How much like Mexico are our border states becoming?

When I worked at the 7^th Marine Expeditionary Brigade (MEB) in 29 Palms, CA, I was instructed to write an exercise scenario for an exercise that included the 7^th MEB and an Army unit from FT Irwin as the Opposition Force.  The first order of the day was to divide the training area.  In the days before Power Point, that was accomplished by placing a clear overlay atop a map of MCAGCC – short for Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center – and drawing some heavy lines that indicated territory occupied for the blue – friendly - and red for the OpFor.  These areas were given made up country names. The blue area was something inspiring like the Republic of Freeland.  The red area was always some nefarious cheesy acronym like the ­Democratic And Representative Country of Redland or DARC Red, then shortened to DARCR - pronounced darker.  Then, because we are Marines (AKA soldiers of the sea) known for amphibious operations, a large portion of the training area on the map was painted blue to indicate the "Sea of Liz" or whatever the training officer’s wife’s name was.

In these scenarios, the usual objective of the Godless communist backed red forces invading the peace loving Freeland was some sort of made up mineral interest.  So being one who didn’t want to spend hours reinventing the wheel during valuable club time, and seeing how the entire training area was contained within the CA high desert, I decided that the goal of the red forces would be the valuable water desalination plant on the port of Wilson (named after Camp Wilson) in Freeland.

I took my brilliant work to my boss who was generally pleased, but because he was the boss had to move this line a bit to the south while moving that line a bit the north.  He liked the objective in the scenario but wanted something in the scenario that gave the DARCR forces a pretext for invading.  Stupidly I said, “It’s the water sir.”  He explained that was the “objective” of the invasion.  He wanted a “pretext’ for the invasion.

Then he used a word that I’d never heard before, “irredentist.”  He me told to craft a paragraph or two indicating that DARCR had irredentist interests in Freeland.  Seeing the RCA dog look on my face, he explained an irredentist interest is where a part of one country is more like a bordering state than the state which it is included in.  People in the disputed area speak the same language as the neighboring country and have cultural, historic, racial or ethnic ties to the other country.  He pointed to the dictionary and said, “Look it up.”   I trusted him, besides I am told by world renowned speller, AF Bro, that you have to know how to spell a word to look it up in the dictionary.

All of this came flooding back yesterday when I heard Fox News’s Shep Smith offering a sop to Vlad Putin by saying people in the Crimea region of Ukraine were more like the Russians than they were like the Ukrainians.  I thought, then I suppose it’s OK for Mexico to invade our border states and if not Mexico alone then Mexico in conjunction with whatever allies they can muster.

I think if smart people like Shep Smith can justify one country invading another because irredentist interests, the US is screwing itself with talk of amnesty and no requirement for assimilation into the American culture.  What I do not understand about all of this is why an immigrant - legal or otherwise - would come here for the opportunities this country offers then insist that this country honor the traditions of the corrupt $h!t hole he just left.  It makes no sense to me for immigrants to try to turn this country of opportunity into the dysfunctional crap hole they just left.

But that’s what seems to be going on here.  A federal judge has ordered students in a CA high school not to where patriotic clothing - in an American high school - during Cinco de Mayo for fear of upsetting Latino students.  Does Mexico have irredentist interests in CA?  I suppose the bigger question is, does any outside Jerry Brown and Demo-Dope fund raisers give a crap if the Mexicans took CA back?  If they did, the Mexicans would have to bail them out, which is probably why they won’t…for now.

Hmm, I don’t know how we went from 29 Palms, CA to Ukraine and back to a CA high school based on one word, “irredentist”, but there you have it.