal dysfunction.
8/ Viewed from the top soil depletion perspective, societal dysfunction arising from people being used up and high levels of immigration to replace the used up people are two sides of the same coin.
What can be done about it?
9/ My humble suggestion is that America’s elites should pay attention to their own society, particularly their own left behind people, Black, White or Brown and their own poor regions.
I joke that Bill Gates spends more time in UP than in Mississippi.
Focus at home!
