THREATENING PARENTS FOR KID’S BEHAVIOR? WHAT’S NEXT

I saw a clip of the masked men of Immigration and Customs Enforcement threatening parents to convince someone behind the locked door of a barber shop to open up.

 

Agent: “I’m going to go get your dad—and I’m going to get your mom!”

Witness: “Y’all can’t tell him that, though. His mom?”

Agent: “Yes we can. That’s how we do.”

 

It piqued my interest when I thought, ‘How would that do with my parents when they were young and alive?’

Like many baby boomers from the early fifties, my father was a veteran.

Not just a veteran, a Marine Corps veteran.

This was a man who joined the Marines knowing he’d go to Korea, hoping he’d go.

At the time the Korean War was a boiling brew, and he wanted some.

During his time over there he walked the ridges, stalked cities streets, and rolled the hospital halls in Japan after a hard day on the job.

This is who you want on your side, if there’s a question:

 

Participating in the attack against heavily defended enemy hill positions when his squad was subjected to sudden and intense hostile small arms, automatic weapons and mortar fire, inflicting several casualties, including the squad leader who had to be evacuated at once, Corporal Gillespie bravely moved from man to man through the fire-swept area to assume command of the unit.

Reorganizing the squad, he skillfully led an assault to overrun the first objective and, after evacuating several wounded men, directed a final devastating attack to completely rout the enemy.

 

If this is the dad you find after threatening parents, good luck.

 

 

Top center, and if I read photographs correctly, I see an expression that says, “I will fuck you up.”

He was no Great Santini sort of bully with a chip on his shoulder, one who needed to whip everyone into shape; more a man who got caught up in a horrible moment of combat, a ‘devastating attack’ of death and destruction, and left it in the past.

He was a man who saw the injustice of war when he and his guys were gunned down, and did what the Marine Corps trains for:

Charge.

My current view from the height of seventy years, a whopping thirty years after he died, I think my Dad lived the white-collar, small town dream, adjusting insurance claims and writing checks up and down the Southwestern Oregon coast.

He also lived the Marine Corps fever-dream of fire and smoke and blood, of routing the enemy in ‘a final devastating attack.’

Who would you want on your side? This guy.

 

Then There’s My Mom

You’re been to the Department of Motor Vehicles?

Maybe you have a story about your experience with a DMV clerk.

One part cop, the other part archive researcher.

After you face one of them you come away knowing you’d better follow the rules, and if you don’t it’s going into your ‘permanent record.’

My Mom was a DMV clerk, then a drive-test instructor, finally a DMV manager.

The old man didn’t need to be a hard-ass with her around. Why?

She started out their marriage as a Marine Wife.

My older brother and I were born Marine Kids, him in a Navy hospital, me at Letterman Army Hospital.

Imagine the combination of Marine Wife and DMV instructor in your face.

Life was hard, lemme tell ya. You couldn’t get away with nothing, or maybe I wasn’t devious enough.

If you knocked on their door you’re getting a 5’10”, 220 lb woman with a familiar DMV expression asking ‘what the hell do you think you’re doing here.’

She’d fill up a door frame, but you might notice the Resting Marine eyeballing you from the couch watching for your next move.

I don’t believe they would abide with masked men yanking them out of their house.

Would it help that they knew every state cop in the Southwestern Region Operations?

That my dad and the city police chief were on a first name basis?

Probably not, but they were experienced negotiators in their lines of work.

They would go along peacefully while my mom would quietly shame each of them for the way they turned out, for acting on wrongful given orders.

“I’m sure your mother’s proud of you. That’s why you wear a mask?”

My dad would quietly memorize the gear, the kidnapper van, and the route they were taken.

 

The Knock On The Door

This is Rasputin from Russia. He’s famous from the days of the last Czar.

Famous, infamous, it was a long time ago, right?

 

Rasputin perverted Khlysty beliefs into the doctrine that one was nearest God when feeling “holy passionlessness” and that the best way to reach such a state was through the sexual exhaustion.

Preaching that physical contact with his own person had a purifying and healing effect, he acquired mistresses and attempted to seduce many other women.

When accounts of Rasputin’s conduct reached the ears of Nicholas, the tsar refused to believe that he was anything other than a holy man, and Rasputin’s accusers found themselves transferred to remote regions of the empire or entirely removed from their positions of influence.

Rasputin’s influence ranged from the appointment of church officials to the selection of cabinet ministers (often incompetent opportunists), and he occasionally intervened in military matters to Russia’s detriment.

 

From my extensive historical education and experience, Rasputin sounds like an optimistic f#ck-stick rubbing up on women desperate to know the touch and smell of a vagrant with a dizzying line of b#llshit.

Sounds like fraternity guys welcoming the new freshman class of co-eds.

Old Raspy liked to deliver spiritual healing and closeness to God through sexual exhaustion?

Through physical contact with his own person?

Bring him up the 80’s and he would have fit in with the televangelist fad and joined the sinners tearfully repenting on TV.

In the Nineties he would have been a reality TV star.

If everything broke right in the current era he would be advising like he did in the old days, with the appointment of church officials to the selection of cabinet ministers (often incompetent opportunists), and occasionally intervening in military matters.

If you’ve been a keen observer of the past and how it relates today, then you’ll agree that we’ve seen many versions of Rasputin doing their magic.

Sometimes they work behind the scenes, sometimes out in the open, but you can recognize them by their common face.

If I read human expression correctly, I see too many, “F-U, whatta you gonna do about it,” looks instead of a nice, reasonable, explanation of new policy and due process.

One Rasputin was enough.

 

PS: When a man like Rasputin starts threatening parents, what’s next?

 

PSS: When men who follow a man like Rasputin knock on the door talking about your kid, what’s next?