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SHUCK & JIVE OR SHOCK & AWE: It’s summertime! That means I need to do my patriotic duty and watch a big, loud, summertime movie. In other words, pretty much anything showing at the Arlington Theatre would be a good bet.
Right now, I think that’s Superman, which, despite all its vaingloriously red-white-and-blue, man-of-steel trappings, has been castigated for not-so-subliminal political preachiness. It seems the bad guy — Lex Luthor — happens to be a tech billionaire.
Among the many cool things to note about the original Superman story — before we are distracted by the clanking din of all the tanks rolling through the streets of Carpinteria — is that the guy who drew it, Joe Shuster, was a nearly blind son of Ukrainian Jewish immigrants fleeing deadly anti-Semitic persecution.
Shuster, the revisionists now tell us, did not have all that much talent, but like many immigrants, he made more than the most with the limited cards he was dealt. And the moguls who bankrolled Superman in its still-formative stages —in 1938 — worried that Shuster’s superhero had too much cush to his tush, which might arouse the prurient interest of gay readers. True story.
The Superman saga has always been an immigrant’s tale originated by the children of immigrants. And Jewish ones. I mention all this, obviously, because of what just transpired in the backroads of Carpinteria, otherwise a glorious visual backstory to my weekend bike rides.
Last Thursday, the Department of Homeland Security, ICE, and Fox News all tell us 50 armed, masked, goggled, helmeted, and bulletproof vested agents — representing ICE, Homeland Security, maybe the DEA — rolled up on the Glass House greenhouse to serve — we are to believe — a search warrant on owner Graham Farrar for a criminal investigation the feds are conducting into allegations of labor law violations.
Those desperately trying to pretend no one should be horrified by this invasion constantly point out that ICE and friends came bearing search warrants signed by a federal judge.
Since when do we exhume the Desert Storm ghost of General Norman Schwarzkopf to serve search warrants? And for labor violations? There was enough military firepower in Carpinteria Thursday to seize the Panama Canal. To occupy Greenland, even. Strictly for the hell of it, maybe we could just re-invade Grenada.
Over his long career in law enforcement, Santa Barbara District Attorney John Savrnoch has probably served 100 million search warrants on people accused of criminal acts and in the arrests of about 100 million more. Had he ever seen anything like this? Not ever, Savrnoch said.
And Savrnoch has been involved in the arrest of members of the notorious MS-13 gang accused of murder. The force deployed, he explained, should be proportional to the likelihood of risk. “It’s all about the targets and touch,” he said in that alliteratively catchy way law enforcement people speak.
But then, what would you expect Savrnoch to say? He didn’t just drink the Kool-Aid; he is the Kool-Aid. Savrnoch is after all, a fourth-generation descendent of Slovakian immigrants — and Catholic ones when Catholics were hated — who fled the poverty and political repression of their homeland for a better life. Like so many Slovakian immigrants, his great-grandfather settled in Pennsylvania, where he worked the coal mines. His son, Savrnoch’s grandfather, was a factory worker and proud union member. His own father would go to college, get an MBA, and work a white-collar job. And as Savrnoch — a child of Wisconsin — told the county supervisors, today he’s the top cop in what he described the greatest county in the United States of America. “That is America’s story,” he said.
When Savrnoch sees Mexican immigrants, he sees his own family story being replayed. And, not to get too corny about it, that’s America’s family story, too.
But there’s another version. As one of my history teachers put it, “Yes, America’s a melting pot. That’s where people on the bottom get burned and the scum rise to the top.” Both stories are true. And right now, they are colliding.
I get it.
Immigrants have made this country infinitely stronger, richer, better, and tastier. So, naturally, other people have always hated them. And if they’re not white, then they’ve hated them more. It might not be a law of physics, but pretty close.
And in America, it’s not uncommon for the hated to join ranks with their haters, hence the strong surge in support Trump enjoyed from Latino voters from his first election to his second.
But please don’t tell me last week’s action was about labor violations. Or about the trafficking of minors. Or about a judicially issued search warrant. Trump has never cared about any of that. Supervisor Bob Nelson, you are way too smart and have too big a heart to say such stupid things and to make such excuses.
It’s about subjugation and domination. Why else would one of the masked goons reach into the car of a Foodbank delivery driver attempting to drive through, yank the keys out of his car, and heave them far into a nearby field?
The fact is, we are all experiencing the horror of being attacked in our own country, in our own town, by shock troops of what we thought was our own government, and we are experiencing a sense of powerlessness in the moment to do anything about it.
To steal a line from the movie, “This,” I guess, “is a job for Superman!” Except this time, that will have to be us.
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