Garbage out, garbage in

Mexico is an ocean-to-ocean garbage pile.

Soft drink bottles, snack wrappers, used diapers and cigarette butts clog city streets, rural highways and scenic beaches. Mountains of garbage stand sentry-like in empty lots and at the edges of bucolic rural villages. Discarded plastic bags hang in trees and dangle from cactus like bitter industrial fruit.

Not every Mexican litters, of course. And perhaps no one does so all the time. But enough of them do, enough of the time, that this nation of 105 million people is choking on its refuse.

Yet, there has been no concerted long-term anti-litter campaign. Only a smattering of Mexican towns and cities have municipal garbage dumps.

This is part of the culture that our Mexico-worshiping Supreme Leader doesn't want to acknowledge. There are so many more: gang warfare, bribery and intimidation as a way of life, machismo, drug trafficking, drunken driving ... yes, so many more.

The epidemic of trash is part of what Supreme Leader, along with his sidekicks Kennedy and McShame, wants to import. He doesn't have to wait for his Amnesty Disease to lay waste to the country he laughably swore to protect and defend. His border-jumping familia is already turning southern Arizona into a midden. See here and here.

Twenty-two bags of garbage gathered from a site used by illegals and tossed by protesters in front of immigration pimp Rep. Jim Kolbe's office.

But the larger point isn't the simplistic one that open borders will add immeasurably to littering the environment (although they will). Rather, the trash piñatas are symbolic of a dysfunctional society that you have to be as demented as Supreme Leader to want to insert here. Tossing trash into public areas occurs when a population lacks self-respect or any sense of belonging to a culture larger than their own tribe. It's not only a Mexican phenomenon, of course -- you see it here and there in the United States too, but where it exists, you can be sure you're in an alienated area (often a hard-core urban neighborhood) through which hostility courses.

Who can be surprised that many Mexicans vandalize their own land? They are alienated. There is an undercurrent of hostility. How could it be otherwise? Some are descended from Aztecs whose idea of a good time was to cut the heart out of living prisoners of war. I'm sure there were more peaceful tribes as well, but they didn't have much luck after the Spanish dropped in to save their souls and loot their territory. Since then they've been ruled by a succession of dictators and bent politicos, or lived in anarchic backward districts. The army periodically puts down attempted rebellions. Cops make their living through shakedowns. What is there to nurture self-respect? How could they be expected to have any loyalty to society?

Of course, an open borders apologist will say that's exactly why they head to El Norte, where they imagine they can be free from everything about their country that stinks. But -- call me cynical if you want, although I think it's common sense -- migrating is not going to change their values. Los Angeles is an example of a safe house for gangs and welfare sows. Mexicans and other Third World immigrants bring their countries with them. "Yes, but that's only the first generation," the open borders pleader says. "They'll assimilate, like other immigrants before them."

Maybe, but the odds grow longer with every passing year. Mexicans have been in Los Angeles for several generations now, although in nowhere near the present concentration, and there is no evidence that they have assimilated except in the most superficial sense.

Yes, I feel sorry for those who are born and bred in environments that few of us would choose. But if large numbers of them are ever to improve their lot, it has to be a home-grown change. Running away to a richer neighboring country isn't the answer. And we aren't morally obliged to limp with the lame.