Border Patrol Agents in the Image of God

     Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (Democrat, New York) isn't afraid to speak about injustice or to say what something is.  Because Americans, those especially who automatically defend the status quo, warm themselves by habit in a bath of delusions regarding their own country, a twenty-nine year old woman of Puerto Rican descent protesting forcefully about inhumane conditions in "concentration camps" along the U.S.-Mexico border is likely to upset older "patriotic" men who, in mainstream news media, defend this nation's vicious behaviors.
     After Ocasio-Cortez visited one of these concentration camps just recently, she reported that some  women held there were told by CBP (Customs and Border Protection) guards, during a drinking water shortage, to "drink out of the toilets."
     Fox News Channel's take on this had Ocasio-Cortez herself saying "they were drinking out of toilets," neglecting to clarify that the congresswoman said that's what she was told by some of the inmates.  In any case, the Department of Homeland Security's Inspector General's report on conditions in the "detention facilities" reports overcrowding reminiscent of World War Two-era Jews filling up cattle cars, with no possibility of finding personal space, a great deal of standing, multiplied by days, weeks, months.  Since the DHS in the time of Trump is hardly an entirely beneficent entity (anymore than it has been since it was first created soon after 9/11), it's reasonable to assume their negative report of conditions in these camps lean toward the truth, rather than in the direction of patient Latinos willing to go through the laborious process of attaining the American Dream, not one of them yet convinced she or he is stuck inside a prison requiring helpless inhabitants, as part of a profit-making enterprise.
     Because the inmates are from south of the border, poor, at the mercy of CBP and ICE employees, many of whom are failed human beings lacking compassion, faced with jobs they don't want to do--looking after families' needs, changing diapers of children separated by Trump's whims from their parents--in a hot and dry climate where some guards may lose their shit and abuse inmates sexually, or neglect them altogether to the point where some of them die, this immigration insanity syndrome has, indeed, created concentration camps.
     A concentration camp houses a persecuted minority in often overcrowded conditions where the inmates lack proper nutrition and enough drinking water, face increased likelihood of disease, and--I add this as an addition to the definition--are regarded as human scum by those who profit politically and financially from their miseries.
     Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's reactions to having spoken with people trapped in these camps and also to the robot-cop type behaviors of CBP guards--she found them very intimidating, a normal human reaction--comes across as a real unpracticed set of emotions recorded on video.  She's not making up that she heard the toilet water-drinking story from some of the women she met with.  Given that the Trump administration withheld for a time hygiene items like toothpaste, toothbrushes, and soap from child inmates; that many of the children in these camps have lice, are not given the chance to bathe regularly--it seems probable that dickhead brute guards would say to some Latinas they hold in contempt, "Drink out of the toilet."
     However, a group of pastors, with President Trump's consent--led by one of Trump's Latino-outreach Christian advisors, Reverend Samuel Rodriguez--visited the "detention facility" in Clint, Texas.  They found nothing of what Ocasio-Cortez was talking about.  Rodriguez, interviewed by a blonde marshmallow who challenged him with no facts or curious ideas to ponder, is neither Democrat or Republican, but "a Christian committed to righteousness and justice."
     Rodriguez "found kids created in the image of God, Border Patrol agents created in the image of God, working together in a very difficult environment.  I did not find soiled diapers, I did not find crying children, I did not find deplorable conditions--quite the opposite!  There are amazing people--on both sides--trying to make a very difficult circumstance better."
     The Border Patrol agents, asked by "Pastor Sam" if they "staged this?" replied, "Absolutely not."
     Rodriguez goes on in like vein, concluding, "The truth sets you free," an approximate quote from a first century Jew who, had he lived in Europe in the 1930s and 1940s, would likely have been sent to a concentration camp.
     The blonde marshmallow concluded, saying she "prays that our leaders have the wisdom and compassion to solve this border crisis."
     Since she was talking to a man of God this seemed the appropriate sentiment, but also a stupid one  since Rodriguez has the ear of Donald Trump, who, let me suggest, likes to have the occasional representative of a different race nearby, someone he can point to as a "friend," as someone giving him the scoop on what the Latinos think, while he screws some of them and gains the votes of others.
     Pastor Sam in his concluding statement made it clear he seeks resolution to the immigration "crisis," something that's actually not much of a problem compared to what it was ten to twenty years ago.  President Obama deported so many illegal immigrants he acquired the nickname, "Deporter-in-Chief."  America, forever fucking with Latin America, likes to complain about those Latinos displaced because of our Drug War, our coups.  Force is rarely acknowledged in the U.S. mainstream news media and in the words of politicians.  People like Pastor Sam wants us to look at Border Patrol agents as created in the image of God.  God with a buzzcut, God raping people from another land, God lying to visiting pastors sent to concentration camps for the purpose of propagandizing for the Trump administration.
     Anyone who understands the real meaning of Christ's message should realize that the Holy Spirit resides in the wretched conditions inside the camps, not within those men brutalizing prisoners just seeking a better life.
     In one of his many laughable efforts to sound intelligent, Chuck Todd of MSNBC condemned Congresswoman Ocasio-Cortez for her use of the term "concentration camps."  That term, Todd seems to believe, only applies to those camps set up by Nazis.  He ignores the definition of a concentration camp; he also doesn't seem to be aware that the British set up concentration camps during the Boer War in South Africa 120 years ago; that the U.S. set up concentration camps for Japanese-Americans during World War Two.  The worst concentration camp during World War Two was in Croatia, run by Croatians.
     Chuck Todd is just another flavor of marshmallow, like his idiot counterpart on Fox, swallowing propaganda spewed by Pastor Sam who hangs out with Donald Trump, meaning he's an unreliable reporter of conditions in camps along the border.  In a word, useful.

                                                                               Vic Neptune