All posts by David Jennings

This is my short bio.

Jus Soli and The Incredible Hulk

Doctors and lawyers are arrogant pricks so it is not surprising that they bring out the Latin to remind us that they are talking about something really important. That busted hemorrhoid flapping around like a Water Wiggle? Ask a doctor and they’ll give you the Latin term for that. In the legal profession, ambulance chasers bandy about such phrases as habeas corpus, nolo contendere, and pro per.

There are a couple of Latin terms used to describe how one’s nationality is determined. These are jus coli and jus sanguinis. The former is nationality determined by where you are born, the latter for who your parents are. For the most part, jus soli is practiced in the New World while jus sanguinis is found in Europe, Africa, and Asia.

There is some overflow between the two. For example, if you are born in another country to an American parent, you get US citizenship. That part of jus sanguinis I am fine with. It’s the non-inclusion of jus soli that bothers me. The idea that you’re not an American even if you’re born here echoes back to an uglier time, the Dred Scott decision in particular. Fortunately, the Fourteenth Amendment of the US Constitution ensures birthright citizenship and will continue to do so until a sufficiently right-wing Supreme Court (like the one we have now) rules that those who passed the constitutional amendment were just kidding.

Ah, it feels so good to signal one’s virtue. Years ago, I righteously defended birthright citizenship and earned a defriending in the process. Maybe declaring that anyone who disagreed with me was un-American had something to do with that.

Admittedly, that was more than a little obnoxious on my part. Worse than that, I was being dishonest. Nothing makes me roll my eyes more than someone wearing their patriotism like a codpiece and here I was doing it myself. I like to think I’m better than that. Apparently, I am not.

Let’s be clear though. I was not merely being an asshole. I really do support the idea of birthright citizenship, if only because nationality based on bloodline has a little racism baked in. But here’s the thing: what I believe in my heart of hearts is a position you cannot use for the basis of a workable immigration policy. It is the belief that nationality itself is bullshit.

The way I look at it, my citizenship is a stroke of luck. There was no merit involved when I got launched out of my mother’s vagina and landed on American soil. What’s more, the piece of America I landed on, Orange County, CA, was not always part of the USA. This traditionally right-wing enclave on the left coast belonged to Mexico until we stole half their country. Before Mexico, it belonged to Spain.

Prior to that, things get a little murky. The indigenous Tongva were living there when Junipero Serra and his merry band of Christian psychopaths arrived. According to Wikipedia (my sole research source for everything), the Tongva took the land from another tribe. It is impossible to say how many iterations of conquerors and the vanquished there were before the first humans arrived and forcibly evicted a family of ground sloths living there.

It’s hard to be sure who the rightful owners of that land really are at this point. I lay no claim and am content to let others sort it out amongst themselves. I step away readily because my worldview revolves around not laying claim to much of anything.

You see, you cannot have watched as much TV as I have growing up without learning a little something about alienation. Not all television programs, mind you. The type of shows I’m talking about are the ones where the main character has his life upended by circumstance and spends one episode after another in a series of interchangeable American towns where he must resolve a plot point before hitting the road as the credits roll. “The Fugitive,” “The Invaders,” and “The Incredible Hulk” are all examples of this sort of show.

In the end, all of them really spoke to me. Richard Kimble, David Vincent, and David Banner did not adopt a vagabond lifestyle because they realized the world they lived in was a crock of shit. They all desperately wanted the one thing to happen that would let them get back to their lives, whether it be finding his wife’s real killer, convincing the government that the alien invasion is real, or practicing anger management that offsets the effects of gamma radiation.

For me and (I’m guessing) a lot of other Americans, feeling uprooted does not come with any clear idea of what we’re uprooted from. For some, the answer is rediscovering one’s heritage, glorifying what comes before the hyphen of our hyphenated Americanness even though there’s no real connection to the old country other than ancestry. I’ve been to Ireland and have to tell you that it bears little resemblance to California, though the dysfunctional families and heavy drinking strike a familiar chord.

Others reinvent a version of home by banding together with likeminded folks and more than anything, they are citizens of the tribe they create. There is a lot to be said for these groups, but I don’t fit in them either. There is only one other person I can relate to and trust completely. When I leave the house, the ground I walk on is only native soil by default.