WCS 42: Do you live more like a Mexican than you do an Alabamian?

w/: Dems' held-over purgatory + Drake death watch + Triumph in SF, belatedly

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Before my late-spring MacArthur Park tutoring came a shopping expedition for well-made $10 shirts with collars to the famous Santee Alley open-air market, located on DTLA’s Fashion District sidewalks. I felt hella Mexican while picking out these shirts and found myself feeling at home as I strolled to work among the Guatemalan and Salvadoran street vendors selling cheap speakers, Tylenol, and pupusas.

This familiarity returned as I consumed Sunday’s excellent installment of CNN’s Fareed Zakaria GPS. When the host informed me that Donald Trump had wanted to lob bombs into Mexico to stop the flow of fentanyl, according to former Secretary Mark Esper, it felt like a bit like he wanted to bomb me.

I learned some telling details about The United States’ relationship with Mexico from this hour of non-fiction storytelling, starting with how the war of 1846-1848 was an American land grab that Abraham Lincoln opposed. How we misunderstand Mexico put me in mind of a Karl Marx quote that I also came across last weekend:

“The traditions of all dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living.”

A nation still new to seeing itself naked, we’re not right with the Mexico that’s emerging. More than an illegal immigrant producer—only 26 percent of the 2024 undocumented are Mexican—it’s a surprisingly upwardly mobile country that’s reaping the benefits of a US-China tariff battle.   

Americans are not prepared to understand the complexities of fentanyl—the hit sequel to Hall of Fame get-high Oxycontin—because our comprehension of drug appetite is infantile. Before the downers, Central and South America were the cocaine producers that the United States kept in business through our insatiable appetite to escape routine, one way or another.

A Venn diagram comprised of UFC fans and Americans who believe that billionaires might indeed come down and save their sorry asses would have the fattest of intersections. After the Republicans’ coalition of America’s mindlessly religious and its drug damaged, that Ultimate Fighting sweet spot functions as the GOP’s key election firewall.

Now the cash product is fentanyl. Even if through some bad miracle bombing it out of Mexican existence could be a reality, that would be no border panacea. Mexico’s worst boundary problem isn’t its northern one. It’s the country’s border to the South, where folks from unstable nations are pouring through.

We in the gringo community would do well to wrap our minds around Mexico, then take an unsparing look in the mirror. Now, here are the 10 featured items designed to spark chatter through your weekend:

10 Heat is hell for Farmers Market sellers

Photo by Honza Vojtek / Unsplash

San Joaquin, Sacramento Valley, even Santa Clarita peeps: I know you are dispirited by the heat and stir-crazy from being inside. But do you know who this endless heat wave is really fucking with?

Valley Farmers Market venders, who are suffering inside their wallets. The Old Town Clovis market, for example will be closed for an unprecedented second straight weekend.
KSEE

• “It’s kind of a tough pill to swallow,” said Heather Frantzich, Executive Director for the business organization of Old Town Clovis. “But, again, we have to do it for our community and the safety of everybody involved.”

Lil Hit

• Despite the PAC-12’s demise, Washington State and Oregon State will honor their existing bowl commitments through the next two seasons.

  Associated Press

• Legislation to defund the federal rescheduling of cannabis just moved in a House of Representatives subcommittee.
  MJ Business Journal

9 Oregon Sen. Wyden pushing for Clarence Thomas investigation

Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has submitted articles of impeachment against dirty Justice Clarence Thomas. I am proud that Ron Wyden just followed up in the Senate with a call to investigate Thomas, whose financial corruption has been seeping into public for a year.

Clarence Thomas told you who he is upon his introduction to the nation.
NPR