My flight back from the reservation got in at around 1AM on Friday morning..
After catching an Uber back to my house,
I lugged my suitcase up the stairs, put it in the guest bedroom
and went right to bed.
When I woke up, around 9AM -
in my own bed with my preferred pillows
and a full compliment of clean sheets,
familiar sounds,
no one else in the building
and Kachava protein shakes just steps away -
(honestly, is there a better combo than that!)
I decided to ease into the day and scroll on social media;
as one does -
especially after being away for 4 days in the middle of nowhere
with inadequate, spotty connectivity.
I blithely opened Instagram -
yes, I hate all the reels,
no, I don't post 'reels' myself
despite pressure from the algorithm to do so.
My Instagram account (pedsersw) is my daily pictorial diary;
1 picture a day to capture where I am
and what I'm seeing.
Trust me when I tell you that I was completely unprepared
to see a reel on Mandy Patinkin's page -
("My name in Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die" fame)
of an ICE raid in Iowa.
By now, we've all seen some version of them, right?
Thugs taking down a brown skinned person,
many of the victims screaming that they're citizens, service men, legal etc -
with various combinations of outraged white citizens
filming on their phones,
screaming profanities and SHAME at the militia doing the take down.
You've got the visual, right?
Has anyone had the experience of watching that -
and recognizing one of the ICE agents
as a relative??!!
trying hard to convince myself that I didn't see what I know I saw.
Trying to rationalize that I didn't sit next to that person -
IN THOSE SAME CLOTHES -
at our most recent family gathering.
WTF??!!
After crying to the point of throwing up,
I started trying to reconstruct pieces of what I know about this person
and how to make this new information 'fit'.
(And, yes, I did some online stalking,
went on his previous employers website
to see if he's still employed there
and, NO, there's no indication that he still has a phone contact listed -
that he had before).
His parents would be devastated if they knew.
His 82 yr old father carries around a pocket copy of the Constitution with him
and is so opposed to what this regime is doing
that every time he hears about a new, ridiculous,
patently absurd and usually illegal edict or mandate,
he looks it up to see just which Amendment they're breaking now!
I realize that a sign on bonus of $60,000
and a base salary of over $100,000.
is a lot of money to resist for some people.
But, enough to sell out democracy?
Enough to inflict pain on human beings just trying to find a better life?
That's the going price of betraying the foundation upon which our country is built??
I'm being honest here...
I understand that everyone is entitled to their own political beliefs;
we all have free will
and we all have to live with the consequences of decisions we make...
but I don't understand how he sleeps at night.
And I don't understand how I'm going to respond to him
if/when we ever get together again.
Yikes, this is hard.
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