"Your concept of justice would freeze the Mississippi River in a heartbeat if you had a heart." — The author, to a judge friend many years ago at The Cabana Club. The Cabana Club is long gone (now it's The Green Pig) and instead of justice meted within, we need only look outside, where Utah has given carte blanche to roving squads of black-outfitted, badge-carrying, weapon-waving, uncontrolled, flying squad cops to protect American justice.
I call it JustICE! Here's why:
1. A Utah legislator justifies recent ICE roundups saying those people—"Illegal Immigrants"—have already committed crimes by being here illegally. Their arrests and their immediate deportations without due process are righteous.
2. The spokesperson for Mormon Land—to borrow the moniker used by the panderers over at The Salt Lake Tribune—doesn't object with any degree of conviction to JustICE agents sauntering into Latter-day Saint wardhouses to check the papers of brown-skinned folks who might be worshiping Jesus (who was once, himself, the target of Herod's JustICE agents at similar hallowed places). And, the Mormon Land brethren also forget how similar bigots killed their own original prophet and drove them out of the land to which they had emigrated in order to find a better and safer existence.
3. A group of JustICE stopped an American citizen of Zion who drove by them and who—seeing their JustICE armored vehicles on the side of a Utah road—offered some advice to the agents using an overused epithet and hand sign as a verb to suggest what JustICE could do to themselves. He was then unlawfully detained for vocalizing an opinion, apparently.
4. Local police officers who were called to assist JustICE employed the same word several times, wondering "why the f--k they were there, why the f--k the citizen was detained and asked out loud who the f--k JustICE thought they were."
5. A good judge in Ogden bemoaned the tragedy of JustICE showing up in his Justice Court to handcuff and take a man out for deportation on a misdemeanor offense. The judge was already dispensing justice and was going to hand down the same probationary sentence that JustICE demands in similar cases.
Willkommen to the New World of Gutless Governors and Legislators (NWGGL) and Profiles In No Courage American Politicians (PNCAP). Both have joined the chorus of "well, they are here illegally after all and it's too bad, but some of them are criminals and Make America Great Again (MAGA)." And, oh they forgot about Joseph Smith but "that was different and blah blah effin blah."
The wafting scents of Agent Orange, packaged with bigotry and injustice in our Not So Just Great State (NSJGS), will turn stomachs before our Utah air is cleansed of hate and bigotry.
Like other problems in Utah, our elected officials are turning to Trump like Colonel Klink and Sergeant Schultz in a comedic, all-too-real parody of Stalag Utah's Hogan Heroes. Meanwhile, Trump's Himmler will continue to drop xenophobic texts and Nazi salutes, pandering to the worst in The American DNA of Know-Nothing Bigotry.
Elon Musk—that trendy, new Eau de Heil aroma that reminds of the halcyon days of 1920s and 1930s, the beer hall putsches and goose steps with a hint of Orange Proud Boy Insurrection. All packaged in crystal bottles to remind everyone of the joys of Kristallnacht. I don't want to JustBITCH here. I have something to offer in this debate to all Proud Boys and Girls who wear red hats and wave Old Glory around like a rouge painted street walker, to be used only when you want to quickly prove your manhood. Yes, even you, Margie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert.
You claim you need closed borders to America because of Fentanyl and other drugs. You want to reclaim for MAGA the jobs that none of you can or will do. You want to stop those gorging on Fido Pizza and Purée of Miss Kitty.
Never mind that the folks down across the Rio Grande once owned this Zion before Manifest Destiny and the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848 legitimized our theft of land—including Utah, where Mormon pioneers squatted on land to turn into what The Salt Lake Tribune calls "Mormon Land."
If all Good Utahns and other Americans stopped packing their noses, arms, mouths and anywhere else they choose to place illegal drugs, those aliens wouldn't have to leave their homes to avoid the drug cartels that control and savage their homelands, and which have branched across the border. They live as they once did, before my generation and those that followed considered the "Whoa, man, look at the lights!" wisdom of stoners like Cheech and Chong to be a "groovy" idea.
If you want to Make America Great Again (MAGA), put away the hash pipe, the syringe, the tin foil and the bong. Without American drug users, drug traffickers go away. Mexico can go back to Making Mexico Great Again and JustICE can melt away, becoming simple justice again.
But to make America Great, MAGA must do something no American wants to do: We have to clean up our own mess. We just want to blame everyone else. That, sadly, is also American JustICE.
*One last thing for The Salt Lake Tribune Editorial Board: Referring to Utah as "Mormon Land" plays directly into the xenophobic ideal of the Trump-Musk-Cox troika—that we are all homogenous vanilla people, making it easier to blame everything on them: the non-Mormon, the non-Republican and the non-conservatives. Your continued use of the phrase "Mormon Land" is JustBS!
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