One of the weirdest things about the US is that in the past few decades it has become ethnically more heterogenous, but culturally more Northern European at the elite level. The American dream is no longer a simple affair that requires only hard work and an effort to be a decent citizen, but instead requires something like a graduate degree and indoctrination in “progressive” values.
The end resut is dissonance for anyone who doesn’t see what’s behind it, and I suspect that includes most young men with some awareness that things don’t add up.
Commenter Charles Martel suggests that the Tsarnaev brothers were culturally isolated, and that’s part of what led to their attacks. I’m sure that’s a big part of the story, but I have to say that I’d feel “culturally isolated” in Cambridge, too. In fact, I feel a bit that way in Seattle, but I have enough friends and family to mitigate it, and I know that a lot of what passes for public opinion is simple political posturing.
But what if you don’t have that advantage? What if you’re an immigrant from, say, Central Asia, and all you see in public is affirmation of values that are abhorrent to you, and indeed to most of the world?
It used to be that America assimilated people from around the world because we had values that were universal and easy to embrace, but that has changed a great deal. It’s easy to understand the values of hard work, honesty, freedom and equality under the law. It’s a lot harder, however, to wrap one’s mind around values like gay marriage, feminism, marital infidelity and class warfare.
And then, to make it even harder, it’s obvious that the very people promoting these values are the least likely to live by them.
I think we need a break from mass, indiscriminate immigration, and have felt this way for quite a while because I see it as a major economic and cultural strain on the native population. However, perhaps we should add to those the fact that the US is becoming an increasingly strange, culturally aberrant place by global standards, and bringing people here who are not likely to react well to the new reality is going to be bad for everyone.
