Meant to can this whole blog, but seeing the news about mass deportations and forcing myself to move beyond moral revulsion, implementation raises questions. More than questions, it raises troublesome phantoms and nightmares of the past, especially after seeing images of swastikas in the streets (again, kinda like those dipshit bigots and their tiki torches before).
Using the military to mass deport would require the sort of situation society is used to associating with the Soviets of the nazis, or other dictatorial nations (say... South Africa): "Papers! Papers! Show me your papers!"
Or, if you're more cinema-minded: the opening of Casablanca, a film which revolves around a stolen set of papers and a morally troubled man ultimately putting what's right before his own desires, ensuring they go to the right person.
Look a pinch Hispanic? That's enough. I mean, being a minority has been implicitly for a long time if you read books like The New Jim Crow, but we're talking explicit and much more violence. There are a few historical regimes I can think of that followed a similar route. I'd imagine my old man, who has spent so much time in the sun he's joked before he "looks Mexican" might be a little more concerned. But wait, he reaps the benefits of the PNW, doesn't have to worry some dickhead BPO pulling him over cause he looks Hispanic and is mowing grass, where's your license and registration papers? ...and your residency ones?
Don't have them available? Off we go.
Let me quote this crazy, radical group:
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
This is a whacky idea called fhr Fourth Amendment.
In order for this mass deportation plan to be implemented, it would either need to be ignored or suspended. Or it would require something akin to the Alien and Sedition acts—widely considered one of the worst blunders in early US history, one of the things I have to pan Adams for and give Jefferson credit for. Adams was absolutely wrong to sign those into law.
Back to today, though, and how is this going to be paid for? I have an idea.
Private prison stocks jump on Trump appointment of immigration hard-liner Tom Homan
After the Civil War, slavery was abolished—except, well let's read the first section of the Thirteenth:
Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.
Catch the "except as a punishment for crime" bit?
This is why those stocks are going up.
The forced prison labor that made companies rich
Another one John Oliver did a good segment on and more humorously
Naturally, every immigrant won't be capable of working—old, infirm, women, children (well, republicans are working on those pesky child labor laws)—so you'd probably want two lines going into the facility. One for workable slaves, one for people that you have no use for and, wait, I think I've read about something like this before. Many times, but Wiesel's Night in particular returns to me.
At Auschwitz; over the gates? "Arbeit macht frei,"
Work sets you free.
Warning signs for fucking years and yet we're stll here.
I just wonder what my paternal grandparents would think.
I never met my biological grandpa, he died when my old man was young. But he fought as a GI against the nazis. My grandma lived through the Battle of Britain in Grantham, the most bombed town by those shitbag nazis during the Battle of Britain (she really hated blocking out her windows at night to hide from bombers), they met during the war and came back to the New World.
Ya know, a lot of Southern American migrants have similar stories, especially after we destabilized the entire region, beginning with Guatemala for those delicious bananas (the gros michel, or Big Michael, yes there is a pun there, was replaced by today's Cavendish banana; did you know some Islamic creation stories also place the banana as the Forbidden Fruit?).
Operation Condor, in particular comes to mind next as an illustration of a destabilized South America. After the US overthrew Allende in Chile on 9/11/73, the dictator Pinochet rose. And he did not like dissidence or dissidents. Operation Condor was a secret pact between authoritarian governments to stamp it out. We know it was called Operatio Condor because that's the CIA's name for it. Southern American countries tend to refer to it by a different term.
People just disappeared. In the night. Like the Soviets. Disposal of remains was various, but the most famous that now crops up in online right-wing spaces are "helicopter rides" because dissenters would be disposed of by, just that, flying them out over the ocean and dumping them. As this ring of dictators closed in, those who could tried to move from country to country—and those who were capable ultimately ended up in Argentina. Which, well, let's quote a judge here:
"Argentina was transformed from a safe haven where refugees had been safe for a long time to a hunting ground where they were trapped."
We don't want to live in a country like this. We don't want a country like Chile was, where famous artists are tortured in sports stadiums and people dance their national dance with pictures of disappeared loved ones. Where there's enjoyment in cruelty and disgusting behavior. We can do better than that. We can treat people beter than that. I know I wouldn't want to be treated like that.
Would you?
"First they came for the immigrants, and I did not speak out, because I was not an immigrant,"
Seems to me, that's the direction we're heading. Once rights are gone from one group of people, those who took them don't usually stop. Rights tend to keep getting eroded from the downtrodden. And in the US our rights are held to be "inalienable"—but we're seeing them erode.
Where are all those Second Amendment jackasses who loved shouting about how they'd stand up against tyranny?
Oh, yeah, blowing their loads all over at the thought they'll be able to use their guns to shoot up their political enemies, the liberals who oppose the encroaching authoritarian government. Huh.
(Reminded a bit of my brother-in-law's take that I deserved a bullet from an illegal immigrant for voting Clinton [when they split hairs, this became basically, 'He didn't say that. He just agreed with his buddy;' as I'm sure you can imagine, that made me feel so much better and did not lead to years of us trading nasty looks while avoiding each other at get-togethers]).
Free speech is racial slurs on Twitter, not actual free speech about things that matter. While I try to accept what I can, there are things I cannot and refuse to accept. Among them: I refuse to accept people can truly be this callous. There has to be some way of explaining it differently, of showing a different perspective, or giving a different insight. As Mr. B. would say, "It's like watching light refract through different facets of a diamond."
And he's a perfect example of this: prior to ninth grade, I was big ol' homophobe, like I was taught.
(Unless it's been replaced, my folks' current boat was purchased from a [former?] lawn customer they called "The Dyke," yes you know why. The family is/was one of the primary lawns in that area, at least in my eyes, because we mowed her sister's[?] lawn nearby. The husband passed away, collected a bunch of beer memorabilia too if memory serves from way back. Very distinct surname, the other part of the family, name of a favorite character in FE7 so it sticks out).
Go into this guy's class, really enjoy his lessons, likig his style of lectures, and someone tells me he's gay. I shrug it off, convince myself he's too cool, no way, all the usual BS bigots tell themselves. I'm never going to know, anyway. Until our school had a Day of Silence and he said, "Well, I suppose you guys have heard the rumors and I might as well address the elephant n the room."
He explained how he was passionate about religion, meant to go to seminary—but especially back then, being homosexual wasn't allowed. It'd get him booted. So he had no one to talk to, no one to turn to, no one for advice. He dropped out after it drove him to loneliness. I can recognize the puffy cheeks of a alcoholic and I suspect he, too, may have been one.
And this ended up with two things: first, the book list I am still working on a decade and a half later. Second, the thought, "If the shoe was on the other foot, how would I feel having someone tell me it was wrong to love my partner?"
Led me to evolving and changing my opinion. There is always a way to find a better solution than easy ignorance.
And I return to my grandparents.
To raise a son too much of a fuckin' coward to lift a finger against the rise of fascism in his own country. But was perfectly willing to fuck over the grandson who kept pointing out warning signs. Just makes me wonder what they'd think of their boy.
Sadly, if he were to read this, it'd be to take a stock tip and offense. Everything else is in one ear and out the other. What was it Murrow said about "insulation from the realities of the world in which we live" and how "our history will be what we make it"?
I suppose he'd prefer Stalin, he was all about Five Year Plans and production levels: "A single death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic."
Or, of course, there's the easier solution, to borrow on what I recall mummy snarling in the court room, "It's all those books he reads... he can't distinguish reality from fiction," and go back to wires and lights in a box.
All these geopolitical tragedies will make some decent movies to watch in the basement theater wth some Hollywood neighbors from down the road who allegedly have a director's cut of Shaun of hte Dead and why think about ugly things when you can go waterski and take a dip in the lake, have a marg, play some ping pong?
What would Walter and Joan think?
—
Two more fun tidbits:
—Dad dabbled with illegal labor once. When he pointed at a lawn when the guy needed to use the bathroom and he pissed in the wrong spot, he fired him for being too obvious. Probably better he's impatient. The tip to use illegal labor to cut on costs came from another man on the block who runs a lawn mowing business and said this is what he does.
—A neighbor one slot away from them in one direction has a real creepy wine cellar. You move a rug on his kitchen floor and there's a trap door and a descending ladder. I was down there once and he explained it's unpermitted (city didn't investigate when I reported), but it, well, let's be honest: any underground, soundless room in the home of a rich dude seems a helluva lot like something out of a true crime. I don't believe he does that, no, but I do know what my mom told me re: physical altercations with his wife (she would deny it all now),
That time I had to stay with my folks he offered me an under-the-table job for under minimum and it was like, "Dude, I'm 26 and run a business. I know how this under-the-table bullshit works. I grew up on it—let me guess, 'least taxes you'll ever pay.' No way." I didn't say that, but kinda smirked and politely declined.
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