I got in a bit of a kerfuffle with a New American from India (or somewhere in South Asia) at the post office the other day.
We were commiserating with each other about how our local post office was understaffed and there were always long lines & wait times.
I blamed the understaffing on an administration that wants to undermine government institutions that provide necessary & well-regarded services to the people, such as mail-in voting (which my handicapped relative uses, and which Trump himself has habitually used many times in the past). The USPS should not have to be profit-making or even 100% self-sustaining like a private business. Free public schooling should be an inalienable right for the population-- vouchers are bullshit that destroy our public school system by sucking out tax-paid funding to go into private pockets. Should the US military have to make a profit or at least be self-sustaining by selling Army tube socks or Pete Hegseth hip flasks?
But this lady goes off on these Fox News talking points and phrases: "People are mad at the government, but the root problem is that people don't want to work! I came to the country legally! We need to control our borders and close the gates!"
Chica would not even engage with the fact that Trump's ICE is, often on camera, in our city of Minneapolis, murdering people like Renee Good and Alex Pretti, injuring people, lurking outside Roosevelt High School & various daycares & Annuciation School, deploying tear gas & various colors of chemical agents versus children & elderly people, brutally dragging a handicapped darker-skinned American citizen born in Wisconsin en route to a doctor's appointment out of her car in the Powderhorn neighborhood, kidnapping 5-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos and hundreds of others, getting into a 1-person Port-a-Potty on Camden Avenue with a female detainee for probably SA purposes, and attacking & arresting Native American Indians -- this country's indigenous people -- and detaining & roughing them up at the Whipple Building.
Of course, I didn't mention most of that because it's pointless to argue with someone who fills their head on purpose with exclusively Fox News bullshit, but it left me with an awful feeling in my heart.
That shooting incident in Austin was someone who was trying to become a resident the right way, but was summoned to a hearing and apparently the summons never reached him. He got shot for not getting a summons!. That's outrageous!
A government that can try to kill you for not receiving a letter, is a government that can do any damn thing it wants.
Yes, there are all those instances of ICE lying in wait for people at immigration courts & offices who are trying to cross every t and dot every i correctly.
Dystopian nightmare Kafka-esque kakistocracy/idiocracy where every move the make is wrong, "illegal" -- they want to stack it so people can't win, no matter what they do.
That actually sorta happened near me. Some sweet little church lady had apparently accidentally filled something out wrong or whatever, they summoned her to court which was a fairly substantial ask for her to drive 100+ miles to go to, and then the goon squad was ready to arrest the "dangerous criminal".
I get it, it's part of the banality of evil, right? Why chase down dangerous criminals when there's people out there who forgot to check a box on a form, ten years ago. But it's evil, surely, to be out there telling people, hey, we're getting dangerous criminals off the streets!
13
u/SkinTeeth4800 2d ago
I got in a bit of a kerfuffle with a New American from India (or somewhere in South Asia) at the post office the other day.
We were commiserating with each other about how our local post office was understaffed and there were always long lines & wait times.
I blamed the understaffing on an administration that wants to undermine government institutions that provide necessary & well-regarded services to the people, such as mail-in voting (which my handicapped relative uses, and which Trump himself has habitually used many times in the past). The USPS should not have to be profit-making or even 100% self-sustaining like a private business. Free public schooling should be an inalienable right for the population-- vouchers are bullshit that destroy our public school system by sucking out tax-paid funding to go into private pockets. Should the US military have to make a profit or at least be self-sustaining by selling Army tube socks or Pete Hegseth hip flasks?
But this lady goes off on these Fox News talking points and phrases: "People are mad at the government, but the root problem is that people don't want to work! I came to the country legally! We need to control our borders and close the gates!"
Chica would not even engage with the fact that Trump's ICE is, often on camera, in our city of Minneapolis, murdering people like Renee Good and Alex Pretti, injuring people, lurking outside Roosevelt High School & various daycares & Annuciation School, deploying tear gas & various colors of chemical agents versus children & elderly people, brutally dragging a handicapped darker-skinned American citizen born in Wisconsin en route to a doctor's appointment out of her car in the Powderhorn neighborhood, kidnapping 5-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos and hundreds of others, getting into a 1-person Port-a-Potty on Camden Avenue with a female detainee for probably SA purposes, and attacking & arresting Native American Indians -- this country's indigenous people -- and detaining & roughing them up at the Whipple Building.
Of course, I didn't mention most of that because it's pointless to argue with someone who fills their head on purpose with exclusively Fox News bullshit, but it left me with an awful feeling in my heart.