[koba]

There was no particular glee I had in the demographic changes per se, though I guess it could be read as such. When the Indians first came here (the vast majority after the 1965 Immmigration Act) many of them were engineers and scientists. Many of these people felt discrimination at their jobs in terms of promotions (i.e. the dreaded "glass ceiling") Today about a third of the engineers and computer scientists in Fortune 500 corporations are Asains but few go up to CEO level, VP level, or a high executive level. When you have the numbers, like the whites do presently, you pretty much make the rules and everyone has to follow them. If the numbers shift the rules of the game also shift. In Silicon Valley, for example, many Indians run their own businneses. Why? Because they've gotten together with other Indians and set up things the way they wanted. This would'nt have really been possible when we first came as the whites controlled everything. If there are, say, more Asains in Silicon Valley then whites (right now there are not) Asians will tend to run things, take the plumb jobs etc. I saw with my own eyes how many of my people were passed up for white people who I believed were less qualified. Now that we have the numbers, we can be somewhat more independent than we used to be. If the white numbers are less, then their control is correspindingly less. Let us say, also, that whites actually start abandoning California in droves. What will happen to their houses and businesses? They will have to sell them, of course. They will probably sell them cheap. Then we can take over. Remember that the upper-class whites have much more inherited money than people like I have and you can not economically compete with them. If they're gone people like me could potentially become dominant economic forces in California. The concern is what kind of society would develop if the whites left the area. Would it become a disaster area or would American culture survive even if the whites left. I don't know the answer to that. As for the 1965 Immigration Act, you are correct. Ted Kennedy said only 5,000 immigrants per year at most would be let in. Guess he got that wrong!

[Regulator]

At least your honest. Allegedly, no one here (I'm in the Silicon Slum as well, but I'm an Aerospace guy) is supposed to be discriminating. You just pointed out that a) you think they are, and b) you plan to do it too, once you're in control. Hah. Like I said, at least you're honest.

As far as the second part...well, it's like this. California is not a separate country, YET (even though it seems like it to us 'whites'). At some point though, the rest of the country may feel that way, and might be disinclined to sacrifice their children and tax dollars to defend it. At that point perhaps CA will sue to secede and be its own country, or perhaps become part of another country (some "Mexican-Americans" believe that this is a wonderful idea, and you can guess which country they would like to tag up with; fun stuff here: Reconquista Now! ).

In any event, the notion of a unified country with a common set of values will cease to exist. Oh, it might still be titularly unified, but that will be a joke. The ethnic differences will be stunning. Will all these nice people get together "for the common defense"? Nah. Look around you. Didja see lines around the block to join the Army on Sept. 12th? But that's what happened on Dec. 8th, 1941. Millions volunteered. It took weeks for the backlogs to be cleared. So we're already there in some ways. Ultimately this will lead to a more vulnerable country. Actually, it already has.

Forty years ago Mohammed Atta and his gang couldn't have walked around loose. People would have been instantaneously suspicious - even here in SJC, at least back then. Cops would have stopped them: whatcha doin here, furriner? But since virtually anyone can walk our streets now, and we are legally enjoined from impeding them based on any criteria at all, we are now vulnerable. The Japanese had to come in aircraft launched from carriers; these days the guys walk right in and set up operations. That's the future!

I don't expect the draft to make a comeback no matter what, for just those reasons. The "American people" may be too ethnically different in 30 years to ever expect that people from Iowa would team up with people from NYC or SFO and go out to fight. The US Armed forces will remain what it has become, a mercenary army controlled by a central government, rather than the citizen armies of the past, which were mainly state militias, activated for federal service in time of war. That is the reason I asked you about the military: to gauge your perceived willingness to identify as a part of a larger whole. Obviously, you don't. You segment the world into competing ethnicities. No surprise there. Everyone does!

Undoubtedly, there are those who will chime in and say, "but its always been this way in the US!". But that was when we had severe pressures to assimilate. With the numbers coming now, and the enormous cultural differences, that pressure has evaporated. And, as you said, no one knows what will happen.