ICE Assigned.

 Today's news threat from our government's Executive Office is to have the agents of ICE (Immigrant and Customs Enforcement) take over the jobs of TSA agents at the airports. The TSA agents are tired of working without pay, and really, with the current(ly rising) gas prices, they probably can no longer afford to, since they don't actually live at the airports.

Maybe ICE could live at the airports! 

After all, they are having a lot of problems finding places to take them in, and an airport should be big enough. The bigger the better for keeping them housed. Plus, sooner or later, they will be facing the same lack of income and higher gas prices. It's just taking longer due to their Special Status.

On the surface, this is a great idea, and probably should have been thought of a long time ago. Just think what incredible numbers they could have arresting and deporting people who might be 'fleeing' the country so they don't get sent away!

Isn't this where they should have been looking all along? As well as stopping flee-ers who aren't being counted on their scorecards, they might even spy some brazenly deplaning as if they were entering a free country of their free will.

It's so obvious. 

Isn't that where they should have been all along, instead of raiding private homes and dragging children  off the streets? (Even if it isn't to bait or betray their parents and siblings?) Or playing Chicken with automobiles then bawking and squawking like one when they succeed at getting hit?

Or --? Well, never mind. I don't want to wander into the uncovered or undiscovered possibilities -- I'm sticking with the best known examples. 

They are bad enough.

There are other considerations as well, some of them rather frivolous. 

My biggest question is that, while they are 'directing' people through metal scanners and  personally feeling them up at gunpoint, will they still be masked?

Will they shoot you if you punch them in their nose if they get too frisky with the frisking?

Will they put your underwear on their heads when they toss your luggage all along the belt? Use your bras as gasmasks? 

Will they take their masks off to do so?

Will they step on your bare toes once they have your shoes?

Will they have tear gas in enclosed areas?

Will they use it?

Will you be there when they do?

ICE in the airports may well slow down the country as much as the pandemic did in 2020.If it does, our executive Officer will have done in 4 months what it took him 4 years to do last time around.

We'll all be getting free spa mudbaths in the swamp, won't we, and being the moles getting whacked in the Great Game.

But the mud will be free, and if we do get whacked, we won't have to worry about embalming and burial costs. 

We'll just keep sinking, from the sublime to sub-lime.

Isn't that ridiculous?

Where is Samuel Adams?

There are a lot of unbelievable things happening in our United States.

Things that should not be happening.

Things that should never happen, because they've happened before, and history knows the cost.

We know the cost. 

Our government has turned against us.

Our government is attacking us. 

Our system of checks and balances has, thus far, failed the everyday American.

The failure is because the very ones who ARE the checks and balances have decided that they'll do nothing. 

Not every one of them, of course, but the majority of them.

They are neither opposing nor promoting. 

They are doing nothing.

Waiting to see which side wins, so they can continue in their own importance. 

I wonder, sometimes, where are the underground newspapers of the 1960s? The Village Voices? The LA Free Presses?

Where are the broadsheets and broadsides on every bulletin board or utility pole in every town?

People ARE speaking up, and speaking out.

There ARE rallies and protests and civil disobedience. 

These are sometimes well-attended, and there is an effort at coordination, but it seems futile. 

It seems random and chaotic and unorganized.

Where are the organizers?

Where are the Samuel Adamses as the USA passes from the Terrible Twos into the next phase of national existence?

Where are the Abbie Hoffmans and the Jerry Rubins?

The Black Panthers and the Young Lords?

Where am I?

I should be Sam Adams. 

Shouldn't I?

Writing invective rhetoric, rallying cries, offering education and information and ideas?

Isn't that what effective writers do in time like these?

These days, we don't post broadsides on the messenger poles in the center of town.

These days we use memes, and sound bytes, and unfiltered, uncut videos.

OUR media is online, spread through invisible waves (for want of a better word.)

We are ALL speaking out, striving to be heard, but sometimes we lapse into speaking -- or not speaking out for our individual selves instead of all of ourselves together. 

Our checks and balances are slowly beginning to appear.

So slowly.

But I, the wannabe Sam Adams, am I doing enough?

Am I doing my best?

Am I speaking up and speaking out?

Am I doing my best with the abilities I have?

How can I do more?

How can I do better?

Am I doing enough?

How can I do enough?

How can WE do enough?