Oh my America!

4.1.18

A refugee caravan from Central America approaches the US southern border as I write.  Most of them are from Honduras, have been walking for the past 7 days; and they are not being stopped as they travel from one state to the next.  Trump has offered his ultimatum to Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto via tweet:

Mexico is doing very little, if not NOTHING, at stopping people from flowing into Mexico through their Southern Border, and then into the U.S. They laugh at our dumb immigration laws. They must stop the big drug and people flows, or I will stop their cash cow, NAFTA. NEED WALL!

      Food has been donated and buses provided.  They come.  These people have had it with cleaning our toilets, picking our veggies, and then being re-paid whenever some sham-macho guy rolls in to DC and decides to show off his cojones by rounding them up and throwing them out.   What does the US owe these people?  A lot.  They're tired of DC machos choosing their government dictators for them, sucking their economy of every last peso down to the bottom of their bedraggled pants pockets, tired of seeing their friends and family gunned down for the enrichment of narco trafficante US banking lords and their floozies . .       The US uses these people for its convenience.  The world we live in is not particularly nice or humane, and is beyond our political systems to correct.  The picture above of a man holding his pink-pajama child as they look through a crack in the fence and this is what he undoubtedly thinks: 

Although she feeds me bread of bitterness,

And sinks into my throat her tiger’s tooth,

Stealing my breath of life, I will confess

I love this cultured hell that tests my youth.

Her vigor flows like tides into my blood,

Giving me strength erect against her hate,

Her bigness sweeps my being like a flood.

Yet, as a rebel fronts a king in state,

I stand within her walls with not a shred

Of terror, malice, not a word of jeer.

Darkly I gaze into the days ahead,

And see her might and granite wonders there,

Beneath the touch of Time’s unerring hand,

Like priceless treasures sinking in the sand.

                         Claude McCay

     The refugee caravan should be renamed to honor the courage and dignity of their quest, which is undoubtedly more complex than seeking refuge.  This act of courage elevates the conversation to a place  beyond fear and greed.  Trump will have his hands full if they reach the border. 

     Oh, My America! - said John Donne to his mistress as he was taking her to bed.  We all dream of that unspoiled beauty, that virgin land that the man peeking through the fence wants to possess, wants to seduce, that we all want to bed, is not a country it is the caravan marching, claiming it as their own. 

My mine of precious stones, my empirie.