June 11th, 2025
Let’s talk about immigration real quick.
“Real quick” because I know how short your attention span is and I’ve been thinking about this so much lately that I can probably share in a few words.
We can chat about the complex reasons citizens of a country feel the way they do about immigrants to that country but, in America, there is a big one that I feel is often and duly ignored:
We have not dealt with what we did.
The shadow.
When the group who made up our modern majority came here, they committed horrific acts that we have not addressed in a truly meaningful and healing way.
And, because it is not settled, the American people are deathly afraid that someone else is going to do it right back to us.
When I look around, I feel like that’s really it.
People are not upset because being undocumented is a criminal offense, because it’s not; it’s actually a civil one.
And the people in L.A. are doing the thing that every good person I have ever met in my life (and also Jesus Christ) would do: they’re taking care of their neighbors.
Meanwhile, we’re being gaslit by a dictator butterfly who has finally emerged from his authoritarian cocoon (what a beautiful monarch).
He says that people who wear masks cannot be trusted — then sends masked people to our cities to tread on and disappear us. He says that anyone who commits violence and crime will not be tolerated — but pardoned 1,500 violent criminal insurrectionists. He tells us that he cuts federal spending and he’s trimming the fat of the government — but is in the middle of passing an insane bill that you need to read to believe (and maybe not even then) while also putting on a birthday military parade that is costing taxpayers $45 million dollars.
$45 million. The next time I hear one of you complain that your taxes are going towards feeding the children of your community through a free lunch program (which is as pro-life a program as any), I’m going to remind you how much more of it went towards a fascist parade.
I said “quick” and I went over by a few words. Sorry. I get a little passionate sometimes. But there is going to come a time, not too far in the future, when we look back and see who was standing up for the right things and who wasn’t.
The right things are so fucking obvious right now, guys.
Even if those relationships are repaired, the ones that have been ripped apart by this ethical demolition Donald Trump planted right underneath our feet, they will never be the same.
We will know who cared. We will know who actually kept in touch with their morality and empathy. We will know who was kind.
And we will know who abandoned every decent thing that makes us human because they lost any and all connection with the human that they are.
[Please check out Jimmy Kimmel’s monologue from last night if you want a better idea of what is happening in L.A. and the hypocrisy of sending in troops now, when the city is not burning, versus the complete lack of response during the actual wildfires just months ago.]
Link:
The Den 