When you do finally grow up a little bit and honestly look at what’s going on with your political leaders it’s shocking to see how much money is more important than abstract things like rights and freedom. Sure, money itself is abstract - but like getting a t-shirt for joining that charity drive there’s something physical to latch on to.
The Statue of Liberty. A beacon of hope for immigrants. Run away from the troubles in your old place of birth and trade them in for the American Dream of corporate sabotage, oligarchs in control of housing and health care, non stop harassment rooted in bigotry. But if you play your cards right you can actually VOTE for those that want to take advantage of you instead of just armed goon squads assaulting the houses of political power. The U.S. has a zero percent success rate with that, not like it hasn’t been tried.
In theory, the Statue of Liberty was a nice gesture. That is beyond the symbolism of the ending of Planet of the Apes. A movie so overwhelming with social allegory that it’s one of those tests you can present to see where someone stands on the political and intellectual spectrum. If you really like talking apes shooting guns and think the Statue represents just a large recognizable object from history - you probably loved the future installment where the mutants wage war and lots of shit gets blown up. If you actually understand that the apes are hugely racist enslavers as a stand in for how humans treat others for the differences that shouldn’t really matter, and the Statue ending is no accident as a symbol for immigration and “otherness”, congratulations. You might actually get more from films - a constant source of ongoing education if you watch the right ones.
I do both. Background noise where an alien monster slaughters inhabitants of a small town and that’s the sole purpose of the movie. Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country at the other side where they try to beat you over the head with its message of not just spaceships flying around.
I still like to think that France gifting the U.S. was a sincere gift instead of what it represents now. Now, it’s an embarrassment. A relic that didn’t age well.
https://jasoncochran.com/2010/11/18/the-statue-of-liberty-is-an-embarrassment/
The same way that CPAs having course work and seminars on ethical standards, the standards have now turned into some kind of running joke where politicians and even Supreme Court justices are openly taking bribes because, well, everyone else is doing it. The idea was good, it just hasn’t aged well. And that’s because of the age old concept that deep down so many people are complete and utter assholes.
The magic words are etched into the Statue. Words that indicate that you are now an American, part of the bestest tribe the planet has ever seen. Becoming an immigrant is cool and the best idea you ever had. Until you get to modern America where it’s just, “I tolerate you as long as I can exploit you for slave labor. Face it bucks, your skin is the wrong color, your god is the wrong god, or some other arbitrary wrongness can be assigned to you.” I was here first, I’m better than you. Fox News and the gematria told me so.
In the meantime, since it’s all or nothing here in the U.S., at any given moment someone can be arbitrarily decided to be cool regardless of citizenship. Immigration is one of those touchy no easy solution discourses. Any government doesn’t want welfare leeches, homegrown or not. Any government embraces luring great people to the land. But short of an Infinity Gauntlet separating people by actual content of character instead of arbitrariness is impossible. We here in the U.S. have in part solved the immigration problem. Who in their right mind would actually want to move into this hellhole?
Well that also can be explained by one of the U.S. big problems - our lack of emphasis on education for decades. Other countries that have wannabe emigrants don’t realize who much of a bad joke the Statue represents and how pointless the journey is now. Let’s run through some of the greatest hits in recent history:
Our gun culture is the most absurd in the world.
Women’s rights have regressed on health care.
Our healthcare is so expensive and denied on a whim it’s fairly useless unless you’re wealthy.
Our housing is way too expensive to own.
And despite an entire civil war the systemic racism is what SHOULD be etched into the Statue.
Back when there was room to expand the Statue was fine and accepting a bunch of Irish potato farmers to walk a beat as a street cop was cool. Yes, a purposeful stereotype to reinforce the point. Now, instead of accepting that the Statue of Liberty should read ENTER AT YOUR OWN RISK it’s a candidate for being memory holed. One of the great unintentional weapons where for a period of time Europe got to say - piss off and go to the U.S. We’ve got our own problems here.