Letter: Sunday column ‘crude and cruel’

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To the Editor-

In a column in last Sunday’s Metro Wire, the columnist takes great joy in mocking a group protesting the Border Patrol storm troopers’ tactics in Minneapolis. The column was both crude and cruel. The columnist claims nobody cares about the group’s protest. Well, many of us do care.

The column frames the protesters as demonstrating against ordinary cops who are doing great good in Minneapolis and elsewhere. The protest was not against ordinary cops but primarily against storm troopers. In my opinion, the storm troopers are in large part a major propaganda arm of the authoritarians controlling the federal government. Of course, the enforcement of immigration laws is a legitimate role of the border control officials. Not the brutal tactics and killing of protesters. Our current president, who would be king, clearly employs “scare the bejesus out of them, and only I will save you.” Immigrants are the perfect target for demagoguery.

After a long, boring, sophomoric attempt at satire, the columnist praises the storm troopers: “I was just grateful for the news that ICE had RESCUED (I added the capitals) 3,300 missing kids in the Minneapolis area alone.” Really! Rescued! Rescued means saving someone from immediate harm, as in saving someone from drowning, for example. Who did the storm troopers rescue these kids from? And where are they now, in some gulag in Texas? The storm troopers call these gulags or concentration camps detention centers. What is actually going on here is that the immigration records lost track of the kids (they were missing from the records). I guess we should all be grateful to the storm troopers for the record-keeping update. The troopers’ masters probably needed the numbers to make their maximum bonus compensation potential.

The column did, in my mind, raise an important and interesting question: How long after leaving a church service is it appropriate to give someone the middle finger salute? The columnist stated he wanted to give the protesters the finger, but since he was just coming back from church, it wouldn’t have been nice. So, maybe two to three hours after church, giving someone the finger would be appropriate? Just giving my input, probably any guidance on the finger issue given in church would be forgotten in two to three hours.

I take this opportunity to congratulate and thank the group for going out on a cold winter day to demonstrate in favor of good, old American values that most of us support. This was not a demonstration against law enforcement but against a federal government that places political party control, brutality, and lawlessness over treating immigrants and protesters with decency.

David Rosin
Plover