Seeing a squatting man, I immediately knew he was foreign, but only after we started talking, did I realize he was Vietnamese. We then switched from English to our native tongue. Of mixed race, Tung likely had American blood in him from the Vietnam War, though there were Aussie and New Zealander troops there too, as well as contractors and reporters from dozens of other countries. A mild man, Tung sported a moustache and donned a cheap-looking, dun baseball cap featuring an eagle perched on the stars and stripes. Forty-three-years-old, he had been in the US 11 years, and was working as a boner at a pork processing plant in Greenbush, MN, making $16 an hour, for $400 net a week. Previously, he had been at a beef plant in Sioux City, Iowa, but that place only paid $300 per week.
Greenbush is near the Canadian border, and the region is almost entirely white, but from Tung I learnt that 80% of the workers at this pork plant are non-white, with many Africans, Mexicans and Asians, with the Burmese so adept at this grueling work, they're allowed to chew betel leaves on the job, with trash cans nearby to catch their spittle. Saving what he could from his modest pay, Tung had returned to Vietnam eight times, with six months his longest stay. Back in tropical Can Tho in the Mekong Delta, he would eat and drink well, and idle his time away, but that too would get tiresome, and his dollars would evaporate, so back to frozen Minnesota he would fly. Recently he passed out at the slaughter house and woke up in an emergency room, but since it happened just before he clocked in, even before he had a chance to put on his gloves, it wasn't considered a work place incident. Tung spoke wistfully of a fellow Vietnamese who had gotten clipped by a forklift. The lucky man broke his chin, so thereafter was assigned the easiest tasks, on top of his medical compensation.
In the morning, with my bus still unscheduled, I trudged through the snow into town. There, I saw several fine examples of empty buildings being jazzed up to entice elusive tenants. All over America, this has become an art, and a booming business for graphic designers. In the past, this cosmetic would be a waste of money, for any prime piece of real estate would soon be rented, but now, even a well appointed edifice in an excellent location might stay empty for years, if not permanently. Behind plate glass windows, handsomely suited men and women are shown surveying and marching towards a bright future, "RETAIL SPACE FOR LEASE," and on the sign board of yet another empty store, "YOUR NAME HERE." In St. Louis, white letters are painted onto a window, BEAUTIFUL HISTORIC BUILDING. $6 BASE RENT. Will Design / Build Interior Space. Let's Talk!"
With so many Americans unemployed, shouldn't people like Tung be kept out of the country? With a smaller labor pool, wages would go up, and the tougher jobs would become more attractive, or at least more worthwhile, though consumer prices would spike. The problem in Tung's case, however, is that America's foreign policies have resulted in him being here at all, and I don't mean just the country, but the earth itself. Further, since our military and banking tentacles have such a wide reach, many other immigrants can rightly claim to be a bastard of Uncle Sam, although he may not have been, literally, their motherf*cker.
Let's meet, then, such a person. Traveling from Salt Lake City to Reno, I sat across the aisle from a darker skinned, middle-aged man in a Bulls knit cap. We had just passed the Lovelock Correctional Center, which the driver pointed out was the residence of one OJ Simpson. Hitchhiking was prohibited in this area, announced a billboard. Presently, Bulls knit walked forward to ask another passenger something. This second man had on an Army Airborne cap. He said, "Man, you've got to learn how to speak English better if you're going to do business in this country. Not everybody is going to be as nice as me."
Airborne then dialed a number to ask why Bulls knit's phone card didn't work. Done, he spoke very slowly to accommodate the foreigner, "They said you spent the minutes already. They said you spent your minutes calling Afghanistan. Hey, are you from Afghanistan?"
"Yes," the war refugee blurted in a tiny voice.
"Afghanistan! Man, I love that country!"
So there you have it. If only we would stop loving so many countries, the Bulls knits of the world won't have to come here in ragged droves to ride our hellish buses and snag our worst jobs, and our goofy young men won't have to assist the very people they had just bombed or droned. Our young ladies also won't have as many chances to learn how to mispronounce "hello," "good" and "candy" in Serbian, Arabic, Urdu or Somali, etc., but that's a loss I think we can handle.
With killing and looting making up the DNA of any empire, however, we won't veer from our bloody ways, at least not of our own volition, though with the US of A rapidly winding down and entering its autophagous phase, state-sponsored butchering and mugging will be increasingly performed in your face and on your body. Hell has come home.
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