Oh, Dear Me - Faux Compassion As ICE Cleans House And The Alien Invasion Is Over

Millie's, a popular upscale restaurant in Washington, DC was 'raided' by ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) yesterday, and the surrounding neighborhood, progressive down to the last soul, was apoplectic.  This was nothing less than a pogrom, Kristallnacht returned, Nazi SS storm troopers in a genocidal sweep of the ghetto, a brutal attempt to ethnically cleanse America, rid it of brown and black asylum-seekers, and restore it to its original whiteness. 

This neighborhood ironically was at the heart of the COVID vigilante movement, a Stasi-like system of informants sent out to identify, name, and humiliate those not wearing masks or keeping social distance. Residents were inflamed. This truancy, this obliviousness to public health, this outrageous defiance of government order and brazen refusal to conform was nothing less than a festering boil on the body politic of American University Park, a cancer, an insidious viral epidemic that had to be stopped. 

J'accuse! was the meme. Social miscreants were howled at, confronted, and spat upon.  They were apostates, unbelievers, and moral traitors.  The community was at a fever pitch, all sense of neighborliness, accommodation, and respect disappeared in a howling St. Vitus' dance of wild, crazed obsession.   

 

This was a caterwauling, howling, mob out to tar and feather anyone who did not follow orders and who were outliers and dangers to the state.  These vigilantes were no different than the East Germans who joined in the purges of insurrectionist democrats, who informed, identified, and pointed to anyone who even suggested political deviance.  AU Park during COVID had become a neo-Soviet, intellectually shuttered, unconsciously obedient place. 

And here they were again, lawn signs again out in force, but the ante was upped.  The 'Hate Has No Home Here' rainbow signs, banners of personal identity and belonging were replaced by those of pure hatred for Trump, Musk, and their torchlight fascist marchers. 

Mr. and Mrs. Jones went out of their way to give coffee and donuts to the illegal immigrants who fled Millie's and were secreted in sanctuary homes in the neighborhood.  It felt good, finally, to act like both Jesus and Marx, embracing generous Christian values and social revolution. 

The Joneses were no strangers to illegal Salvadoran immigrants.  They were the ones who cut their lawn, replaced their shingles, painted their porch, and were nannies for their children, all in a no-questions-asked, comforting ignorance.  Jose and Maria were not illegal anything, but legal human beings and would be treated as such; and when former President Biden open the gates to the southern border, they cheered, for a new generation of leaf-blowers and house painters was on its way to Washington. 

They ignored the social and economic disruption of millions of illegal aliens pouring into the country unchecked and unquestioned.  These were good people fleeing bad, and America had a duty to shelter and harbor them.  There was no such thing as illegal entry when an asylee had been beaten, tortured, and insulted.  

It made no difference that restaurants like Millie's were saving millions of dollars in wages, thanks to illegal immigrants who would work for peanuts; or that such illegal employment was driving down all wages and effectively obstructing the fair working of the labor market.  It made no difference that open immigration was no different from Fidel Castro's Mariel Boat Lift thanks to which he emptied his prisons and sent convicts to their new American home.  

It made no difference that undocumented immigration increased discrimination and caused a fractured, divided American society.  It made no difference that under the pretense of a compassionate caretaker, the role of government was being yet again expanded. 

The umbrage, the outrage, the furious and wild outcry against the ICE raid of Millie's was just what AU Park needed to reenergize their fight against Trump and the Far Right, a fight which had lagged in the first months of the new Presidency because of the unexpected juggernaut slashing and burning up and down Independence Avenue. 

Now the heady feeling of real protest was back and the juices of the old civil rights days flowing again.  'To the barricades', AU Park shouted, and down they went to official Washington in busses just like the old days. 

 

Betty Jones hoped that they would once again feel the blast of water cannons, the thud and whack of police batons and axe handles, the bite of police dogs, the sense of justice and righteousness that brought out the best in one. 

Of course all the undocumented, illegal workers at Millie's, Chef Geoff's, and a number of other upscale Northwest Washington restaurants went scurrying for the exits after the ICE visit, and no surprise, the establishments started paying a living wage to the plongeurs in the kitchen. 

'What if ICE comes after us?', said one anxious resident of AU Park. 'We are just a stone throw from Millie's and...' Here she stopped herself.  If ICE did indeed to make a U-Turn and head north a few blocks, roofers would stumble down from second story dormers to their vans, lawn maintenance crews would drop their leaf blowers, nannies would run out back doors, and painters would leave walls have done.  Traffic would pile up on 46th Street as the undocumented headed for the warrens of Rock Creek Park and across to the barrio.  

Betty Jones knew this, and knew exactly what would happen, and despite her outrage had to think of her rose bushes and cracked chimney, let alone her children about to be picked up at school by Hortensia, so she kept her own counsel.

'A police state, that's what we're becoming', lamented Betty Jones, forgetting the Orwellian nightmare of censorship, revisionism, government interventionism, and Armageddon-based environmentalism of the previous administration  If there ever was a mind-controlling, expansionist state, it was out of control during Biden's tenure. 

 

Such political irony is not uncommon in progressive redoubts like AU Park where history is an afterthought, the Enlightenment a curious intellectual bypass, the Constitution increasingly irrelevant, and social reform, if done properly, the future of America; so Betty Jones was a happy person, alive in heady times - difficult and trying to be sure, but meaningful, and what a legacy that would be!