Those Unruly Visitors Up North
Some folks just don’t know when it’s time to leave
Preamble:
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The ICE-CAPADES from Hell continue in Minneapolis—when will they ever end?
This Week’s Post
Hello, again.
After taking a breather, I’m back.
I had to force myself to “get back in the saddle.” This cliché is appropriate for writing a blog. I have been thrown a time or two by unruly stanzas that started a stampede.
Some of you may have been wondering how my weekly blog comes into being. It’s a messy business. First, I need an idea, an inspiration, then I have to make it work.
You might think the process is predictable and orderly. Nope! It looks oddly familiar to the scenes of masked ICE hooligans running through the streets of Minneapolis.
My writing process in my head seems oddly similar to watching the nonviolent protesters rushing out to stop ICE agents from committing further atrocities.
Somebody hands out orange whistles. Crowds of people appear and blast tweets to attract other protesters and direct traffic. “ICE, over there! This way, everybody!”
It is cold; their breath condenses when they shout. The protesters huddle together for warmth and safety. ICE could arrive any minute; the protesters steel themselves.
Unmarked SUVs screech to a halt; ICE agents leap out, confronting protesters. Both sides brace. Protesters chant slogans; ICE agents whack their batons on their palms.
When we see it, we feel a shock deep in our gut. We turn it off, sit on the couch, and stare at the ceiling. Breathing deeply. Seeking calm. Hoping for peaceful sleep.
The Chaos of Words and Actions
But what does my writing process have to do with people protesting in the streets? The answer is that these things start slowly and then spin out of control.
A peaceful street protest in Minneapolis materializes and then morphs to disaster when ICE creates a frantic melee of shouting, punching, kicking, and teargassing.
Fortunately, my words merely misbehave and try to entertain me. They wake me up in the middle of the night. “Guess what we thought of? You’re gonna love it!”
Ever since I was young, I had lots of words roaming around up there. I didn’t go outside and play like normal boys did.
Words and ideas often hit me like a punch in the face that spun me around. I spent a lot of time being dizzy. The other kids talked about me.
“Who’s that weird kid, talking to himself? The one with the notebook and pen?”
“Him? That’s weird Carl. He lives on my block. He’s got a word factory in his head.”
“A word factory? What’s that?”
“Instead of acting like a normal kid, he’s always writing stories and stuff.”
Open the Door and Let Them In
Paul McCartney’s group Wings had a minor hit with the song (Open the Door) Let Him In. It was about celebrating community and offering hospitality to family and friends. Paul McCartney never had to deal with all the words in my brain.
Words show up uninvited, knock on the door, let themselves in, and make themselves comfortable. Before long, they raid my refrigerator and drink my beer.
“Look, guys,” I say. “You can’t hang out in my head indefinitely, making a mess. I need to organize you.”
A low rumble emanates from the word scrum. “‘We don’t want to get organized. We hate following the rules of grammar and syntax.”
‘Sorry,” I say. “This has to be done. OK, nouns over there, verbs over here.”
The nouns object: “We don’t like the verbs. They’re always telling us what to do.”
The verbs retort, “That’s because without us, you never do anything!”
“Guys,” I say, “Calm down. You need each other. Without nouns, it would be all action. The nouns help us put a name on things.” The verbs grumble, “That’s true.”
“Adjectives and adverbs,” I say, “please sit in the back.” They protest, “But we should be in front of the verbs and nouns.” Why do I have to fight these battles?
Bringing order out of chaos is not easy, either in writing or in reality.
***
Lights, camera, action!
Why do we love action movies? Because they are more exciting than our own lives?
It’s thrilling to encounter madness safely on the silver screen in a movie theater, while munching on a big bowl of popcorn, but not in our heads and not on our city streets.
Sometimes, while I hunt for the right word, it feels like I am hunting for an African elephant, hidden in the tall grass. It eludes me until I turn around. There it is!
There is nothing like the sight of an angry bull elephant trumpeting, trunk up, angrily flapping its ears. A charging phalanx of ICE agents is also scary. We see angry ICE agents, guns drawn, chasing after protesters, shouting, “Stop or we’ll shoot.”
After we see those videos on social media, our hearts pound and our minds race. To relax, we switch to funny YouTube videos of silly cats or dogs to blow off steam.
It’s a silly and non-sequitur, but it often works.
Groundhog Day, Minneapolis (the Sequel)
If words behaved, it wouldn’t be so hard to control them. If ICE behaved, every new day in Minneapolis would not look like another scene from the movie Groundhog Day.
The scene in my head when working on a blog looks like another day of protest gone wrong in Minneapolis. There is smoke in the air, and people are crying (me, mostly).
But being in my own head is not as terrifying as facing ICE agents in Minneapolis.
Protecting constitutional freedoms of speech and assembly is messy and dangerous work. For most of us, our means of objecting to ICE are often dull and repetitive: the daily signing of petitions, or posting and reposting memes voicing our silent outrage.
How did we get to this point? It feels like a nightmare from which we can’t escape.
Some people cheered the arrival of ICE in Minnesota. “Bye-bye, illegal immigrants!” They “turned a blind eye” while the government cracked heads. “They deserve it!”
Turns out the blind eye doesn’t work very well when protesters film every single confrontation. Even hard-core law and order folks get squeamish watching murders.
The pendulum is swinging away from pure hate, toward tolerance and understanding. As Voltaire said, ‘I may not agree with what you say, but I defend your right to say it.”
***
I am for freedom of words to assemble and express themselves, but I have to publish on time, dear readers. By Thursday afternoon, I whip the words gently into line.
This is tough love, my friends, not the grammar gestapo.
While this chaos continues, time is passing, in my head and in Minneapolis, where the occupation that began in December unthinkably continued through all of January, too.
Soon, Monday is gone; Tuesday is almost over. I publish on Thursday afternoon. I struggle to corral the sentences and paragraphs into a coherent blog on time.
Our Titanic Democracy Just Hit an ICE-Berg
It started slowly in Minnesota. Someone thought our democracy could not fail; then we hit an ICE-berg. The planes began to land, the ICE agents disembarked, and the hotels began to fill up. Suddenly, there wasn’t a rental car to be found in town.
This is how it begins.
The troops mass before beginning the assault. Then an order is given. “Get out there and get those bloody bastards! If they haven’t done anything, arrest them anyway.”
The voices of those bearing the brunt of the attack are muffled in the din of battle.
Yet they cry out. The protesters have been trying to articulate a single, clear message since ICE began the assaults, but their core message is still not clear to everyone.
It takes a long time to get thousands of strangers to chant with a single voice.
They are getting close.
They shout, “ICE out.” They stand together in the cold, chanting no to fascism, which arrived wrapped in a flag, wearing a uniform, telling us how to achieve law and order.
Then, ICE goons charge forward, punching people, barking orders, and attacking.
It is a three-bean word salad. Danger masquerades as safety. Freedom means keep quiet, or you’re next. Victims are re-labeled terrorists.
Let’s all take back the truth and defend freedom.
Remember That Bridge in Selma?
Someday, we will say, “Remember what happened in Minneapolis? It changed everything.” The way older people refer to the march from Selma to Montgomery.
For nonviolent resistance to succeed, an atrocity or a massacre is often necessary. The violence has to be so extreme that it shocks the conscience of a trauma-weary nation.
The mess in my head, and the frenzy of words and images in Minneapolis, are related. In spite of conflicting news reports and deliberate misrepresentations about tragic events, the story is coming into focus.
People have seen with their own eyes the horrors of ICE.
With any luck, my blog posts may also have a point. If you actually read to the end, you might be able to discern what it is. Let me know what you find out.
Let’s trust our eyes and ears, and give people who are protesting peacefully, even if angrily, the benefit of the doubt. Nobody is paying them, btw.
And, other than my few, dear paying subscribers, nobody is paying me, either. Yet, like the protesters, I persist.
Words matter. Keep truth alive. Read my blog.
NOTES
In the midst of chaos, I reach for familiar metaphors and images, such as Groundhog Day, for the endless repetition of violent days in Minneapolis. We all struggle to make sense of a dangerous and incoherent situation without modern precedent. Think of movies about the mayhem caused by poorly trained or poorly led soldiers.
The story of ICE could be made into a movie sequel titled The Goon Platoon.
Giving lethal weapons to ill-trained, poorly-led men and letting them loose in a U.S. city is tantamount to a war crime, and I hope it will be prosecuted as one someday. We have seen movies about evil armies abroad, but now these armies roam our streets.
My words are chaotic at first, but I am relentless about organizing and making them into good soldiers or officers. Think of An Officer and a Gentleman.
Or, they are clumsy kids who work hard and get to march in the Macy’s Parade. They may not win the Grand Prize, but I am so proud to see them strut down the street.
A handful of items need to be addressed.
First, for anyone worried about all the words in my head, it’s OK. I’m used to it.
Second, does anyone else have a word factory in their heads? I’d love to hear about it.
Third, I sent an announcement of the first monthly Q&A with me later this month. This will be for paid subscribers only. Unless you want to invite some of your friends.
Fourth, we live in dangerous times. While I employ humor, there is nothing funny about the emergence of fascism in America. Rest assured, I take it quite seriously.
Fifth, there is now a plan afoot to pull about 700 ICE agents out of Minneapolis. That leaves about 2,000 still on the ground. I pray that we will get rid of ICE in our cities.
My Mom loved the song Back Home Again. In Indiana, which you may recall, is performed each year at the start of the Indy 500. It used to make her cry. And that would make the rest of us cry, too.
Thanks for this, Carl.
I have a word factory, too - and I can’t always get them to behave in a logical manner :)