Disgusting

Forget regime change in Iran, how about here?

Making the world safe from IHOP landscapers! Good job, federales!

Don’t pour yourself a whiskey and get too comfortable, settling in for protracted Slack Tide goodness. This isn’t a real piece, where I tap dance and dazzle you with wordplay, as is our custom around these parts. It’s just a short, blunt, angry cry. Watch this video of masked ICE goons (and how are people supposed to know that they’re ICE, when most of the time, they don’t even identify themselves, just going in for the snatch’n’grab?) detaining one of those dangerous criminals President Trump promised to send packing. If by “dangerous criminal,” you mean the guy weed-whacking down at the local IHOP. What a relief he’s off the street!

His name is Narciso Barranco. You’d think President Trump would have some affinity for him, since his first name derives from the name, “Narcissus,” who in Greek mythology, fell in love with his own reflection. Yeah, he’s an undocumented migrant, who has been here for many years. But according to CNN, he raised three sons who love their country and are U.S. Marines. So you might argue that he’s paid the country back with interest for jumping the line. While doing a hard, physical job that nine-tenths of us gringos wouldn’t be caught dead doing. (I can barely stand to weed-whack at my own house, and I live here.) According to one of his sons, even after Barranco was arrested, pepper sprayed, had his shoulder dislocated, was beaten bloody, and stowed away in detention where he’s getting water roughly once a day, relieves himself in a room with 70 other people, and still hasn’t been allowed to change his bloody clothes or wash his bloody face (as testified to in an appearance a son just made on Nicolle Wallace’s MSNBC show), he asked his son to finish the job that he was in the middle of doing when arrested. Good help is hard to find. Maybe it’s in America’s best interest not to slam their head on the pavement, and treat them like they’re sub-human.

But no matter where you stand on illegal immigration (I’ve always been against it, for the record), this video is disgusting. It’s wrong. And I don’t want it being done in my name. You shouldn’t either. If you’re cool with it, and want to tell the “full” fake story, save it for your fan fiction on how one lonely IHOP gardener needed to be violently taken down by brutes. Maybe you, too, can get a job in ICE Barbie’s press department. But if you show up in my comments section, expect to get made an example of. I’m feeling just a tad violent today. (Maybe I should apply at ICE?)

Meanwhile, I thought we were supposed to be a Christian nation? That’s what my old compadres on the right keep telling me, if they’ll forgive me for using a Spanish word. So why don’t we act like it? I’ve read the Beatitudes many times, and nowhere does it say: “Blessed are the masked men who beat the shit out of migrants.” If you truly need more of my thoughts on the subject of what the Scripture says, you can find that here.

But sometimes, it’s best to just sit with an atrocity, so that we don’t commit more of them. The reason people have always risked life and limb to come to this blessed home of ours (including all of our ancestors), is because it’s the best goddamned country in the history of the world. (Apologies to God for taking his name in vain, but I think he’ll forgive me, since it’s for a good cause.) Yet if our leaders can’t live up to those standards, maybe we need regime change here. Keep that in mind when the next election comes around, instead of getting so wrapped around the axle of what should happen in Iran.

We have our own self-destructive ayatollahs (I’m looking at you, Stephen Miller), and they deserve to be stopped, before they tarnish our good name forever. People wanting to come here illegally is a good problem to have, even if we can’t let everybody in. Nor should we, for obvious pragmatic reasons. But it’s when people don’t even want to come here legally that the real trouble starts. Which is the track we are on. Here’s praying that we don’t arrive at that destination.

Bonus Track: Here’s the late, great Texas songstress Nanci Griffith and friends performing the Woody Guthrie song, “Deportee (Plane Wreck at Los Gatos).” Which has a story behind it.