Community culture

To my friends and political frenemies who are hard-core on the Trump train: I feel for you, I really do. Carrying around that much anger and delusion is a burden.

And to those who believe immigrants are taking certain jobs: Few WASPs over the age of 16 in this country would agree to do stoop labor or haul hay or pick peaches for anything less than $12-$15 an hour. And after one dawn-to-dusk shift, even that is iffy. It’s called community culture. Some folks run to hard labor because it is necessary, while others run just as hard in the other direction because they hate hard work.

I decided to go to college when I was 14; that was the summer I tried picking tomatoes and cucumbers and hauling hay.

Nope. Nada. Uh-uh. Nyet.

The fact that some folks think U.S. citizens raised on social media, video games and hip-hop are going to do stoop labor is laughable and ludicrous. Who do you think picks strawberries, blueberries, blackberries, watermelons and cantaloupes that we, the self-entitled, gently place in our grocery carts? Who stands elbow to elbow to elbow with other workers deboning chickens or cutting slabs of beef and pork into salable packages, or pulling the entrails out of fish, goats and turkeys?

Be thankful for immigrants, illegal or otherwise; they do work that most American citizens do not want to do, or cannot do. And most Americans are grateful for those who do. And damn well we should be. GEORGE S. SMITH Sutton