by FREDERICA VON McTOAST-HYPHEN, Alternate Reality News Service People Writer
Fascism is not just about the leaders who make policies and explain to the masses how they benefit from those policies even when they don’t. Especially when they don’t. It takes thousands and thousands of lower level functionaries the masses are never likely to have heard of to make fascism function. In its dysfunctional way. It’s kind of in the job title. This is one of their stories.
“I’m not racist,” said Maybelline Portabellpottee. “I just feel people of pigment would be more comfortable in their own countries. I know I will be more comfortable when they’re in their own countries. That’s why I want to help them get back to those countries. I’m a humanitarian, really…”
Maybelline is a traffic coordinator for the Immigration Corralling and Expulsing Service (ICES). She works out of the Entrapment and Railroading Operations Retinue (ERrOR) office; her job is to route teams of ICES agents to various immigration hot spots around the country *WINK WINK*.*1
“You don’t want a team showing up at an asylum hearing an hour later than another team and being left with nothing to do but harass random passersby,” the 63 year-old woman explained her job. “And you absolutely do not want five teams showing up at the same orchard to arrest illegal workers. They start arguing about who will be the official arresting officer – the big babies. Before you know it, fists are flying and local police have to be called in to break up a brawl. What should have been a simple snatch and grab has now turned into a…jurisdictional dispute!” Maybelline shuddered. “Not that I speak from experience. And you shouldn’t believe everything you see on Foxindehenhaus News!”
Maybelline claims her ancestors can be traced back to the Mayflower. [OMNISCIENT NARRATOR: They can’t. The Portabellpottees first came to Vesampucceri in 1851 during the Irish boll weevil famine, which was odd because they were coming from Italy. When they first arrived, they were warmly greeted with knives and broken bottles, a common experience for Catholics at the time.]
The ICES traffic controller looks like a five foot tall potato wearing a polka dot dress that the fifties would like back. A wrinkled, grey-haired potato with horn-rimmed glasses. Looking at her – perhaps you’re stuck with her in a bus shelter, because I can guarantee you don’t have the security clearance to see her at work – you can easily imagine her resting on a plate next to a steak smothered, a healthy dollop of sour cream in her hair. Inedible, but great to look at. Mouth-watering, even.
Her desk is immaculate except for a haphazard pile of file folders and sheets of paper topped by a stapler that had been broken in two. “That’s my chaos corner,” Maybelline explained. “Whenever the job gets too…intense, I look at it and think, Welp, at least things aren’t as bad as that! If pressed, I will also admit that I sometimes use it to delay making difficult decisions. ‘Sorry – I’ll get to that as soon as I finish straightening up this mess!’ Unfortunately, I think my shift supervisor is catching on to the fact that the mess never seems to be straightened out, so I may not be able to use that excuse for much longer…”
Maybelline went on to philosophize that you cannot have order without chaos. “President McDruhitmumpf taught me that. Most MAGAs think he’s Jesus, but I think of him more as a Vesampuccerian Buddha: what he says may not seem, on the surface, to make any sense at all, but when you dig deeper, you find all sorts of wisdom.”
When I asked her to give me an example, she said, “Remember when the President talked about whether you should choose a shark or a car battery if you found yourself in open water? When you think about, it’s really a parable about how life sometimes gives us a choice between two bad outcomes. We can flail around in the water hoping that a better future will magically appear before us, or we can accept our fate and choose the less bad option.”
When I expressed doubt that that was the President’s message, Maybelline shook her head and said, “I did say you had to dig deep. Some digs are deeper than others!”
And the stapler? “I can’t tell you,” Maybelline stated. “Sorry. National security. You understand.”
Maybelline mentioned that her passion is toy trains. “I love to watch them *RAAAAAAAAM* each other at high speeds. Especially when they blow up. I saw it on a TV show once – I think it was Nature’s Top Predators – and I thought, Oh, yeah. That looks like fun!“
Replacing the wreckage of toy trains can be expensive, so Maybelline only creates spectacular collisions on special occasions like birthdays, ChristmaKwaanzUkah and January 6. “What can I say?” she said, “Wrecking things is a holiday tradition.”
1. The fact that they are only assigned to Dumboprat-ruled cities in Dumboprat-ruled states is just a…happy coincidence?