Most people I went to high school with did not go to college. Unless you grew up someplace incredibly wealthy, I bet it’s the same for you. It wasn’t expected of me; it wasn’t even really discussed because the concept was foreign to my family, and I only ended up going full time after a few years of floundering, drinking, and job after job I hated and was miserable doing.
I lost touch with most, but not all, people from high school. But losing touch doesn’t mean not knowing what they’re up to. Many went on to big careers and families, and I’m genuinely happy for them. Many of those careers are in the trades — the kinds of jobs you shower from, not for. If you’ve never had one of those, you’re missing out.
The satisfaction you get from completing a physical task is unmatched in the white-collar world. It’s why so many rich guys play dress-up and hunt, fish, or do some kind of craft involving woodwork. To this day, as I drive through Detroit on visits, I point out, with pride, to my kids the various apartment buildings I helped put roofs on. Naturally, they couldn’t care less — one of the joys of being 9 and 7 is not understanding much about things beyond your friends and toys — but someday in the next decade, if I do my job as a father right, they will.
It will be more difficult for their peers to understand that satisfaction and pride, as the number of those jobs in the physical trades continues to exist, they’re just no longer available to Americans.
In my life, I worked more jobs than most families — upwards of 82 at this point — and among them were roofer, electrician’s assistant for a local IBEW, and concrete work. When I did them in the 1990s, the crews were a rainbow of people that could fill a Benetton ad. We didn’t “celebrate” it; we lived it, and it didn’t matter.
Most importantly, we were all Americans who could communicate with each other, as we all spoke English. Go anywhere near a job site today, or roll down your windows as you crawl through a construction zone now, and you likely won’t hear English spoken. Maybe from the supervisor, if they happen to be on the job site at that moment, but otherwise you’ll likely hear Spanish.
While not impossible, the likelihood of an American only being able to speak Spanish is incredibly low. By law, though seemingly not enforced, you have to have a working understanding of English in order to become a citizen. That means any logical person should assume the crews on these construction sites are made of up, in the most generous scenario, Green Card holders or, in a more likely scenario, illegal aliens.
The good jobs that were available to me and my classmates who weren’t cut out for college right out of the box are gone. Well, not gone, just not for us anymore. American kids graduating high school who don’t know what they want to be when they grow up, or know what they want to be and are a journeyman, don’t have the chances that once were. Now, they have to learn Spanish in order to have a shot at one of these jobs.
The pathway to the middle class for people who grew up like me has been orange-coned and detoured away from what is one of the best ways forward for a high school graduate or dropout. Those jobs, those industries, have been ceded to illegal aliens with a wink and nod from the political class, or both parties.
If you’re good at your job in a skilled trade, you will always have work. Americans no longer have those opportunities.
We’re told illegals are “doing the jobs Americans won’t do.” This is a lie; I’ve done those jobs and know people who do them. They aren’t hiring Americans anymore, white, black, or Hispanic (if they aren’t fluent in Spanish).
The companies hiring these people need to be fined into oblivion, the illegals deported immediately, and I do not care how many crying neighbors chant as it happens. If they get in the way of federal officers enforcing the law, arrest and throw the book at them. Make enough harsh examples out of lawless leftists, and even the dumb ones will begin to pick up on the concept of consequences.
When I see stories like the one in Austin, Texas, about the illegal alien with a final deportation order (meaning he should’ve been long gone already) being shot in a confrontation with ICE, I can’t bring myself to care. He should not have been here; he should not have resisted; he should not have been hired by a food delivery app to deliver food. I do not care — the bleeding needs to be stopped, and then he needs to be put on a plane.
Democrats can whine all they want about how mean it is to people they consider their constituents, but it won’t change anything. That dumb Americans elect people to government positions where they will fight harder for illegal aliens with no business being in this country more than they will actual Americans is not my concern; I can’t save stupid people from themselves. My concern is everyone else — the people who have to live in the wake of morons; those who suffer the results of the stupid decisions these elected idiots impose on others.
I care about the Americans victimized by illegal alien crime. If they only attacked Democrats who support them being here, I’d care a lot less, but those people are insulated from the violence of their gardeners by heavy police patrols and private security. It’s normal people assaulted, never their kids.
As such, when I hear about an illegal alien or left-wing protester hurt “confronting ICE,” or whoever they feel “brave” taking a swing at, I don’t care.
I look at it the same way I look at a “bullfighter” being gorged — what did you expect to happen? Bullfighting is savage; it is disgusting and stupid. They drug the bull, poison the bull, wound the bull, then a weakling comes out in a costume with a sword to pretend to “fight” the drugged, confused animal, eventually killing it to make up for physical shortcomings elsewhere.
But every once in a while, the bull catches one of these “men” and inflicts real damage through the haze of the poison. I’m on the side of the bull.
ICE is the bull, just doing their jobs. And the illegals and the agitators are the “fighters” comfortable in the knowledge that the bull is restrained by law and professionalism, not to mention the human desire to not harm anyone and just get home at the end of a day’s work. They taunt the bull, they antagonize the bull, they resist the bull, and every once in a while, they cross the line and threaten the bull. For that, there are consequences.
The only real shock I’ve seen is that it doesn’t happen more often, given how many illegal aliens are taken into custody and how many cosplaying leftists have no understanding of how laws work and where the lines for self-defense are.
But ultimately, I don’t care. If you don’t want to get hit by a train, don’t play on the train tracks. If you don’t want to get deported, don’t come into the country illegally. Don’t want to lose in a physical confrontation with law enforcement, don’t start a physical confrontation with law enforcement.
Most of life’s questions have obvious answers; this is no different. It’s just a matter of acknowledging them and moving on. I invite you to join me in actively not caring and making your unambiguous disinterest known on social media. Don’t click on their stories, don’t fall for the outrage, just express your disinterest and then ignore them. Maybe they’ll get it then?
Probably not, but maybe.
And then vote against them in November and make sure everyone you know who agrees with you votes that way, too, even if they don’t want to vote. Ultimately, that’s the only way to really beat these people.
Derek Hunter is the host of the Derek Hunter Show on WMAL in Washington, D.C., has a free daily podcast (subscribe!), and is the author of the book "Outrage, INC.," which exposes how liberals use fear and hatred to manipulate the masses, and is the host of the weekly “Week in F***ing Review” podcast where the news is spoken about the way it deserves to be. Follow him on X at @DerekAHunter.