Mountain Views News, Combined Edition Saturday, June 27, 2020

12

OPINION: 

 Mountain Views News Saturday, June 27, 2020 

MOUNTAIN 
VIEWS

NEWS

PUBLISHER/ EDITOR

Susan Henderson

PASADENA CITY 
EDITOR

Dean Lee 

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Patricia Colonello

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John Aveny 

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CONTRIBUTORS

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Dan Golden

Rebecca Wright

Hail Hamilton

Joan Schmidt

LaQuetta Shamblee

STUART TOLCHIN


TO THINE OWN SELF BE TRUE

NOT EASY WHEN EVERYONE AROUND 
YOU IS LYING

 Every conversation I have lately ends up being about who 
is telling the truth or even whether it’s a good idea to tell the 
truth. Just now I heard that the FBI after a “full investigation” 
has determined that the noose found in the garage of the one 
African-American NASCAR driver did not demonstrate that 
he was the victim of a hate crime. It has now been determined that the “noose” 
was simply a rope used to tie the garage door closed and had been overlooked 
before. Sure, do you believe that? 

 The point is that there is so much lying going on all around us that it is 
impossible to know what is “true”. In previous articles I have written that there 
is something very wrong in the structure of this culture that goes well beyond 
its long-standing inequalities and racism. As support for this position I have 
cited the amount of suicides, drug problems, domestic abuse, divorces, and 
the fact that according to studies about half the population describes itself as 
unhappy. (These studies were done prior to the onset of the virus.) As a remedy 
to this really desperate situation I have suggested that people simply tell the truth 
about what are their actual feelings. I have suggested that people have serious 
conversations with those with whom they disagree instead of demonizing them 
as irreparably stupid and heartless.

 The responses that I received to these article from Asian people, who I 
consider to be my friends, reminded me that as Asians do not engage in arguments 
unless it is with someone they know well. It’s the “Silence is Golden” rule and my 
friend suggested that I read Sun Tzu’s Art of War so that I’ll realize how much 
indirection is preferred and that I should be aware of my White Skin privilege. I 
received a similar suggestion from another Asian friend. That may well be true 
but it does not alter the fact that lying, avoiding stating one’s true opinions may 
be connected to overall feelings of dissatisfaction and unhappiness.

 I believe the main reason we are unhappy is that we are continually 
surrounded by lies and lying to our self. We are continually “being nice”, or 
walking on eggshells trying to be politically correct and silencing unresolved 
inner doubts. Television commercials pretend to care about social good and 
helping people when we all know that it is all lies and just about money. If you’re 
worried about who is telling the truth Trump or Bolton, just be assured that they 
are both lying. I believe that the only possible cure is to try and speak the truth 
ourselves and to LISTEN to other people’s truths. We may lose friends or anger 
people but in the end I think we will all feel better—maybe poorer and lonely - 
but better. 


LILLY KOFLER

THERE'S A REASON OPINIONS ABOUT 
CONFEDERATE STATUES HAVE 
CHANGED SO QUICKLY

What you think 
about removing 
Confederate statues 
has less to do 
with your opinions 
about race and more with how you 
perceive the motivation behind removing 
them in the first place.

Jim Penniman-Morin, who majored in 
military history at West Point before serving 
in Iraq and Afghanistan, grew up seeing 
Robert E. Lee as a hero. Now, the ex-Army 
officer sees Confederal markers, such as 
military bases named after Confederate 
leaders, as disrespectful to the troops. "It’s 
cruel to send an African-American teenager 
off to war from a base named for a person 
celebrated because of their disdain for 
racial equality," he said. No amount of nostalgia 
is worth causing a young soldier to 
feel unwelcome because of their skin color.”

Spurred by Charlottesville's plans to remove 
a statue of Lee, the bloody Unite the 
Right rally in Charlottesville in August 
2017 caused cities and schools all over the 
country to take a fresh look at whether 
Confederate history required public monuments. 
At the time, Americans leaned towards 
keeping them up, with 52% in favor 
of letting statues of Confederate leaders 
remain standing, twice as many as favored 
taking them down.

Now, many Americans, like Morin, have 
changed their minds after seeing George 
Floyd's killing because the protests are not 
just one city at a time - it's in almost all of 
them all at once. We all have access to the 
video of George Floyd's killing as well as 
hundreds of incidents of police brutality. 
And now only 44% of us support keeping 
Confederate monuments against a growing 
32% who want to take them down. To see 
a net 14% swing in only three years on a 
subject that ended more than a century and 
half ago is, well, monumental.

Before we can understand why people are 
changing their minds, we have to look into 
the brain. When you break Confederate 
symbols down to their component parts, 
you see that a flag is just a dyed piece of 
cloth and a statue is simply a hunk of metal 
melted down to form a shape.

People care so much because that material 
is infused with meaning. From birth, our 
brain spends its time putting information 
into buckets. It's how you can tell that big 
thing with four wheels in your driveway 
is a car or a truck. At the same time, and 
without our conscious awareness, culture 
encourages us to impose meaning, values 
and virtues on the objects we see, which 
is why you might think people who have 
a 2020 Ferrari have money or status and 
people with a 2001 Toyota have less.

Confederate monuments have a culturally 
significant meaning that signals virtue for 
some. For many, a statue of Robert E. Lee 
is a signal of preserving American history 
and local tradition, but for the growing majority 
of Americans, that same statue has 
evolved to symbolize oppression.

Likewise, the act of removing historical 
monuments sends a signal that is equally 
open to interpretation. When NASCAR 
banned the Confederate flag, some saw the 
declaration as an act of sincerity, others saw 
corporate bandwagoning.

Science suggests the way we perceive the 
motives behind removing or banning Confederate 
markers may determine how accepting 
we are of that change. If you think 
the motivation of those who call for removing 
statues, renaming military bases, or 
banning the Confederate flags comes from 
a sincere place, you're more likely to be 
open to those moves. If you interpret them 
as politically or commercially intentioned, 
you're more likely to disagree.

"If people think that the removal of flags 
and statues is out of political correctness or 
to garner votes for their side, then people 
are going to be less likely to support social 
change. But if people realize that these acts 
are not just lip service and that there’s an 
authentic concern behind them, then positive 
social change is likely to transpire", 
said Dr. Emile Bruneau, who directs the 
Peace and Conflict Neuroscience Lab at the 
University of Pennsylvania's Annenberg 
School for Communication.

That's what changed Morin's mind. His 
brother-in-law, who teaches high school 
in Jacksonville, shared with Morin the feelings 
of Black students who drove by Confederate 
monuments every day to schools 
named for Confederate leaders. Those students 
got the message. Finally, Morin did, 
too.

"Those students were indeed receiving the 
message those symbols were always meant 
to convey", said Morin, and that’s not fair 
to them."

Lilly Kofler is the Vice President of Behavioral 
Science and is the U.S. lead of 
Hill+Knowlton Strategies Behavioral Science 
Unit.

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JOE GUZZARDI

TRUMP ACTS TO DEFEND 
AMERICAN WORKERS


Finally! After 
nearly three decades 
of pleading 
to deaf Republican 
and Democratic 
congresses 
for a fair shake, 
American workers 
can celebrate.

Breaking with his White House predecessors, 
all of whom displayed an 
addicted-like commitment to more 
employment-based visas, President 
Trump gave American workers a reason 
- at long last - to cheer. Whether 
low- or high-skilled, Trump’s announcement 
that he would cut 525,000 
visas from among those who would 
have entered and taken a U.S. job 
during this year’s final six months 
means that 45 million unemployed 
Americans’ futures are suddenly 
brighter.

Trump expanded his April 22 Executive 
Order that only inconsequentially 
lowered legal immigration totals, and 
left employment visas untouched. For 
the remainder of 2020, the following 
visas, all of which include work permission, 
will be restricted: H-1B, mostly 
for tech; H-2B for seasonal nonagricultural 
workers that ludicrously include 
lifeguards, leisure industry employees 
and amusement park workers - as if 
young American wouldn’t do those 
jobs.

Also included are J visas that allow au 
pairs to work on the cheap in tony D.C. 
suburbs; H-4, an Obama-era program, 
never congressionally approved, that 
gives work permission to H-1B spouses, 
and L visas that allow, for example, 
a Hong Kong-based IBM accountant 
to transfer to the Armonk corporate 
headquarters - as if the New York/Connecticut 
region has no available bookkeepers. 
By the way, accompanying L 
visa holders will be their spouses and 
unmarried children age 21 or younger. 
Bringing family members keeps the 
U.S. population exploding and assures 
that K-12 schools remain overcrowded, 
both of which reduce Americans’ 
quality of life. But President Trump 
put extended family chain migration 
on hold. Only Green Card holders’ 
nuclear family will get Green Cards, 
making them eligible for lifetime-valid 
work permits.

The president moved to correct another 
preposterous immigration flaw. 
The Trump administration announced 
a new regulation that will prevent most 
of those who come to the U.S. illegally 
from getting work permits while they 
apply for asylum or make other pleas 
for special dispensation. Currently, 
aliens can obtain work permits while 
their cases are pending, a period that 
often stretches out for years. This misguided 
policy represents an obvious 
incentive to enter illegally, and then be 
rewarded with work permission.

When they learned of the president’s 
order, expansionists that include the 
Chamber of Commerce, the tech lobby 
and some in Congress went apoplectic, 
and sounded foolish. FWD.us, the immigration 
advocacy group that Mark 
Zuckerberg cofounded, pulled out 
the predictable hysterical claims that 
President Trump’s newest order 
was â€oea full-frontal attack on American 
innovation and our nation’s 
ability to benefit from attracting talent 
from around the world†and that it 
will â€oehurt our economy,†another 
tired old saw.

Not surprisingly, but nevertheless disappointing, 
Senate House Judiciary 
Chair Lindsey Graham is in complete 
accord with Zuckerberg’s group. 
In a series of tweets, Graham criticized 
President Trump, and predicted 
that his order would have â€oea chilling 
effect on our recovering economy.
†Graham’s career voting record 
on increasing employment-based visas 
is the same as those of notoriously 
anti-American worker sellouts Chuck 
Schumer, Nancy Pelosi and dozens of 
other congressional globalists.

No intelligent argument can be made 
that the U.S. needs employment-based 
visas or - for that matter - more people. 
Americans agree with President 
Trump’s immigration pause. A Zogby 
Analytics poll taken in swing states 
Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Maine, 
Michigan, Minnesota, North Carolina, 
Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin 
showed that a strong majority, about 60 
percent of registered voters, favor immigration 
reductions. In all ten states, 
majorities of voters concurred that 
â€oelimiting admission of new immigrants 
and guest workers will improve 
the chances of laid-off American workers 
being rehired.†With record high 
unemployment, for Congress to force 
unemployed Americans to compete 
with imported labor is an outrage.

While Trump’s order doesn’t go 
far enough, or last as long as it should, 
he’s taken an important step in the 
right direction to protect beleaguered, 
job-seeking U.S. workers.

Joe Guzzardi is a Progressives for Immigration 
Reform analyst who has written about 
immigration for more than 30 years. Contact 
him at jguzzardi@pfirdc.org


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Mountain Views News 80 W Sierra Madre Blvd. No. 327 Sierra Madre, Ca. 91024 Office: 626.355.2737 Fax: 626.609.3285 Email: editor@mtnviewsnews.com Website: www.mtnviewsnews.com