Let’s Get Those Signs
Let’s get those signs.
I need one of those signs.
Because cowardly politicians are nudging me closer to the brink of hatred.
And I don’t want to go there.
At least I don’t want to go to hating someone.
Cowardice yes! People. I don’t want to go there.
But every time a groveling politician spews garbage about “stopping fentanyl at our borders,” “invasion” and “illegals,” I remember…
Robert.
[We’ll come back to the signs.]
Robert never had a chance.
Every force of nature seemed in dedicated cahoots against him, plotting his death.
It took more than half a century, but the evil forces won.
Eternal rest grant unto him, O Lord.
And let Your perpetual light shine upon him.
May his soul and the souls of all the faithful departed
rest in peace. Amen
Born in a rustbelt town that was more dead than dying.
Son of a man so reprehensible most of us wouldn’t douse him with water if he were on fire and a mother for whom the word “Jezebelean” would be a compliment.
Robert (I always addressed him as “Robert” or “Sir” – one of the few measures of respect he received in life) never had a chance.
At five, his father forced him into the family car, then threatened and beat him until he directed “the ole man” to the home of his mother’s newest boyfriend. Then he went inside and killed the man.
What does that leave a kid growing up in a town where “drunk” is the most common job descriptor?
Join a gang, of course. Barely make it through high school, a given.
Somehow, a mentor who taught him “fine art level carpentry” found Robert. And he was “very good.” Good enough to have his own place, drink too much too often, develop a cocaine addiction, and decide to become the next Tony Montana (his Scarface reference) of Miami.
Life became: Work, get a paycheck, blow it on alcohol and drugs; rinse repeat.
After twelve years in recovery, the hands, wrists, arms, knees and ankle pains accrued by twenty years of hammering and ladder-climbing took their toll and doctors started prescribing painkillers.
He couldn’t see the steel wall at the end of the tunnel, just knew it was there. Rehabs, a wife who deeply loved him and whom he genuinely loved despite all their difficulties, the counselor’s best efforts.
Nothing worked.
It’s over a year now since Fire Rescue, police and the courts forced him into a month-long involuntary rehab and “treatment” – such as it wasn’t.
Released on a Friday, he died of a fentanyl overdose early Saturday afternoon.
I pray often for the rest of his good and suffering soul.
I also recognize the fear-fanning “blame the desperate at America’s borders” fentanyl lies of politicians.
A Texas Department of Health and Human Services Web site is headlined “Son. Daughter. Family. Friend. Fentanyl Kills.” and the warning “Five Texans die every day, on average of fentanyl poisoning.”
The University of Colorado Boulder Health & Wellness Services Web site has published “5 things everyone should know about fentanyl.” They include:
Fentanyl is a synthetic opioid 50 to 100 times more potent than heroin or morphine and is often mixed into other drugs because it is cheap to manufacture and a small amount goes a long way.
It is added to powders (like cocaine), capsules and illegally “pressed” pills made to look like prescription meds.
“[M]ay be more common” than people think. “In fact, the [United States Center for Disease Control] announced that fentanyl is now the leading cause of death among adults 18 to 45…”
The site also carried an “Important update: September 21, 2023 Boulder County Public Health (BCPH) is urging caution following the discovery of a powdered form of fentanyl circulating in the county’s illicit drug market.”
But for the uninitiated into the world of drug addiction, the UC Boulder’s greatest contribution may be a single image: 2 mg of fentanyl next to a penny.
2mg. A lethal dose.
Many counterfeit pills contain up to 5 mg. “It’s important to remember that any pill or drug sold on the internet, on the streets or by a person you know could contain a potentially lethal dose of fentanyl,” UC Boulder warns.
According to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, law enforcement seized “more than 360 million deadly doses” of fentanyl in 2023.
Here’s more facts:
Despite its denials, China remains the primary source of the precursor chemicals synthesized into fentanyl by drug cartels in Mexico.
There had been some degree of cooperation between the US and China in cracking down on fentanyl-related crimes prior to the outbreak of COVID-19 and disputes between China and the previous Trump administration over the how-and-where of its origins, as well as China’s role in producing the precursors of fentanyl. It is hoped that, following President Joe Biden’s November 2023 meeting with Chinese leader Xi Jinping, this cooperation will be increased and productive. China’s Minister of Public Security Wang Xiachong said in a joint address with a US delegation that he hoped the two sides could “enhance and expand cooperation to provide more positive energy for stable, sound and sustainable China-U.S. relations.”
On December 28, Oregon Public Radio closed the year by reporting:
“2023 may be remembered as the year Americans woke up to an unprecedented threat scouring communities…
“For the first time in U.S. history, fatal overdoses peaked above 112,000 deaths, with young people and people of color among the hardest hit.
“Drug policy experts, and people living with addiction, say the magnitude of this calamity now eclipses every previous drug epidemic, from the 1980s to the prescription opioid crisis of the 2000s…
“Federal researchers now say drug overdoses are a leading cause of death among young Americans age 18-45 and have also spiked as a killer of pregnant women.”
Figures for Fiscal Year 2021 release by the United States [Federal] Sentencing Commission show that 82.8% of fentanyl trafficking offenders were men; 41% were Hispanic, 37.4% were Black, and 19.9% were White; average age was 34 years and “86.2% were United States citizens.”
The 2024 federal fiscal year began on October 1, 2023. (It begins October 1 since 1974 under the Congressional Budget and Impound Control Act.) On December 22, 2023, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security announced that
“[T]hrough the end of November [2023], over 5,500 pounds of illicit fentanyl have already been seized by U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) in the first two months of Fiscal Year (FY) 2024, with over 3,000 pounds seized in November alone. Additionally, over 750 pill presses were seized in November, bringing the total number seized for the first two months of FY 2024 to over 1,800…. [Pill presses are mechanical devices used to do precisely that – form or shape raw materials (including talcum powder, backing soda, other ingredients and fentanyl) into pills.]
“Progress this year builds on our efforts in FY 2023, when DHS stopped over 43,000 pounds of fentanyl from hitting our streets and seized more than 3,600 pill presses and $16 million in currency. These efforts by CBP and HSI also resulted in over 5,600 arrests in FY 2023. Since FY21, DHS HSI operations have seized more than 1,570,127 kilograms of fentanyl and methamphetamine precursor chemicals. [Bold in original text]
“The DHS strategy has evolved to target not just fentanyl but the tools and materials transnational criminal organizations (TCOs) use to make it. We are interdicting and seizing precursor chemicals, pill press machines, die molds, and pill press parts used in the manufacturing process. We are targeting pill press supply chains, pill press brokers, TCOs and U.S. recipients who are producing and moving fentanyl, and the money launderers who help facilitate this illicit trade….”
On February 10, The Daily Beast special correspondent Michael Daily reported,
“In one 48-hour period last week, Customs and Border Patrol officers thwarted three separate attempts to smuggle fentanyl into the U.S. at the Paso Del Norte Border Crossing in Texas.
“None were migrants, despite the narrative being peddled across MAGA world that immigrants bring the deadly drug with them as they pour across a supposedly open border.
“All three - a 20-year-old who had 37 pounds stashed in a spare tire, a 45-year-old who had .29 pounds in her vagina, and a 26-year-old who had .16 pounds similarly concealed - were American citizens.
“In fact, nearly 90 percent of those arrested for trafficking in fentanyl are Americans - roughly the same percentage of interceptions at legal crossing points such as Paso Del Norte. Virtually none of the asylum seekers detained at the border are found with the drug….”
We – Father Roger and Father Skip – have buried too many victims – often way too young – of drug overdoses. In fact, we co-officiated at one Rite of Christian Burial. We want to see an end to our nation’s drug crisis and the deaths of young people.
But it’s time to end the lie that those desperate refugees at the southern border fleeing the murderously oppressive governments of Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela are smuggling fentanyl into this country and “poisoning the blood” of America. “Poisoning the blood” is a trigger phrase. It should be used in reference to the almost 90% of fentanyl smugglers accused by American law enforcement – all Americans. Or perhaps when some politicians refer to foreigners “poisoning the blood” of America theirs is simply hate-filled rhetoric aimed at people like two wives of a former president of the United States.
Before fentanyl became such a lucrative enterprise, in a June 11, 2019 hearing of the Senate International Narcotics Control Caucus, Republican David Perdue declared:
“At half a trillion dollars — $500 billion — that makes the cartel business and the drug traffic just in Mexico alone coming across to the United States bigger than Walmart, to put it in perspective. So this is larger than our largest companies.”
It’s time for politicians to stop blaming the tens-of-thousands of desperate men, women and children lining up at our southern borders for “poisoning the blood” of the nation with drugs and recognize that it is American criminals and Mexican cartels doing the poisoning.
During an O’Hare International Airport protest against the Trump administration’s immigration policy barring citizens of seven predominantly Muslim countries, a 9-year-old wearing a kippah sat on his father’s shoulders and held a sign reading “Hate has no home here.” He was grinning at a 7-year-old girl wearing a black hijab and carrying a sign reading, “Love.”
In recent weeks bright red, white and blue posters bearing the message “Hate has no home here” in English, Urdu, Korean, Hebrew, Arabic and Spanish have begun appearing all over the North Park, Illinois.
I don’t want to hate people, even those falsely and politically accusing desperate people of causing our nation’s murderous fentanyl crisis and “poisoning the blood” of the United States.
I want one of those signs – to remind me not to hate people (but t’s OK to hate hatred and malicious ideas).
[The signs also are available as free downloads for those who would like to print their own posters, yard signs or bumper stickers at 7f2e03_331af0101706400e9010f77353ef21dc.pdf (wix.com)]