As I wrote about in this blog post 3 , I’ve had to deal with a lifetime of prejudicial behavior based on the fact that I look “Mexican,” a word when used by some people has the same intent as using the “N-word.” Being held on the ground by white kids having grass stuffed in my mouth, a white kid throwing pebbles at me while watching a softball game until Dad told him to stop it, and white kids throwing firecrackers at me at the beach when I was stranded in Los Angeles after I encountered a white man on a Greyhound bus who claimed he could “help me out.”
Of course back then I thought that anyone who claimed to be my “friend” could be “trusted,” but I should have known something was “amiss” when he told me he was evacuating Texas after he narrowly escaped capture by police when he was loading a pickup truck with goods from a house he and his partner had broken into; I woke up the next morning in a motel room to discover that he had made up for his failed robbery attempt in Texas with an easier one in California, leaving this dumb “Mexican-looking” guy with $9 and change to find a way out of his predicament—which I eventually did by just going to the nearest Army enlistment office to apply for another “term.”
I had learned a hard lesson there, and cynicism about human nature stayed with me ever since.
This cynicism can hardly be overcome in a country that has a history of acting on “impulse” when it comes to wanting to rid itself of the “others,” and if it can be done only partially “legally,” at least it gives certain orange-tinted and powder-plastered people a wet dream. Sometimes (or most of the time) this is done without regard to reality, as this Washington Post story 1 about the short-lived effort to recruit high school football players to work in the farm fields after the end of the Bracero program to give back those “good jobs” to “real” Americans that turned out to be not so “good” as advertised, and today 2 trying to find just anybody who is “100 percent American” willing to spend more than a few hours in the fields is a pipe dream.
Who decides who is “good” and who is “bad” is matter of hyper-partisan political ideology these days. In his audio commentary for the film Love Story, director Arthur Hiller mentioned that his father once told him that it was better to be a non-Jew and a good person than a Jew and a bad person. Stephen Miller comes to mind; he may be “good” at his “job” in directing his ICE thugs to conduct mass deportations, but does that make him a “good” person? I think not.
But Miller is not alone; we are learning on a daily basis that it is impossible to locate anyone in the Trump administration who qualifies as a “good” person of any description. The fact that 90 percent of Republicans approve of what Trump is doing—and they don’t even represent anything close to half the country—only underlines the fact that what is happening in this country isn’t “normal,” as posited here 1.
I had another project in mind here, but I was sidetracked (again) by something that occurred at the Seattle Center Armory, which I’ve hung out for a while since the Central Library is not exactly a “quiet” place to work anymore, with it being more of a camp ground for homeless people and those who just want to find some place to plug in their phones and engage in lengthy conversations. At the Armory the noise doesn’t bother me if it is “random” and passing—and not a consistently annoying effort to be rude by a person who I have reason to be offended by their presence.
Of course there are people there who are homeless and have all their earthly belongings in tow. I don’t have a problem with that as long as they don’t start sharing their stories with some “liberal” white person. I don’t understand people like this, I admit. I might “look” like a drug dealer to some people (hardly a week passes when someone doesn’t ask me if I have “cream” to sell), but in truth the need to work is as in my bones as breathing, and I’ve never been out of work since I finished college for more than two weeks a couple times. It’s not “hard” to find work; just go to a temp agency and they’ve got something for you the next day. It’s not “regular” work, but it is something to put on your resume.
Thus when I hear some “brother” living on the streets talking about what outside influences are preventing him from an honest living, and then eventually starts blaming the “Mexicans” for his problems, thats when I start saying things like “You only have yourself to blame where you are at,” loud enough so that he gets out of my face.
There are other people in the Armory who I suspect “live” there every day (I spent maybe a few hours a day there three days a week over the past few months). I suppose like any other biological entity that life is the simple act of doing what is necessary to keep breathing, people don’t want to imagine an endless sleep state which is the fate of all human beings, but in their waking state, some are left to ponder if their only “point,” since their only “contribute” to the world is to provide employment for public assistance workers. Well, actually, I don’t think many of the get past the “point” stage.
Starting in 2010 I started this blog because I was angered by “progressive” influencer Thom Hartmann constant demonizing of Hispanic immigrants “stealing” jobs from “real” Americans, which I spoke about on that very first post. I was banned from commenting on his web posts after challenged some of his views and that of some commenters, which I saw as borderline racist. That was over 2,400 posts ago, and like my “regular” work, it is just as much a part of living as breathing is. It is my “purpose” in life to “dare the gods” who just see a Mexican-looking nobody who probably sells drugs or breaks into cars on the side.
So the other day I was typing away when a homeless couple who are “regulars” set up a table a five yards away from me, plugged in their phones, turned on a video they were watching and added noise from themselves to project a “stereo” effect, completely mindless if anyone around them was interested in their “business.”
This problem was compounded by the fact that I have encountered these people before about this behavior, and the male half seems to have this need to impress the female half with his prowess in threatening people with physical violence to “compensate” for his failure to be a “breadwinner.” After listening to them for a half-hour in the failed hope that this might stop or they’d pack up and go away, I initiated a “conversation” with the query “Why are you here?” since the pair usually hung out to plug in at a location on the other side of the building.
Of course it is difficult to hold a civil conversation with someone whose principle means of settling matters is threatening physical violence. Well, I said then go ahead and punch me. Since I merely exposed his lack of work ethic, instead he marched over to a table where some people outfitted in what looked like Nazi Stormtrooper gear were sitting, and I presumed he gave them his version of events, leaving out the parts that made him look bad of course.
While he was gone on his mission, I used the respite to resume typing away on my laptop—before noticing that I had “company”: four-count-them-four of those guys who upon second thought were dressed-up like, well, those ICE thugs, who were confident enough in their lawlessness to allow me to take a group photo:
This image, anyone, of that U.S. citizen who happened to be "driving while brown" in Florida on his way to a work site 4 ?:
Being “Mexican-looking” as a factual matter and the way people whose only interaction with me is by happenstance and “sight,” assumptions are made and the people sometimes act on what they assume are the “characteristics” of people who “look” like me; on the other hand I see myself as a living, breathing example of the hypocrisy of this country. Oh sure, there are “activists” who are hanging out the local immigration court to provide “assistance” to those who are being detained by ICE thugs, but I have lived here for almost 35 years and it is my experience that people who “look” like me don’t have any particular “rights” that anyone is “bound to respect”—particularly the “freedom of speech” right to describe the world the way I see it. I have no “illusions” about the world I live in.
So what did I “see” when these four individuals accosted me, given one version of events? The Seattle Center’s version of ICE thugs? This is probably the closest thing to “work” these people will do all week, or probably all month for that matter. They all need to get in on this “action” to act tough against this Mexican-looking guy who on any other occassion they see three times a week for a few hours just sitting quietly typing up his next blog post. Maybe this “Mexican-looking guy” must have a “side hustle” since it is “suspicious” that this brown-skinned guy is dressed-up in a clean pants and a sports coat; it frankly “disturbs” them because I doesn’t fit the “stereotype” they’ve been trained to “understand” about people who “look” like me (you know, the reason why people “racial profile”).
When they came up to me I questioned the need to “gang up” on this little 65-year-old Mexican-looking man. Of course they denied any “racial profiling” intent, and that “numbers” wasn’t the “issue”; Well, sure it was: it was an intimidation tactic like they were cornering what they saw as a feral animal in human form. If this was a “friendly” conversation to discuss differences of opinion on human terms, there would only be one, maybe two people who approached me. Instead their “plan” was to present a physical threat and not to try to understand my “concerns.”
When I brought-up the way this show of force looked to me, and that they chose to take the word of someone who was bigger and whiter than me, you heard the usual defensive denials and threats to not offend them or they were going to throw me out of the building, especially when I told they looked and acted like ICE thugs. One of them admitted that one might get that impression, but added that they were not wearing “masks” so it was not “correct” to call the ICE thugs. OK.
This wasn’t new to me even here; I recall that I was sitting in a chair when three “officers” of a different security company—one of them with the “rank” of “captain”—were hanging in front of me, with me wondering what they were doing. Presently some employee approached me and told me he needed to take the chair. Oh, sure fine—and then I observed those “security” people walking away. Oh, so they were expecting this “Mexican-looking guy” to cause violence and mayhem when approached with this? Of course the employee pretended ignorance to know why they just happened to be there just long enough for him to take away that chair, as if I was going to make a “claim” to it that required “police action.”
What is in the heads of people like this? Do they wish they could be beating up on people like we see ICE thugs doing every day on television and social media? DHS.gov claims that ICE thugs are seeing an “increase” in being “assaulted,” without ever once showing us the “evidence” of this, other than illegally-detained U.S. citizens “talking back” or trying to pull their arms away from being held.
But I am just a little 65-year-old college-educated “Vet” who has tolerated much ignorance in this world because he is “Mexican-looking guy”—sorry to harsh your self-denials, but that’s the way I interpret numerous “interactions” that don’t have any other “explanation,” per Trump and his sycophants like Noem, Leavitt, McLaughlin and Homan. I have the right to my opinion as noted in that first linked post. It required four grown white men to “restrain” me for standing up for my rights, and one of them (the one front and center) indicating they were going to put their hands on me if I didn’t just leave “peacefully.”
The choice ultimately was what did I have to gain groveling before these dressed-up thugs and promise to be a “good boy” and aid them in placing an alternative definition on what was happening here. Well, I wasn’t an employee of the Seattle Center, nor did I “live” in the Armory, and I could always return to the library where there at least is more privacy from “prying” eyes. I was going to make the move back there one of these days, and why not do it now when I had the perfect opportunity to make a political statement in a situation where the “optics” were “right”?
So I decided to walk out on my own, called them Nazis so everyone could hear, and why not—they looked like Nazis and the ICE thugs we see on cable news and YouTube videos; and these wannabe thugs obviously enjoy violating the civil rights of people who insist upon them, especially if they are from a despised group. I chose to exercise my right to free speech and prepare for the fight ahead when this city and of course the farm country of Eastern Washington starts swarming with people released from Trump and Miller’s cage of newly recruited Meerkats paid for with that $45 billion cash infusion at the expense of Medicaid and SNAP recipients…
…who are we may presume are barely more qualified than the above at “conducting and coordinating high-level comprehensive investigations” and less willing to “take part in securing signed statements, affidavits, and documentary evidence for inclusion in reports or case records and prepare sworn testimony on behalf of the government in criminal and federal grand jury cases” than they are at “using deadly force when necessary, in accordance with the law and agency policy”—the latter of which we well know is not happening.
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