Spaulding wrote:
good dolphin wrote:
Those hacks at the Polish American Committee have been shills for the republican party my entire lifetime. Their constituency is aging immigrants. I get along with them but the dolphinski's have been at political odds with them for two generations. I've beaten them to the punch in a number of local elections with just a few friends and family versus their organizational infrastructure. Half those hacks in the audience were up our asses a year ago to get tickets when Obama gave his speech at the Copernicus Foundation a couple of years ago.
That said, Obama has been no friend to Poland. He has called Nazi concentration camps "Polish concentration camps". He has allowed his underlings to do the same without reprisal. He has sent flunkies to major international events sponsored by Poland that all other heads of state saw fit to attend. He had almost no response to Russian aggression creeping closer to Poland when he knows that Putin, left unchecked, will try to rebuild USSR. He has altered missle defense programs that would have built security in Poland against its eastern neighbors. He has given little recognition to the military and political support Poland has provided to US causes throughout his presidency.
On the other hand, what has Trump done to show his friendship? Did he employ any Polish American firms to work on his building? Did he employ any Polish American professionals to develop or market his units? Can he point to anything he has done to back that statement?
Do your kids have this strong of a connection to their heritage? Why do you? That's not a criticism, I'm just wondering.
I'm not one of those people who is Polish-American with an emphasis on Polish. I never went to Saturday Polish school and I don't speak the language. I never lived in an ethnic ghetto and I was never pressured to associate only with my own. My great grandparents were the ones who came over and I was lucky enough to know one of them into my adult life, so that probably added to my identity. We have a fairly tight knit family that keeps some of the traditions but probably in an Americanized way. Poles would probably laugh if I identified as Polish and first generation immigrants certainly don't see me as connected to the country. I'm American with a sense of my heritage and an interest in politics. Your question is as odd to me as asking why I have five fingers. Its just who I am.
I also have appreciation and celebrate other cultures.
My kids are the first generation of my family on any level that are of mixed heritage (all my nieces and nephews and extended relatives of that age are as well but my age and before is all Polish). I take it upon myself for them to understand their heritage inherited from me as I know it. I support and encourage them to also learn about their Irish roots and I'll teach them about it as much as I know but ultimately that is on my wife and her family.
I think it is important to have a sense of identity, a connection to the past and a connection to the larger world.
However, identity is a strange thing. I am American of Polish ethnicity but my inherited sense of Polishness is informed by pre WW I, pre WW II and pre Communist identity. I can tell you to a certainty that those who lived through Communist occupation have a different sense of what it is to be Polish than I.
Ultimately, what the hell do I know? This is what I am and it doesn't seem so bad so I'll pass it on to my boys.
I do view life as being indebted to those who came before me and obliged to those who come after. I'm not blind to the fact that my forefathers were probably incestuous hillbillys who would get into bar fights with people who wore the wrong high school hat. However, without misery they never would have looked to US as a great alternative and I would not be who I am today.
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