Se habla espanol

Hey, kids!  Want to know a sure-fire way to make Rightzi heads explode?  Talk Spanish.  Last week a New York City lawyer named Aaron Schlossberg went seriously apeshit when he heard two women speaking Spanish in a restaurant.  Forgetting that everyone now has a camera at the ready, the counselor ranted that they were probably on welfare and in any case were certainly breaking some kind of law by talking to each other in a language he couldn't understand.  His outburst was zooming through cyberspace within seconds and,  New York being New York, creative outrage ensued.  A GoFundMe was established and over-subscribed before Schlossberg got back to his Madison Avenue office, and when he went home, a Mariachi band had been engaged to serenade him.  Then a taco truck arrived, and it was a fiesta.  Not so much for the lawyer, whose landlord promptly evicted him from his office.  Before that happened, someone called the office and got "To continue in Spanish, press 'one,' for Chinese press 'two'" and so on.  Good laugh.  I'm guessing he's not an immigration lawyer.

Yesterday a Border Patrol officer in Havre, Montana, population fewer than a Mariachi band, leapt into action when he heard two women speaking Spanish in a convenience store.  He demanded "papers, please" from the women, one born in California, the other in Texas.  I assume both were able to satisfy him, because they were not put on a bus to Tijuana with the other "animals" (Trump's word, not mine).  Doesn't everyone carry a passport and a birth certificate when making a late-night milk run?  Well, maybe they should.

The rising tide of stupidity and racism is lifting all boats to levels not seen since Reconstruction.  People with fuck-all else to do will call the cops on anybody moving into an apartment, sleeping in a common room, grilling in a park, sitting in a coffee shop, leaving an AirB&B, driving, shopping or standing still while black.  Idiots with badges will harass you for talking or just looking like you don't belong here, in their opinion.  Who needs the Klan when ICE, Border Patrol and local cops will do what night riders with torches used to do?  Probably for a bonus and a promotion, too.

I studied Spanish in junior high school, and I wish I remembered more of it.  My high school Italian is a little better, and the people who carry signs that say RESPECT ARE COUNTRY, SPEAK ENGLISH probably can't tell the difference anyway.  It is important to converse in other languages when in public places, not just to out the Schlossbergs but to signal our continuing relationship to a world that increasingly, and justifiably, sees us as the planet's largest madhouse.  And yeah, as Sarah Palin would say, it makes their heads keep 'splodin'.  Just be sure your papers are in order.