Merry F’n Christmas… there’s not enough love on the borderline, or anywhere else.

Musicians and artists are the voices of the prophets.

They ARE our prophets.

Their consciences are often our nation’s collective voice of conscience. For many radio stations, the only profit they care about is traded on Wall Street, and their consciences are not tethered to trouble, or pricked by care for others’ problems. Their profit is all that matters, for their god is green and cold, and easily fits into any wallet. It has crowded out natural love in the calculi of their now-inhuman hearts.

And, for one reason, or another, it seems that these days, there are very few voices “crying in the wilderness,” or elsewhere, about social injustice.

But three years ago – in 2015 – musician/artist Chip Taylor wrote a song entitled “Refugee Children.” It should be heard by everyone, though it certainly hasn’t.

Whether one is a believer in the story of the virgin birth, or any god, the basic fundamental element of that ageless story is that a small family with a young pregnant bride were refugees, homeless, with only the clothes on their backs.

Any well-read person, regardless of any religious belief, or not, should be familiar with the story told in the Gospel of Matthew which, in the introductory part, tells the story about Joseph (a man who married his bride, even though she was pregnant by another) and Mary, his betrothed, who were fleeing for their lives, and were especially concerned that their soon-to-be-born child would be murdered. And indeed, as the story goes, the despotic ruler Herod ordered all male children aged two and under killed. So by fleeing, by becoming refugees, they managed to save perhaps not only their lives, but most certainly the life of their as-yet-unborn child.

In this hemisphere now, our nation’s top leader is actively turning away refugees fleeing violence and certain death by murderous, criminal-gang-run totalitarian despots who kill for pleasure in El Salvador, Guatemala, Nicaragua, and Honduras. Those fleeing for their lives, who the mainstream media calls “a migrant caravan,” are our neighbors.

Are we to turn a blind eye to them?

What if we had to flee?

What if this government decided tomorrow to come to your house and order you and yours to get on some cattle truck or train (like Nazi Germans did) and were separated and shipped off to parts unknown?

Yeah… we’re doing that shit today.

“First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out —
Because I was not a socialist.
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out —
Because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out —
Because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me —
and there was no one left to speak for me.”
– Rev. Martin Niemöller (1892–1984)

A not-so-friendly reminder that White Supremacist ideologues of Nazi Germany killed Jehovah’s Witnesses, anyone suspected of being LGBT (who were forced to wear pink triangles), the physically feeble, Jews (who were forced to wear yellow Stars of David), the mentally retarded, those with physical deformity, Roma Gypsies, Poles, those the Down Syndrome, Blacks, and more.

Such a dystopian scenario is not too far removed from our own history, for it did happen during WWII when our United States government created Japanese “internment camps” deep within the remote areas of Jerome, and Rohr, Arkansas, and other often-inhospitable locales in the West.

The tragedy of that matter is that those people WERE AMERICAN CITIZENS – BORN IN THE USA. They were entrepreneurs, business owners, scholars, tax-paying bonafide United States citizens. And yet, they happened to be of Japanese ancestry. That was their only “crime.” Our nation was motivated by irrational fear to segregate and separate them from their homes, and each other.

The irony is, that our nation’s most highly decorated military unit in history – the 442nd Regimental Combat Team (now called Infantry Regiment) of the 92nd Infantry Division, which motto was “Go for Broke” (over 18,000 awards in under two years, including 9,468 Purple Hearts, 4,000 Bronze Stars, 560 Silver Stars, 52 Distinguished Service Crosses, 22 Legion of Merit medals, 8 Presidential Unit Citations (5 in 1 month), and 21 Congressional Medals of Honor) – was made of those Japanese heritage Americans known as “Nisei,” which translated from Japanese means “second generation” American-born.

Those men were so brave, such fierce warriors that, while laden with packs and ammunition, scaling a 60º steep incline along the shale-encrusted North Apennine Mountains in Italy in the dead of night April 4, 1945, at least one man fell over 300 feet to his death without uttering one sound, because the success of their invasion to the entrenched and fortified Gothic (German) Line leading to the Battle of Rimini, hinged on silence, and secrecy.

Were it not for their heroic deeds, to have gone behind enemy lines during WWII, the war might not have ever turned. One of those men was 2nd LT Daniel Inouye (1924-2012), who lost his RIGHT arm to a grenade, a Congressional Medal of Honor recipient, was later elected as Democratic Senator from Hawaii, and served Hawaiians from 1963–2012.

Our nation has an inglorious history of such wretched behavior. We saw it with Native Americans (Choctaw, Chickasaw, Cherokee, Creek and Seminole tribes from MS, AL, GA, TN & FL) and the “Trail of Tears” overseen by Andrew Jackson – a wicked scumbag asshole of a human being and slave-owning miserable excuse of a president from Tennessee, very much like the one now occupying the White House, who was similarly an adulterous bigoted, racist whose rotting corpse pollutes the stony ground of Nashville – and were forcefully driven like cattle to the arid, inhospitable climes of Oklahoma. It would be wishful thinking, and were it not for the Secret Service and the tax payer-funded healthcare he and his filthy rich family gets, not too far-fetched to imagine that he could end up like Jackson, with two bullets in him – dying from lead poisoning, and other disease. But no, you and your family don’t deserve taxpayer-funded healthcare. Our nation is too stupid to figure out how to do it, or why it makes good economic sense to care for ourselves.

So yeah… refugees.

And merry f’n Xmas.

…thinking about another refugee couple, and a man who married a woman pregnant by another.