I remember once at a family gathering my grandfather said from the next room "is someone fighting?" and my aunt said No, dad. That's just how [Nezua} talks about things. Because I get so involved, my passion rises, my voice rises, and all of my heart is engaged. An old employer said he liked me because my "face was like a fishtank. You can always see right in." Because of this full, fevered, engagement, the world sometimes...the truth sometimes burns me out. This is why in any movement (announced as such, or simply springing from the roots of necessity and unnamed), or group who strive for some type of justice, so many people are required. They all bring a certain role, lend a hand in the right place. And I thank those who can keep up the steady, hard work of an unwavering drumbeat while I lull and zag between my big fills and bass drills and cymbal clash.

Just when I think I have a calm take on something, a measured and intellectual reponse, some fool will come along and say some dumb shit and it really stirs me up. Reading over at XP's I hear the same old dumb shit about how uppity arrogant the Mexicans are, daring to approach the border time and time again. Well, "Clint" the Commenter—who feels that the label "Democrat" somehow equals Most Open-Minded and Progressive Fuck Wot Wielded a Keyboard—is plain old tired of it. And I wouldn't bother justifying this pinche estupido puto with a response but for the fact that he speaks for others. He vomits up a certain strain of superiority, ignorance, and exceptionalism that pretends to know history, but really only holds hate in its hand.

I am tired of their arrogance. I am tired of criminals coming across my country’s broder [sic] and wielding rocks at cops.

—Clint the Democrat

I don't see incidents of murder and incarceration at the border or at Hutto or in Chicago as isolated incidents. As I've said often, there is and has been a long war on Latin America, and pertinent to my focus, on México. From many angles. America's is not insignificant! So I see these abuses in that historical light, not so conveniently separated so that an American mind is able to maintain the slavery-persecution situation that benefits this pyramid we sit atop. You see a border guard justly killing a man who could have been throwing a grenade? But I think of Esequiel Hernandez and the success brought about by Operation Gatekeeper, and all la gente that helped build a huge part of "your" country. And I think of my own familia. And I think of the uses this nation has had for la gente. In the fields. In the meatpacking plants. In the kitchens. In the nurseriers. In the yards. In NIFTY arrangements that crush their abilities to farm and feed themselves and make a living, that crushes their economy while it feeds you juicy bits of melon and grapes on lilac-laced Sunday afternoons with your legs up.

I and I build the cabin
I and I plant the corn
didn't my people before me slave for this country?
now you look me with that scorn
and you eat up all my corn
we gonna chase those crazy baldheads out of town...

—bob marley, crazy baldheads

Oh, poor Clint. Come to papá, let me soothe your weary brow. You know what I'M tired of, amigo? I'm tired of schmucks like you hiding under some WHITEPROGRESSIVE umbrella whilst they further a line of thinking that may be true or not, but either way that will do nothing to move this world forward, or live with each other on the same continent, or stop the abuse and violations being done to a people who have moved over these borders LONG before you and your line came here, no doubt. So chill the fuck out, and take a broader view. And you know, I realize this isn't just about Clint, as I say this. By now it's all a big ball of ...sadness and fury and awe and disappointment...and just inability to believe that people can narrow their focus so small. And that there are so many who litter the land like you. We are, too many, buying into this conquistadorial mindset of controlling the land and hoarding resources and exploiting the weaker. Don't you see it is killing everything? Bit by bit by justified bit? Your heart has already been numbed out. A government owns it.

Ah! Sometimes I can take it in stride...sometimes I can't keep it inside. And I don't think we always should. Sometimes we come with zen and others with double-barrelled palabras in our hand. BIG LOVE to all hunted, used, coralled, and killed in this land. Big love to mis amig@s, and mi gente, and yeh—even (secretly) to the cops killing people on the border. May you one day see things a different way.

Until then, I hope every piece of corn or spinach or tomato or grape or avacado or mexican@-handled meat you eat turns to ash in your mouth.

And wit DAT, bienvenid@s and welcome to your ultra-spicy YouTube Friday!

Here's Chingo Bling to give you some bump and jump and swing. Show 'em how far they can deport that thing.

Enjoy your freedom-filled Friday, vat@s.

Sombrero tip a la Brownstate