The Great Pumpkin Diarrhea’s Dogs

Virtually everything that the current US administration, and frankly what previous administrations had been doing for decades, is the misguided, stupid, and fundamentally wrong clusterfuck of actions for addressing what are real and genuine problems.

The treatment of undocumented (as well as documented immigrants, including military service members) immigrants is inhuman, and indefensibly cruel. Regardless of what you think of immigration and immigrants, undocumented or otherwise, even if you are adamant in the belief that undocumented people should not be in this country, you must concede that the way authorities are going about pursuing this goal is malicious, and good luck convincing me of the sensibility of it.

For all the talk about how there are huge numbers of dangerous undocumented immigrants, drug dealers and hordes of gangs, with Trump the ever enthusiastic hypeman for the marginally significant LA-born MS13, these are not the people, by and large, being harrassed, abused, and deported. It’s been families that have been suffering most. The poor, marginalized, and generally law-abiding. Meanwhile, actual criminals are largely unaffected, for the simple reason that criminals have always had an easier time moving drugs, people and assorted contraband across the border than have ordinary people. The thing about successful gangs, is they tend to be resourceful; and successful drug dealers have money. They are not among the huge number of immigrants in this country picking and preparing our food, cleaning our shit, and raising our children. But it is that latter sympathetic, and arguably much needed, category that is being most targeted by ICE raids.

I’m pretty sure ICE agents are a bunch of pussies. I know, preaching to the converted here. And apologies for the gendered slurs, but I will add that they behave like a pack of bitches. Maybe the news outlets bury all the stories about ICE apprehending drug lords and serial killers, because I never hear those stories. I hear countless stories of homes and workplaces being raided, arguably innocent people being rounded up, family members and friends being abducted and disappeared. Story after story of heavily armed and aggressive men using violence and subterfuge to kidnap frightened and defenseless people.

But let’s not focus only on ICE and let Border Patrol off the hook. One can hardly argue that the inhumane and abusive actions by the agency are the fault of a small number of bad apples. Anyone whose job it is to put children in cages after separating them from their parents, allowing them to go weeks without bathing, changing clothes, or brushing their teeth, exposing them to disease and abuse, has to question the ethics of their employer, their occupation, and whether they can tell themself they are a good person. If that were my job, it would probably come down to a decision between whistleblowing, quitting, or suicide. Were I a German military officer circa 1935-45, I hope that my feelings and actions would be the same. You have to realize that what you are doing is wrong, or at the very least that what the organization you work for is doing is wrong. Do something to fix it or get the fuck out.

I won’t argue whether Border Patrol does important work protecting the country or if they’re merely a gang of federally sanctioned thugs. The truth may be that they’re somewhere on a spectrum between the two. It is, regardless, an agency that has been rooted in racism and violent nationalism from its inception, one whose members have committed litany human rights abuses through it’s near-century of existence, well before the Great Pumpkin Diarrhea made them his dogs. Not all Border Patrol agents are racist, misogynist monsters who treat human beings like garbage and share despicable memes to that effect, but many are, including those in leadership positions.

I will argue that ICE and CBP (Customs and Border Protection is distinct and separate from Border Patrol, because: logic) are both superfluous law enforcement agencies which, like all else done during the Bush (43) administration, should be undone. To act as though these or any of the divisions under Homeland Security, and that department itself, have any true purpose, a valuable use that couldn’t be, or wasn’t already being, handled by any number of other law enforcement agencies, is asinine. For all the lip service Republicans, so-called conservatives, give to shrinking the federal government and cutting spending, there never seems to be any shortage of love from them for redundant law enforcement agencies and exorbitant “defense” spending. Let the FBI handle terrorism, let Border Patrol do the obvious, (not that I have fondness for either agency), and cut DHS, ICE, CBP and all other overfunded and unnecessary alphabet agencies from the budget.

Of course, it hardly bears saying as we all know the truth, that the anti-immigrant agenda is one based in the pursuit of making America “white” again, and that cruelty is the point. For the people leading the charge and fighting on the front lines of ethnic cleansing, causing fear and doing things we consider evil, that’s the point. Getting the brown people out by any means, and making life miserable for those that remain, is the agenda. Because nothing the Trump administration and its stormtrooper douches are doing in the war against immigrants will make anyone safer or the economy healthier.