A couple years back I penned a blog, “America The Beautiful”, in which I expressed my thoughts on how we became a nation of migrants, using my own family’s journey as an example. The reader’s digest version of my thesis was that our ancestors came here because they were living in shit holes, which gave them little choice but to pack up and move, even if it meant risking their lives. I went so far as to suggest that native Americans made the same dangerous choice, just 20,000 years earlier than the rest of us. Once here, this place, this “shining city upon a hill” changed them for the better. America, the great mixing bowl of the world, where peoples of all creeds, races, and religions, while keeping the best traditions of their ancestors became one people, feeding on freedoms which allowed each to ascend to levels of prestige and prosperity based on their merits and gumption: a thing not possible in their native lands. At least that’s what I was taught in school and believed and reveled in just two short years ago.
I knew that this belief had a few minor flaws, as not everyone was included. Like if you were black, brown, Asian, spoke English with a funny accent, wore a turban, head scarf, Yakima, were an okie or hillbilly, had the wrong sounding surname, lived in the wrong part of the country, went to the wrong college, or showed empathy to any of the above-mentioned groups. But WTF, it worked for me, which it really did, so it must basically be true.
It certainly is not true today. People living in shit holes and war zones are still trying to come here. They strap their infants to their backs, walk through jungles, across deserts, are subject to exploitation, beatings, rape, and death. Ever played the “Oregon Trail” game? That was a walk in the park. Then, if they survived the journey, they often crossed the border without permission, turned themselves in and requested asylum. Two year ago, when we had a shred of humanity left, we granted them temporary status, checked into their past and reviewed their claims. This was called due process. But no more.
Now poorly trained and badly supervised masked thugs hunt them down, putting men, women, and babies in shit hole detention facilities, then we ship them out, sometimes to countries not of their origin. We grab people that have been here for decades, working jobs that us white folks are too proud or lazy to do, then ship them out as well. We do this when they dutifully show up to their asylum court hearings, take them out of final citizenship ceremonies because they were born in the wrong country, calling them the worst of the worst, rapists, drug smugglers, human traffickers and cat/dog eaters. This is American exceptionalism? A shining city on the hill? More like a slum in vermin infested swamp.
Some of us are standing up to this. You have all seen them on the news, exercising their first and fourth amendment rights by blowing whistles, honking horns, waving signs, and in Portland waking around in inflatable frog suits. They have hidden their neighbors from the boogie men, brought groceries to those too terrorized to leave their homes, and generally are making a nuisance of themselves. In response, ICE have detained American citizens of color, beat up a 17-year-old who worked at a McDonalds, pulled a senior citizen out of his home in subzero temperature who was bare chested, in shorts and wearing crocks. Then they murdered two protesters in cold blood.
As bad as that sounds it got far worse. The president, vice president, DHS secretary, and numerous others in the Trump junta, called the victims professional agitators and domestic terrorists who intended and tried to kill ICE agents. Even though there was massive video evidence to the contrary, they persisted, doubled down, tripled down, with the Fox watching right wing echo chamber adding their nescient home schooled voices to the noisy distraction from the truth. They are telling you not to believe your own eyes and ignore what you hear from witnesses, one of which was five feet away. They have incompetently contaminated and then disapperared evidence like the phone, the gun, and the bodies. Blocking independent investigations by local police; DHS is in charge of investigating DHS. Really!!! I can’t wait to hear how they are going to spin the autopsy reports. The shot that killed Rene Good came from the side. Alex Pretti was shot nine times in back by two ICE holes while he was on the ground. Feared for their lives, my ass.
After a couple of weeks of unrepentant character assassinations of the victims, the governor of the state, the mayor of the city and anybody else who dares to point out what anybody with eyes can plainly see, our commander-in-sleaze finally replaced Greg Bovino with Tom Homan. The main stream media jumped on this change, congratulating the tens of thousands of Minnesotans for risking frostbite. “This represents a change in tone”. Sorry, if I am not impressed. I am reminded of what happened in NAZI occupied Europe in 1942 when Reinhard Heydrich was replaced by Ernst Kaltenbrunner. A “change in tone” does not alter the sickening reality of an instrument that only plays one note.
Folks, this was never about emigration enforcement. It is about a mentally challenged, narcissistic, sexual pervert’s retribution on those who see him as he really is. I am repulsed by what I see. This is not the American way. Or is it?
Our history is punctuated with racial hatred, violence against minorities, and numerous foreign wars based on what’s good for a few moneyed elites rather than the safety and humanity of the American people. No matter how many laws we have passed to alter this fact, there is always a predictable and grotesque backlash. Those of us who choose to speak up are labeled with every derogatory term possible and told love it or leave it.
American, love it or leave it. This has become an America that I can’t love and I am too old to leave. Waving a sign while standing on the sidewalk, giving money to Democratic candidates, manning phone banks to get out the vote, are all laudable, but I fear they are not enough. What we now need is something more effective. We need to become ass holes.
Here is my plan. Whenever you meet a MAGA adherent, be it stranger, friend or family, look them in the eye and say FUCK OFF, then turn away and don’t look back. They are unmoved by logic, lack empathy, and only care about others when it directly affects them. Don’t tell me that I shouldn’t let politics affect friendships. This is not about left/right, blue/red, Democrat/Republican. It’s about morality. Do you think that it is OK to violently deport families, put grandmothers and five-year-olds in unsanitary detention camps and feed them moldy food? Is having sex with a 15-year-old acceptable because at least she was not 12? Did you vote three times for a rich and powerful man that brags about grabbing pussy, walking into teenage girls dressing rooms, and mocks people with disabilities? Do you think that LGBTQ human beings are depraved and shouldn’t have the same human rights as you do? Then you are not someone that is worth my time. FUCK OFF!