Random thoughts on a Sunday night

•  It's interesting to see how fast Indians have gone from being praised as being model immigrants to being openly loathed by both Canadians and Americans. Back in the 90s when they took over the motel industry and what seemed like every other gas station most people who noticed either made jokes or grumbled quietly about how nasty formerly cute mom and pop motels had become and how rude the gas station attendants were, but nobody got loud about it. Nobody cared when blue collar people were affected. Later people in computer and technology fields started making  mild jokes to close friends and family that the H1-B hires in the IT department were socially inept and could  be very offensive around women. Nothing was done. This thing was allowed and encouraged to grow.  The industry leaders, and the media adored the H1-B employees. They were cheap and slightly more than indentured servants and the wise men on TV said they were essential because we didn't have enough smart young workers.  People, mostly young men raised objections but were ignored. Now that Indians are here in such numbers that they're no longer the meek and mild kid in tech support  but coming for the managerial ranks  and executive positions in the corporate world and they're making waves in politics, it's suddenly a problem that has a lot of folk really riled up.  This reminds me so much of what happened to factory workers in the US back when NAFTA became law. One by one factories all over the country closed. Thousands upon thousands of people lost their jobs and couldn't find new ones that provided comparable incomes. Families were destroyed. Drugs hit small town America hard. I don't recall middle and upper class folks taking too much notice until about a decade later when white collar people started losing their jobs. What was it Benjamin Franklin said? "We must, indeed, all hang together or, most assuredly, we shall all hang separately." Americans have been left to hang so long and we never seem to learn.      
• Pope Leo announced that he's having surgery to remove a nodule on one of his lungs and I'm surprised at how muted the response is. 
  
  
  
  
  
  
• There's something about the disgusting Jane Doe and the Cornell 7 story that nobody seems to have mentioned. For at least 60 years young people have been encouraged to engage in degenerate behavior at college. If your kid is at a big secular university sexual immorality is pretty much  a rite of passage now. College students are told go ahead, have sex but don't get pregnant. If you do get pregnant have an abortion. Party hard. Drink all you want as long as you don't become an alcoholic. Parents sigh and grudgingly expect occasional marijuana use. The professors and administrators and security turn a blind eye to the drug usage as long as it's nothing "serious" like Meth, Fentanyl, or Crack and pretty much as long as a student doesn't become noticeably addicted. The outrage at the immorality of Cornell incident seems a tad hypocritical, particularly fron the feminists. Books, movies, TV, and  older adults all bid the kids to go out and behave like deer during the rut as soon as they get the first invitation to party on campus and then we all pretend to be shocked when they do what they've been told to do all their lives. 
  
  St. Maria Goretti, St. Basil, St Agatha, St. Gregory the great, St. Augustine and St. Francis of Assisi, St. Dominic Savio, St. Agnes, St. Charles Lwanga, and  Blessed Anna Kolesárová  pray for our youth.