This week on Facebook, a friend asked whether there was a way to block any post that referred in any way to the ignoramus who currently occupies the White House. The poor guy just can’t take any more of the incessant insanity.
Me? Beyond my professional obligation to you, dear reader, I have a general tendency to wallow in my misery — to pick at scabs until they bleed. To scratch mosquito bites until they break open.
To watch the news.
How did that awful Mellencamp song go? “Sometimes love don’t feel like it should, You make it [beat, beat] hurt so good.”
Take, for example, footage of the California fires. Most of it is difficult to watch. Whole swaths of towns are burned down to ashes, miles of forest are reduced to piles of dust, and yet I keep watching. Then Rump shows up and voyeuristic grief turns to masochistic joy. Watching California Governor Jerry Brown’s face while Rump explained his theory of forest management — not enough raking — was beyond hilarious. Brown was the very definition of stone-faced. Of course the fires have nothing to do with climate change. If only somebody had raked hundreds of thousands of acres of woods!
Pretty much lost during the long-anticipated midterm elections was coverage of the infamous caravan of scary immigrants slowly making their way through Mexico from Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras, countries not known for their low crime rates and high standards of living. Rump went so far as to call it an “invasion” before his party lost the House and he became more or less mute on the subject.
A reporter from BuzzFeed News, Adolfo Flores, talked to some of the LGBTQ members of the invading forces, and what he discovered was disturbing:
“Standing on the beach in Tijuana on Wednesday, Christian caught his first glimpse of the United States. The country he was hoping to call his own was partially obscured behind a metal border fence in the process of being reinforced with barbed wire by construction crews surrounded by US soldiers.”
“Christian, who declined to give his last name out of fear of damaging his potential asylum case, was part of an LGBT contingent of the caravan that separated from the main group in Mexico City to head for Tijuana. The contingent said it faced discrimination from within the caravan in addition to the dangers that such a visible group faced on the journey through Mexico.
“‘We went ahead of the main caravan because we put our lives at risk on the road,’ Christian told BuzzFeed News… The gay 24-year-old from Guatemala said that someone threw a bottle at him during the caravan’s march north. When the group, which includes several transgender women, would try to hitchhike while traveling with the main caravan, drivers who were offering a lift to other members of the caravan would deny them rides or leave them stranded along desolate highways, Christian said.
“The group of about 80 arrived in Tijuana on Sunday afternoon after 54 hours on the road, riding inside two buses paid for by RAICES, an immigrant advocacy organization based out of San Antonio, Texas. RAICES raised $18,000 for this LGBT contingent of the caravan and spent $6,100 for bus tickets and $4,000 for an Airbnb. The advocacy organization used the remainder of the money to send a legal team to Mexico.”
Meanwhile, in the Conservative Review, the appropriately named Nate Madden took the opportunity to gloat:
“Much as with the demands for near-unrestricted immigration from the Middle East, here we have another situation where two common policy positions of those on the Left find themselves at odds.
“Here’s the question: If the caravan is such a dangerous place for gay people and transsexuals [sic], why are so many on the Left so keen to let thousands of people who may treat them this way into the country on specious (if not outright bogus) asylum claims?
“Sure, the open-borders crowd would find any way they can to deflect and change the subject if any of these migrants were to get drunk, drive a car, and kill or maim an American citizen, but what happens if any of them starts throwing beer bottles at pride parades?
“Will those who harbor these kinds of views actually be expected to (gasp!) assimilate? But then, since calls for immigrants to assimilate and change their ways are so often decried as xenophobic and racist these days, what’s a leftist to do?”
Madden’s conclusion: “One big truth in politics: Absurd policy positions only lead to further absurdities.”
I don’t know where to begin, but here’s a starter: If any of the women who literally carried their babies the length of Mexico or further to make a better life for them were to get drunk and run over someone in this country, that woman would be apprehended and tried in court; if she were convicted, she would be sent to jail. That’s the way our system works. A more likely scenario is that some homegrown white nut job would take one of his many guns and shoot up a church congregation filled with immigrants.
And what is this hooey about assimilation? The Amish have been here since the early 18th century; why isn’t Madden telling them to ditch their horses and buggies, step into the 21st century, and buy some brand-new Buicks?
As for throwing beer bottles at a Pride Parade, I think the perps would find themselves so out-numbered that they’d turn on their heels and retreat, hopefully not before some mighty, bare-chested dykes pulverized them.
Reality to Madden: We don’t put up with that shit anymore.
