Comfort and Joy: Christmas for an Atheist

“You are fettered,” said Scrooge, trembling. “Tell me why?”

“I wear the chain I forged in life,” replied the Ghost. “I made it link by link, and yard by yard; I girded it on of my own free will, and of my own free will I wore it.”

-Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol

            The guns were silent across much of the Western front on Christmas day of 1914 when approximately 100,000 men in the British, Belgian, French and German armies called a truce for the day. By some accounts it began as Christmas carols emanated from the opposing trenches, which were often separated by no more than 100 yards, culminating in the two sides singing together. How the truce itself began and spread along the front is debated, but what we do know is that many soldiers exchanged gifts of food, cigarettes and other items, and makeshift soccer balls would be kicked around between the men of enemy nations who’d been sent out to kill one another. This was to the vexation of the commanders who feared their troops might recognize how similar they really were to their enemy, adopt a “live and let live” mentality and lose the will to fight. Though troubling to the military leaders, these are the very reasons the Christmas Truce has become immortalized. Even if only for a single day, masses of men whose job it was to annihilate or be annihilated recognized their brother’s as such and, in what is the paragon of the spirit of Christmas, made merry and even had the audacity to enjoy their common company amid the start of a war which would steal the lives of nearly 10 million soldiers and almost 10 million civilians.

            Symbolic of how the Christmas season is about emphasizing our likeness as brothers and sisters and coming together to make peace, the story of the Christmas Truce begs us to ask, if they can come together and make merry, why can’t we?

            Christmas Spirit morality would, however, be left incomplete without reference to Charles Dickens’ candid and percipient novella A Christmas Carrol, where the main character Ebenezer Scrooge is the personification of pure materialistic greed. We the readers are taught the necessity of viewing one’s own life from a third party perspective, holding up a mirror so that we can ask whether we really are giving our best (or any) efforts to live a life well loved. Not until he is forced by the Ghost of Christmas Past to watch his younger self putting his greed into action does Scrooge see how he's affected others and forged the chains of his current loveless existence. 

            The central moral to A Christmas Carol is that we reap what we sow (although there is also socialist appeals throughout). We all aspire to be desired and to be remembered. To love and be loved adds a certain fullness to life. Our legacy in this temporal world is our only opportunity to live on past our death, and all decent people want that legacy to be one well remembered. In order to create a future life and legacy we can be proud of, the holiday season encourages us to acknowledge and inspect the chains we may be forging for ourselves.

            None of this, you might have noticed, involves any justification from or grounding in religion. The holiday celebrations have very unchristian origins as an alcohol-enhanced Nordic solstice celebration that was co-opted by Christianity (which also presents us with a very questionable “reason for the season”). There was some revisionist work done by the New Testament authors to place Jesus’ birth in Bethlehem (to fulfill the Old Testament prophecy) by positing a census which required people to return to their home towns. The issue with this is that the census describe doesn’t seem to have taken place. There is no record of it, nor of a Jewish man performing miracles and being crucified. This is quite a giveaway considering what good record keepers of such public events the Romans were. Even so, people weren't required to journey to their hometowns for censuses and, if they had, then it wouldn’t have occurred in the winter. 

            Further, none of the values we attribute to the Christmas season depend on religion or religious belief. Has someone ever given a convincing reason why you or I should believe, on no evidence and against reason, that a man was born via parthenogenesis and was the son of the creator of the universe (who we also must believe exists)? Or, that if we do not believe in this man’s existence, forsake this life to follow his teachings, and give incessant praise for this Dear Leader who knows all of our actions as well as thoughts, then we will be condemned to torture for all eternity (such is the boundless mercy of His love)? And why must one believe such unbelievable and immoral propositions to appeal to the common humanity we all share, practice self-reflection and spread joy to others? Rejecting these assumptions, we can easily designate the holiday and its December season to reminding ourselves to turn our attention inward and meditate on the love we have and whether our actions are increasing or decreasing the deserved happiness of those around us. The holiday has fortunately become something secular, though has unfortunately also become a consumerist, shallow time of year with much though not all of the gift-giving being more akin to an obligation to spend lots of money than a time to express appreciation through more meaningful gestures.

            I was lucky enough myself to never be indoctrinated with the trappings of Christianity, so this holiday, full of joy as it is, is entirely secular for myself. Religious though my father was (and that my mother’s family is), Christmas never was a religious event for me growing up. On Christmas Eve my parents, brother and I would tune into TBS for the 24 hour marathon of A Christmas Story while drinking hot cocoa. During Christmas dinner with our relatives, the closest we come to a prayer is the lighthearted reference to National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation where we all say “grace” (“The Blessing!”) instead of anything recognizable as an actual prayer. Despite a family who is modestly religious, Christmas never involved any recognition, praise of, or giving of thanks for the alleged birth of Jesus. In fact, the only aspect of my Christmases that is recognizably religious is the tradition I began in high school of attending Christmas Eve mass with my best friend and his family. (I first went before I realized I was an atheist, and liked the church because on my first visit they told a non-religious parable which emphasized the moral of happiness being a choice - a result of one’s mindset and chosen response to circumstances.)

            Never having had religion placed at the center of the holiday season, it becomes apparent how I so easily dispel it from the whole Christmas enterprise. It simply isn't necessary.

Holiday's cause us to get along for a day by emphasizing our similarities and putting aside all of our minor differences, whether of different ethnicity, language, class, or what have you. I tell you the truth, we want to spread comfort and joy and we feel and intrinsic satisfaction at being the cause of this feeling in others. The experiences these actions evoke in ourselves and others are reason enough to embrace the urge to act upon them. As for popular traditions, I enjoy the movies, the cookies, the shopping mall Santas, the Christmas lights, and I enjoy giving thoughtful gifts and reminding the people I care about that they never go unappreciated. I use the season as a time to reflect on myself and how I am imacting the lives of everyone around me. This is how I approach Christmas as a nonbeliever, and why I continue to celebrate it every December. 
Happy Christmas, friends. 

           

                

War With North Korea

I wrote this in response to an article in my university's newspaper that I found to be lacking and irresponsible. Without any further introduction needed, here it is.

                Hundreds of thousands dead, to give an optimistically low estimate, is what awaits us if war breaks out between the United States, our ally South Korea and North Korea. Most significant is that the vast majority of these victims will be Koreans, especially from South Korea. This means we have an even greater obligation to avoid armed conflict between our forces and that of the North Korea’s Dear Leader Kim Jong Un at all costs.

                In a recent article in The Quad that meant to paint a picture of what war with North Korea might look like and who would win, the author did little else than describe a numbers game of how North Korea’s military might compares (or rather, doesn’t compare) to ours. While obvious that much accurate research was done on the points he tackled, the article’s title was betrayed by his giving no description of what a war with North Korea might entail, and the article irresponsibly boiled it down down to an issue of who would ultimately win in the long run, disregarding the losses both sides would take along the way. This is as misleading as those who, when talking about the possibility of war with Russia, explained that our military and nuclear capabilities were greater than theirs. Yeah, this is true, but it fails to take into account the number of casualties that would be piled up in the process of claiming victory. This is not a battle with Yu-Gi-Oh cards where the person with the greater attack points wins with no real damage to herself. This is real life.

                Just north of the demilitarized zone (DMZ) that separates North and South Korea are thousands of conventional artillery, laid into the mountainside. As describe in the Huffington Post, “[b]urrowed into hard granite mountain faces and protected behind blast doors, 15,000 North Korean cannons and rocket launchers are aimed at the glass skyscrapers, traffic-choked highways and blocks of apartment buildings 35 miles away in Seoul ― and the U.S. military bases beyond.” According to Mark Bowden in The Atlantic, a U.S. military official estimated that if Seoul was broken up into three-square-foot blocks, the guns would be able to pepper them all within hours. Seoul and its surrounding areas are home to about 25 million people and bordered by mountains and a river, making evacuation a near impossibility. (If we were to evacuate, it likely would be before a first-strike. This could not be done while going unnoticed by the North Koreans, thereby tipping our hand to the imminence of a strike on their territory, and almost certainly prompting the firing of these artillery.) Kim Jong Un is holding not only the North Koreans hostage to his regime, but also the South Koreans, who he will pull the trigger on at the first sign of an invasion or large scale attack. This is what stops us from attacking, and which Mark Bowden noted was the reason that former President Nixon did not retaliate militarily when North Korea shot down a U.S. aircraft, killing over 30 service members.

                While aptly described by Sam Harris as a moral maniac, we know Rocket Man is not totally irrational. While giving no regard to the well-being of the Koreans who he claims to have divine right to rule over, his actions in regard to hostility toward us have been quite rational as a strategy of deterrence and keeping us on our toes. Having Nuclear weapons is an almost certain deterrent to other countries’ desires to remove you from power, so long as they have reason to believe you would use them, which we partly do have. However, we are sure Kim understands that while launching a nuclear missile on the American mainland (once he can do so, which may be before the end of Trump’s presidency) would not be the end of America as a country, the response from us could be the absolute annihilation of North Korea as a country. While a moral maniac, he is not dumb. Although, there is always the chance that I am wrong, and he is one of the people who really do deserve the ascription of the word “evil”, being willing to let his people go down in flames just to wreak mayhem on the world. We must assume the worst though, and hope for the best.

                So for the sake of argument let us imagine a conflict broke out and assume, entirely unrealistically, that we successfully took out North Korea’s nuclear capabilities, that we managed to avoid the destruction of Seoul, and that Kim’s government was toppled. We would then be left with a stateless North Korea, which holds a population of around 25 million that have been told for 3 generations of leaders that it is a master race, almost naturally destined to be in conflict with the United States (an idea that has to be kept constantly alive by Kim’s regime), and spread over a mountainous terrain where pockets of resistance could easily gain footholds, likely led by Kim’s current military commanders and leading to a guerrilla land war. This would cause a refugee and humanitarian crisis that would make a post-Saddam Iraq or Civil War Syria seem like a playground. Keep in mind that these people have been isolated from the outside world almost completely, largely uneducated, told they are a master race ruled over by a man through divine right, and that their very existence as a state revolves around opposition to (some real but many imagined) threats from the United States. This is also their justification for the pursuit of military might. If they acquire the ability to hit the U.S. mainland with a nuclear missile, they will be safe from our deadly reach. Do we expect such a population to cooperate with an American-occupied post-war Korea?

                So we come back around to the question, what would a war with North Korea look like and who would win? We would certainly win the war against Kim’s government. But, this would likely come by the sacrifice of millions of lives, and it can’t be stressed enough that nearly all of the lives lost will be Korean, meaning we not only have no right to instigate a war but have a responsibility to avoid one at almost all costs.  The result of such a war would inevitably be an American-South Korean victory on the battlefield, but also would be one of the largest humanitarian crises the world has seen, made more difficult by pockets of political and military resistance. Adding to the confusion is the uncertain position of China and how they might respond should war occur, as well as how Russia might try to capitalize on it given their trade with the North Korean government. At the moment, there is just no good outcome for the conflict between America, her ally South Korea, and our adversary North Korea. 

Illegal Immigrants in America

Approximately 11 million immigrants currently reside in the United States without legal documentation. This group has been the subject of very polarizing debate, especially during the previous election year, and the conversation surrounding it is often emotionally driven and filled with assumptions that may or may not be accurate. With all of the catch-phrases and conventional wisdom surrounding this topic, I thought it was time to learn about the reality of the current situation in regards to illegal immigrants and decide on a rational approach to fix the problem. In the coming paragraphs I will provide the information and statistics about different aspects of this issue, such as the number of illegal immigrants, where they hail from, the rates of crime among illegal immigrants within the United States, how they come here, and how much they contribute to taxes and take out of welfare programs.

When discussing illegal immigrants, we need to understand who this population is made up of. The stereotype of most illegal immigrants being Latin American is not inaccurate, although there is a sizable minority from other regions as well, and the reasons that the majority are Latino are only a matter of geography. In March of this year, the New York Times released an article titled Here’s the reality about illegal immigrants in the United States in which they provided information on the proportion of illegal immigrants and their countries of origin. It states that of the total 11 million, about 6.2 million hail from Mexico (although a Pew Research Center report claimed this number dropped from 6.4 million in 2009 to 5.6 million in 2015), 723,000 from Guatemala, 465,000 from El Salvador, and 337,000 from Honduras (these make up the vast majority of Latino immigrants). There are also sizable numbers from China (268,000), India (267,000) and Korea (198,000), with the rest coming from various other countries. While there are many newcomers, a majority have been living in the States for some years. According to the Migration Policy Institute, an officially non-partisan organization based in Washington, D.C., about 60% of illegal immigrants have lived here for ten years or more, and about 20% have been here for five years or less, which leaves about another 20% that have been here anywhere from six to nine years. This means that an estimated 80% have been living here for more than five years.

There is often a charge made against illegal immigrants that they are criminals, meaning that they engage in criminal behavior while living inside the U.S. This is a serious accusation which, if true, must have great effects on how we approach the issue, and so the validity of it must be understood. The Migration Policy Institute estimates that of the total 11 million illegal immigrants, those convicted of any crime at all adds up to about 7.5%, or 820,000. The percentage that have committed an actual felony, however, is about 2.7%, or 300,000 people. By comparison, a 2011 research paper titled Growth in the U.S. Ex-Felon and Ex-Prisoner Population, 1948 To 2010, stated that the percentage of people in the overall U.S. population who have been convicted of a felony to be about 8.6%. We can easily speculate on why this difference exists, but what is important is that it does exist. The narrative that paints illegal immigrants as highly prone to committing crimes in the United States is not only unsupported but actually contradicted by the evidence. This means the fear of illegals as violent criminals is unjustified, but also that there are obviously a number who are criminals, even if a small minority. The relevance of this to the overall discussion is that any person illegally residing in the country who decides to commit a serious crime that would make then a danger to others, ought to be deported immediately. However, focusing on crimes committed by specific illegal immigrants and using them to represent the whole in any meaningful way, is a fallacy called the Hasty Generalization. It is illogical and leads to an unfounded stereotyping that hinders any rational approach to addressing the issue, and will only cause unnecessary problems.
To be fair, some people argue that their illegal presence makes them criminals, but here I employ what I call the Mulaney Principle, taken from a phrase John Mulaney said in his 2019 stand-up comedy special. "Just because you're accurate doesn't mean you're interesting." 

  The conventional wisdom tends to be that these immigrants sneak across the southern border that we share with Mexico, but increasingly more have entered the United States legally with temporary visas and then do not leave when those visas expire. The Center for Migration Studies reports that between 2007 and 2014 a majority of immigrants becoming non-lawful residents have done so by overstaying temporary visas (About 66% of new people joining “illegal” ranks in 2014).  However, just less than half still come across the border illegally, demonstrating that the southern border requires as much attention as our internal immigration enforcement. The most effective and efficient ways to do this are up for debate, as far as I am personally concerned, given the complicated nature of protecting the border and the different types of equipment that may be needed in different areas. Others may have more insight on this than I do. 

The jobs that illegal immigrants work range from agricultural work to journalists and more. However, according to the Pew Research Center (5 Facts about Illegal Immigration in the U.S.), these undocumented immigrants are over represented in the farming and construction industry, where they make up 26% and 15% of the workforce, respectively. As of 2014, an estimated 8 million of the total 11 million were a part of the U.S. workforce, accounting for about 5% of the overall number of American workers who were employed or looking for work.

The evasion of taxes that comes with living in the United States illegally is also a hot-button issue for many people, and understandably so. Numbers on this are not so solid, which is unsurprising given the difficulty of estimating tax payment by a population who, at least when they pay income taxes, often do so under fake Social Security numbers. In September of 2016 The Atlantic published an article titled The Truth About Undocumented Immigrants and Taxes, which highlighted the fact that because many illegal aliens pay taxes under fake or stolen Social Security numbers, they pay in money that they are almost certain to never see again. This is the result of the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 which stipulated that any employer knowingly employing an illegal immigrant will be committing a crime. But, in order to not make employers into miniature immigration agents, it also instructed them to accept any documentation reasonably appearing on its face to be real. This opened a black market for fake or stolen Social Security cards and birth certificates, which then brought in payroll taxes from a portion of these immigrants. In the same article in The Atlantic the Chief Actuary of the Social Security Department, Stephen Goss, is referenced as estimating that about 1.8 million illegal immigrants worked under fake or stolen Social Security cards in 2010, and that about $13 billion was paid into the system by illegal immigrants with about $1 billion being paid back in benefits. It is hard to estimate how many pay taxes though, as many are paid in cash like other under-the-table workers and as a result never fill out W-2 forms. The Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy estimates that about 50% pay income taxes, though I have not seen this number substantiated elsewhere yet. People who reside here illegally may also pay taxes in lieu of a Social Security number by using an Individual taxation Identification Number (ITIN). It is worth noting that many immigrants living here without legal authorization very often pay local taxes, even when not paying federal income taxes. 
As Snopes.com points out, Illegal immigrants are not eligible for any federal Healthcare programs, though "six states and the District of Columbia have rules that allow undocumented immigrant children to avail themselves of Medicaid benefits, and undocumented immigrants are also entitled to emergency medical care." (https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/illegal-immigrant-benefits/)
They are also not legally eligible for welfare benefits like food stamps through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). This legal obstacle can be bypassed if they have children or other family members who are legal residents or citizens since those individuals are eligible for such benefits. Children are also guaranteed access to public schools regardless of immigration status, which also gives low-income children (including undocumented ones) access to school food programs. I can not name anyone with certainty who would want to starve a child to death for not having a proper form of legal documentation though.

                These are the bare facts and statistics, without the accompaniment of any specific proposed policy changes in order to address the issue as it stands. My own reluctance to extend this is both because of the fear of dragging it on with too long of an article, and because of my realization that I have many more details to look into before I can confidently say that I stand by a specific approach. I can only hope this helped shed some light on the situation and help some people think more rationally about the topic.