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“I literally did not recognize it as my country.”

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I thought the same when I moved to Pasadena and worked in downtown LA in the 90s. I felt like I had moved to the whole world. The food was great, but the stress of living around people who do not have the same understanding of life, and can’t communicate well, was really draining. In any transaction, you cannot assume the business owner knows that “the customer is always right”, and on the freeway you cannot assume that the other people will “drive defensively” or use “common” courtesy. Public restrooms will not be used in the manner intended and left in the same shape as when the user arrived. And in school, your kid may be shunned by the ones who only speak Chinese, or Spanish, or whatever.

On the other hand, we now live in Torrance and our family is finding that we have more in common with the aspiring immigrants than some of the other families. They are pro-family and faith, have high expectations of conduct for their children, and always show up to help. Liberal white families let their children mouth off and worry about whether teachers have treated their kids special enough. The non-aspiring families, I don’t know, so I think we are doing a good job of avoiding them, except when one of them calls my kid a name on the playground.

I live in a beautiful place. Now, if we could encourage the rude people to leave...