Paranoia strikes deep, as the fella says.
Coming home from a grocery run yesterday I turned into the cul-de-sac to see a nondescript white Chevy SUV parked in front of the new neighbors’ house.
Didn’t think anything of it at first — new neighbors mean strange vehicles full of inspectors, handymen, and new neighbors.
And then, as I rolled past, three largish individuals in light-blue shirts, dark-blue trousers, and thick black vests stepped out of the vehicle and stalked across the street to the Bulgarians’ place.
I call them Bulgarians because I think that’s their nationality. Can’t quite remember. It’s a multigenerational, multilingual household, and the owners have adult children in the area who are always popping round in a variety of top-shelf vehicles bearing dogs and grandchildren and whatnot.
They’re probably the neighbors we have the least amount of contact with, mostly because they seem a self-contained unit. Describing them to a reporter after a capital-E Event of some sort you’d say something like: “They were quiet. Kept to themselves. We never had any problems with them.”
Still, with one eye on the rear view as I punched the button to raise the garage door, I was thinking what I was going to say to the three largish individuals in light-blue shirts, dark-blue trousers, and thick black vests if they suddenly stopped talking to the Bulgarians, slapped the cuffs on their wrists and the hoods over their heads, and dragged them shrieking into the white SUV.
Time to earn that democratic-socialist street cred, bruh!
So I snapped some quick pix of the SUV, ran the groceries inside, grabbed the binoculars, went back outside, jotted down the deets from the license plate — which was not easy, it being a typically sun-bleached New Mexico plate and barely readable — and just generally made myself real obvious standing there in my driveway three houses down, waiting to see whether I needed to go over there and get my ass kicked for some people I barely know.
And then the discussion ended without violence and the authorities ambled down the cul-de-sac to the next house over. It was then that I saw, stenciled on the back of one dude’s stout black vest, not “ICE,” but “PSA.”
“PSA?” I mumbled to myself. “Public Service Announcement? Prostate-Specific Antigen? Pi Sigma Alpha?”
And then it hit me. Police Service Aide. The unarmed crew that helps the Albuquerque Police Department with traffic control, writing reports on property crime, and other low-risk chores while sworn officers focus on scraping the stiffs off the streets.
And as that neighbor stepped out to speak with the PSA posse I recalled that he does have a problem with the Bulgarians, who have kept a broken-down rust-bucket with a right front flat and weeds growing through the engine compartment parked at the curb for the better part of quite some time, and whose functioning vehicles have been known to take up a fair amount of the limited parking in our little cul-de-sac, occasionally blocking his mailbox and/or making it tough to find a spot for the bins on trash-pickup day.
Well … at least he didn’t call the ICEholes on them. He is a Trumper, after all. And I’m not at Alligator Alcatraz, picking worms out of the chow I can’t eat with my jaw wired shut.
Mad Blog Media 
Gee and I thought you would have pulled the old lumberjack chainsaw out of the garage fired it up, held it over your head and gave the neighborhood a couple of raps of “Don’t mess with my cul-de-sac”.
Of course any wise lumberjack knows that chainsaws leak and placing one over your head may not be the wisest thing to do.
Helluva note when the mind leaps straight to the worst-care scenario, isn’t it? Straight from “Yum, groceries,” to “Fuck, do I gotta go get up in the grills of three bozos in their battle-rattle? The cat will miss me when I’m gone.”
Can’t blame you for the paranoia. I prolly woulda thought pretty much the same thing. With Congress having passed the OBBB and Trump being entrusted to ten times the current ICE staffing as his own private SAVAK, I really am getting paranoid.
Radley Balco had a good essay about this the other day.
https://radleybalko.substack.com/p/the-police-militarization-debate
Here’s hoping we do have free elections in ’26 and ’28. I still can’t figure out, the way things are going in Dee Cee, why the knuckleheads in the DNC are still trying to take away our rifles. Damn well might need them if that Jeffersonian Tree of Liberty needs watering some day.
US Politics 101: If you’re losing an argument, change the terms and start all over.
40 years ago, we were talking about getting law enforcement out of their Crown Vics and onto bikes, or even on foot or horseback.
Now the question is, is even a JLTV sufficiently up-armored for our cops? Shouldn’t they be in an Abrams or Bradley, just because?
And yeah, no surprise that the DNC can’t figure out which way is up. You want to ban assault weapons, whatever that means? Then the best way is to go full “shall not be infringed upon” and start up Black and Brown rod and gun clubs.
Remember when the Black Panthers and Brown Berets got interested in their Second Amendment rights? Hoo-lawd, did that ever give Mistah Charley and Tio Sam the jitters.
Yep. The infamous Mulford Act. Can’t have these brown and black people thinkin’ the Second Amendment applies to them….
I guess we are back to whiskey is for drinking and water is for fighting.
Meanwhile, people are fighting back against the digital drug pushers trying to build a huge data center, Project Blue, in Tucson. How could anyone think we have to water required to cool things off in an oven? Round and round we go. More heat outside, more water to cool the inside.
This comment was meant for the “Rio Ground” post. Oops
Thought so, Paddy me boyo. Wanna make it again, but under the Rio Ground post? Then I can kill it here.
I’d move it but WP won’t let me.
No worries. You have smart readers, and they figured it out.
We have the local gendarmerie pulling over almost every brown face they see, and after writing them up, the cops call the border patrol, who check for immigration wants and warrants. So far, three transfers to West Coast Federal courts. How in the hell do they think about who will do the roofing, table busing, and lube jobs? I can only imagine what the Latino community is thinking. Soon, a situation will happen as in the movie ” Born in East LA”. A Cheech Marin movie just slightly ahead of its’ time. The 270 Win is loaded, as is the single-shot 410, plus the 22 pistol. I feel for the cops, but the orange troll is going to get some of them dead and gone.
Americans love cheap shit. Always hunting a bargain. They forget that labor is a component of price. Cheap shit/bargains mean low wages. I suspect that few of the bargain-hunters would sign up to follow the harvest in the Imperial Valley or assembling iWidgets for CheapShit LLC in a dorm-equipped factory the size of Toledo.
Just wait until they have to pony up $15 for a shitty Florida tomato picked green and gassed for color, or take out a home-equity loan for an iPhone. They’ll miss all those dang foreigners then. Either that or just blame it on Sleepy Joe.