48 YEARS LATER

My arrival to this beyond-the-imagination country took place in June 0f 1961. I was 20 years old. My expectations of this experience when I first made contact with American soil were met and surpassed. I was totally in awe. This was the land I always dreamed of. Everything was bigger and everything was exciting. I was a young man in search of a future and I found it. The land of the free and the land of opportunity. It was up to me to make the best of it, to take advantage of the best this country had to offer to someone with ambitions and someone who had to flee a Muslim country engulfed at the time by anti-European feelings. A normal reaction to many years of foreign domination and colonization, but very scary when you didn't know whether you could reach your school alive or be counted as one more fatality during those explosive days. It has been 48 years already since my Panam landing at Logan Airport on the way to its final destination Idlewild Airport in New York, the capital of the world.
Many things have changed since. Some for the best, most for the worst. Morocco has now been an independent nation since 1956. It has had its up and downs, but it seems that it has prospered and modernized among its natives. Women, although still second rated citizens, are back on the beach wearing bikinis, and in the office running their own companies. They've come a long way. I still have some friends left over there. They are Muslims and they are good people, with the same problems and same daily situations to face we all face here. They are educated people, not terrorists, as many ignorant extremists here believe only because they are Muslims. We were friends, in spite of me being the son of a Catholic father and a Jewish mother, and them being Muslims. In Tangier we all were educated differently than on other parts of the world. Tangier was international where all religions were accepted and respected. We understood and showed respect toward our professed religions and our customs and traditions.
Unfortunately for us, Americans, born or naturalized, many things in the greatest country in the world, seem to be going downwards on a spiral. We hate more than ever; we are more selfish and do not care about those who lose their homes because of health care premiums and illnesses and pre-existing conditions not covered by blood sucking insurance companies; we are more racist than ever, although we pretend not to be;
we cannot accept that a black person is our new president; we have lost respect for the truth and we are so submerged into our lies that we actually believe they are the truth. We have fallen into the pathological
state of accepting the lie as a truth. We have become more ignorant than ever. Granted that in 1961 we did not know where Hawaii was and some of us still don't know yet. And that in the early 60s racism was a way of life in many parts of this country. I, personally experienced it, indirectly, one day in the summer of 1961, in Los Angeles, California, when I attempted to buy lunch to a black coworker. He was very adamant to accept and going out of the working place for lunch. I insisted and he finally obliged, I guess to convince myself of the reason of his persistence. As we walked down the street to a Coffee Shop, and as I was ready to enter he stopped me and pointed at a sign on the window next to the door: " NO NEGROES ALLOWED".
So, that has not changed in a way, and although "Negros" are allowed now, the rejection still exists at all levels. This is the rejection that's in the air today, We could not define it before the elections. It is clear after Obama was elected. Racism is alive and "well" in this country. I suppose ignorance plays a major part for this disgraceful reality. And ignorance is abundant in the Southern States mainly. Those States that still wave the Confederate flag with preference over the United States flag. Those States that produce bullies and low class citizens such as Congressman Joe Wilson from South Carolina, creating an avalanche of sheep followers, of the same caliber of intelligence, who storm the streets protesting against the help that their President wants to give them to improve their lives, and who have the gall to call our President liar. One of them, an old "lady" with a quote such as "The Muslims are moving in". A complete disgrace of Americans in the view of the rest of the world. Definitely, things have changed here for the worst.
I remember going to Drive-Ins; Diners with roller skate waitresses serving you in your car; playing music in a jukebox for a dime; leaving at night my empty bottles of milk by the door and picking up full ones the next morning; reading pages and pages of "Help Wanted" in every newspaper; going to a Department Store and being swarmed by smiley employees eager to help you; having all the register counter positions in the store occupied by workers; not getting annoying telemarketing calls; going out at night without fear; refueling at a gas station without getting out of your car and getting your windshield washed; not being charged for the delivery of an appliance you spent good money for; talking to a "real" person not to a recorded message; but more important...showing respect to our President. It has all changed for the worse. With very few exceptions, we are a society of takers, of "what's in there for me" characters, of computer controlled minds, of "Face Book", instead of Faces and Books, Internet rather than inter brain. Logic has gone the side way, common sense has no room in our computer; and humanity has a dollar sign.
This is the country I came to in my early years and I integrated with as we all did, from any nation and any religion. This is the country that accepted me, as it accepted everyone who immigrated here, with open arms and with the lemma "if you work and live an honest life you are welcome here". This is the country that made me happy, that I enjoyed for so many years, that made me proud and brave.
Now, 48 years later, this is the country that makes me sad, cautious, and worried. I see too many changes and a tremendous lack of respect and responsibility towards our president, our flag and our freedom.
We need to educate our people. The education system has failed, it has cloystered itself and ostracized from the rest of the world, hence making a large size of its population totally ignorant of the outside world, and not precisely geographically speaking, but of their own personal world. This population is afraid of any changes and they immediately call it socialism or communism, when the reality is that our government needs some times to intervene to avoid new Wall Street frauds, Banks greed, HMOs avarice and control of our lives, and many other injustices we suffer in the hands of unscrupulous companies and individuals whose only goal is to make money at our expense and our misfortune.
Unfortunately these people who protest in the lowest and most uneducated and insulting way, and rally against new ideas submitted by our "Black President", eventually, when this is over and the Health Care reform passes the Senate and Congress and it's made into law, will benefit from it. Jesus Christ offered the other cheek when he was slapped, our democratic government will do the same when those against it will reap the benefits as well. But...Obama, in their narrow and sick minds, will still be "The Black President". The one they will keep attacking and trying to undermine on any and all of his quests, to dig our country out of the deep hole we fell in during some of the worst eight years we ever witnessed and experienced in our short, but proud history.
I don't care if the TV Networks don't have the balls to openly state that what's going on is racism, and if politicians or prominent interviewed people do not dare to make that conclusion either. I am a law abiding citizen, who still loves this country and will fight for it the only way I can now, which is by the freedom of speech given to me by The U.S. Constitution, and I have no fear to say that everything that's happening now against our President Obama is ONLY DUE TO RACISM. Period.
Would we be better off if most of the southern States, such as Texas, South Carolina, Louisiana, Mississippi decided to fight for a Secession and declared themselves another country, like for instance " The Southern States of America"? I don't think so, although sometimes I wonder...I believe there is room for everyone here, even for those who are
constantly verbally abusing our President and our Government with lies and outrageous statements.
Yes, 48 years ago things were much better than now, but as it is said in a marriage...FOR GOOD AND FOR BAD UNTIL DEATH DO US PART.