A thought occurred to me on the way to work today and I thought I would share. There has been a lot of talk lately about the "browning of America", and about how illegal immigration is the biggest negative issue facing our country today. While most of the talk of illegal immigration, in my opinion, is stemmed from racist attitudes towards Mexican people, I do feel as though there is a much bigger issue to consider here and worry about than just "They are brown!" or "They don't speak no English!".

America is a "superpower" right? Actually, at this point, since we have to real nation state enemies, we are more of a "hyper power". We have the most technologically advanced military the world has ever seen, we have limitless amounts of wealth, and whether we use it right or not, we have the respect, admiration, and fear of most other nations on the planet. With that said, who would be crazy enough to take on this "giant" that is America head first? Even if someone was crazy enough to try, what more would they accomplish than to put a small dent in us, arise our sleeping anger, and sentence themselves to certain doom? You can not hope to take the giant on head first and win.

So, how to take down a giant? Well, we need to look no further than the battle between nature and our own homes for inspiration (hopefully not your ACTUAL home, or my ACTUAL home, but some one's home!). The termite is approximately the size of an ordinary ant. If Mr. Termite were to walk up to our front door one day and say "Hey buddy, I am taking down your home", we would chuckle, stick out our foot, and squish poor little Mr. Termite. Now lets say Mr. Termite had a bunch of friends who organized an Army to step up to the door and proclaim the same grandiose statement in his honor. Well, we might not be able to squish them all with our feet, but we would simply employ our technology and spray them all with bug spray. Now the termites are pissed as a species, but are smart enough to avoid the head on approach. So, what do they do? Sing along now. They infiltrate the structure of our house and start to slowly deteriorate it from the inside out. Before long, if this infiltration is left to go on unabated, the tiny little termite will be successful in bring down the house that dwarfs it on a magnitude scale of millions.

Before you cry foul, I am NOT comparing the Mexican people to the angry termites! I am merely pointing our an analogy that I think fits our current state of affairs. And I do not think that we are only being "eaten away from the inside" by the illegal immigrants from Mexico. We are so dependent on cheap goods and running unsustainable debt levels, that our economy is also being slowly rotted away by the Chinese. Now, unlike Mexico, if China wanted to take us on head first, they would probably stand a good chance of winning. But what they are doing (what we are allowing them to do!) is much more subtle. We probably do not even know at this point the damage to our nation that would occur if either; A) China stops exporting cheap goods to us, or B) China decides to collect on the $500 billion plus in loans we have due to them. Either scenario would destroy our way of life overnight. The same can be said for the illegal immigrants. If they were to all leave overnight, how do you think that would affect our economy and our way of life?

See, the problem here is that we Americans want things cheap, we want things now, and we do not care the costs to our country's sustainability or infrastructure to get them. And ignorance is no excuse. We have peeked behind the base boards and have seen the infestation of termites there. We have chosen to ignore it and continue to live in this house in hopes that it won't one day all crumble down on us. But, if we do not believe that this giant will fall without a serious effort to rebuild its infrastructure, well then, I suppose we deserve to have it crumble down on us.

Thanks for reading..