When the weather’s warm I have my lunch outside. You need to get outside, out from the big old office building. Because it’s right across the street, and it’s a little different from most benches, I go over to the Joe Serna bench, next to the old city hall. It’s built of bronze and has a statue of Joe Serna and his wife having a picnic, with a little bowl of fruit on Joe’s knee. So I have lunch with Joe and his wife.
I see and sometimes meet all kinds of people out there, including homeless people, who congregate down around Cesar Chavez Park and the central hub downtown. I’m fascinated by the behavior of people, and the homeless present a perplexing view, and the contrast with all the business and governmental types is stark. And though it may not be true on the deeper level, it at least seems as though there is an acceptance of the situation by everyone – at lunchtime at least.
So, I was bemused when I looked over on the bench to see
this disheveled old man in a rumpled suit sitting next to me. His face was
pock-marked and his eyes were bloodshot.
I knew who he was right away.
“Where the fuck did you come from?” I asked.
“Your worst nightmare. Live with it.”
“You’re not my worst nightmare, asshole.”
He was a little offended at my calling him an asshole. He seemed to think he was better than that.
“You’re much too much of a joke to be my worst nightmare.
You’re getting this rep for being an intellectual! That is quite funny, my
friend.”
“Your globalist crap just makes me want to vomit.”
“”Vomit away, fool. I’ve had a few people vomit over here in
the Rhaphiolepis behind me. What’s with all this sovereignty stuff
anyway? Why are you so het up about this? I’ve struggled to find the logic in
this and I can’t find any real threat to the US’ sovereignty.”
“We’re being overrun with immigrants! This country is being
taken over! Can’t you see that?”
“Well, yes and no’”
“Typical Leftist spinelessness.”
“No, seriously, I’ve sometimes been baffled at all the
people who don’t speak English worth a damn, or that it seems like every motel
you stop in, or cab driver you hail down, happens to Pakistani, or something
Middle Eastern. Or that the college campuses are overrun with Asians. And…well,
I guess that’s the kind of thing I’ve have
been a little perplexed about, at times.”
“You are an idiot if you’re not with us. You can’t see
what’s right in front of your face.”
“OK, clue me in, hotshot.”
“Because we’ve had open borders for decades, which, by the
way, is because the Democrats need to get new voters into the country, we have
lost our country! America was founded on the Judeo-Christian world view. You
have no identity apart from that, it’s not America, and by the way, we’re not
the world’s babysitters! Economic nationalism is imperative to save our country,
and by the way, this is not about corporations, it’s about working people,
we’re talking workers!”
“This is the 21st
century, you know? Has this all been a conspiracy, all this upwelling of
international collaboration and cooperation?”
“You better believe it has been, globalism is the death of
us. MAGA! baby, MAGA! We’ shout it out from the skyscrapers!”
“What the fuck are you talking about, asshole? How’d you
ever pull off this ruse that you were an intellectual, anyway? Fake
intellectuals, you and Gorka, and others. Don’t you ever get interested in
other cultures, peoples, ways of doing things? I find it so striking and
interesting when I hear other languages in the halls of my place over there.
Hell, I lived in Africa for 8 years, and that was the thing – being plopped
down into a different situation.”
“You’re hopeless. You’ve been listening the that liberal
crap so long you can’t even think anymore.”
“You know, unlike you, I actually was a working man for 25 years. I fucking worked in factories,
drove trucks and cabs, picked fruit in the orchards and crushed grapes in the
wineries, I dug ditches for rich folk’s houses (with a view), endlessly raked
clods of clay to landscape fancy ranch houses. I walked on 2 X 4 exterior wall
plates, 3 floors up from a rocky ground. What the fuck have you done? Goldman
Sacks? Some crappy and shallow political film rants, running a shoddy and
poorly researched website that stirs up hate and vengeance?”
I think he was a little taken aback by my autobiography. He
could tell that I was not a bullshitter, and, as much as he hated to admit it,
he knew that that I had one over on him.
“Look, you can believe what you want to believe, and I’ll
believe what I know. We’re gonna take
this country over, better resign yourself to it.”
“I doubt it, asshole. I really do. That’s not a world I want to live in, and I’m
nowhere near alone in that.”
“Well, maybe you won’t have to. Live in it, I mean.”
He got up and kind of shuffled off, to somewhere. He seemed
to think he knew where he was going. Right then I felt something plop down next
to me on the bench. It was another old guy, disheveled and in rumpled clothes.
His breath came with difficulty. “How long have you been on the streets?’ I asked.
“Too long.” he answered. “I’m hungry.”
He was truly miserable. He needed help. I had a dollar in my
wallet. It seemed like I should give it to him. But how would that help him? I
felt pretty helpless, because it seemed that the only way to really help him
was to forget my job and devote myself to this cause, or at least take a
substantial chunk of time. Not too many of us can do that, and I’m way too
selfish to even try. Why deny it?
“Good luck.” I told him. Bannon would probably say that this
guy would have a job if it wasn’t for all the illegal immigrants. I had some
serious doubts about that. But there was an inalienable truth that continually
reverberated in my ears: we’re all full of crap. From our puny perspective, how
could it be otherwise? I got up, crossed the street, and went back to work.
