I have a long history of cluster headaches interspersed with an occasional bout of migraines. Cluster headaches, man, that’s some pain. They were always headaches, as in head pain, with considerable sensitivity to sound and light but with the head pain the thing inspiring the desire to pound the offending head against a wall.
So it never even occurred to me that the thing that had me thinking I’d blown out an eye last week was a headache. Exposure to light of any intensity had me feeling like my eye was being stabbed by the icepick of legend. This made my head hurt, but that seemed incidental to whatever was happening with my eye.
This thing lasted three days before beginning to fade away. The cluster headaches were almost always less than a day, usually six hours or less, sometimes twice in a day, and the occasional migraines were 24 hours or less.
The point being I had no idea this was a headache and not the head pain one could expect ancillary to repeated icepick stabbings, but that’s what the neurologist says it was.
And if anybody saw me weeping from one eye while attempting to take pictures at the Pride festival, that’s why. It was a great scene but I was not overcome by emotion.
To illustrate how deeply neurotic I’ve become about daily writing, this whole headache exposition is an explanation of why I missed a day the other day.
I’ve decided to take up painting.
The Border Patrol agents union is among the most vitriolic of such accounts nationwide. The NYPD sergeants union was their closest competitor, but the sergeants have been a little quiet since the FBI started stomping around their little playground.1
The Border Patrol, though—they’re still as mouthy as they wanna be.
That’s fascist propaganda, and the union are big on “stab in the back” rhetoric too. If we get another authoritarian-minded president with a supportive Congress, the Border Patrol will go to war for them. This is not an organization with institutional impulse control,2 nor one which expects accountability for misbehavior up to and including murder3—and that was before the Trumpettes came to town.
Casual observers tend to think that the Border Patrol’s authority is limited to the border, but that’s not so.4
A federal law says that, without a warrant, CBP can board vehicles and vessels and search for people without immigration documentation “within a reasonable distance from any external boundary of the United States.” These “external boundaries” include international land borders but also the entire U.S. coastline.
The federal government defines a “reasonable distance” as 100 air miles from any external boundary of the U.S. So, combining this federal regulation and the federal law regarding warrantless vehicle searches, CBP claims authority to board a bus or train without a warrant anywhere within this 100-mile zone. Two-thirds of the U.S. population, or about 200 million people, reside within this expanded border region, according to the 2010 census. Most of the 10 largest cities in the U.S., such as New York City, Los Angeles, and Chicago, fall in this region. Some states, like Florida, lie entirely within this border band so their entire populations are impacted.
So you’re 99 miles from the nearest border, your flight from wherever just touched down and as you exit the plane some conspicuously armed Green Monster agent accompanied by some Mr. Smith-looking motherfucker asks you to join them for a talk, which they can detain you for refusing.
So now you’re in an interior room another quarter-mile further from the border but they can still ask you to unlock your phone and other devices for them, and if you decline they can seize the devices for as long as five days, all without a warrant, and while they have your phone or computer, any data they’re able to access can be added to an until recently secret database, which can be accessed by 3,000 Border Protection (you’ll excuse me for previously calling it the Border Patrol) agents.5
U.S. government officials are adding data from as many as 10,000 electronic devices each year to a massive database they’ve compiled from cellphones, iPads and computers seized from travelers at the country’s airports, seaports and border crossings, leaders of Customs and Border Protection told congressional staff in a briefing this summer.
The rapid expansion of the database and the ability of 2,700 CBP officers to access it without a warrant — two details not previously known about the database — have raised alarms in Congress about what use the government has made of the information, much of which is captured from people not suspected of any crime. CBP officials told congressional staff the data is maintained for 15 years.
That’s a Washington Post story from last month, so not a problem limited to the dark ages.
CBProtection has around 50,000 armed agents, including 20,000 assigned to the southern borders. That’s the largest armed force in the U.S. outside the military, and one that is in many instances excused from observing rights conveyed through the U.S. constitution.
So, you know: police state. And that’s without even mentioning the police, or the other federal paramilitaries.
When Trump was getting elected a friend or two warned against a fascist coup. My sentiment was that the infrastructure wasn’t there. Now perhaps it is, because people inside government and out have learned that the consequences aren’t all that bad even if one loses.
Pokey LaFarge has made my current comfort music rotation. “Rock Bottom Rhapsody” opened the writing day, further propelled by Yo La Tengo with “We have Amnesia Sometimes,” which I originally remembered as “Sometimes We Get Amnesia.” If pressed on what’s next I’d say Japanese Breakfast and “Jubilee.” I think that’s right. I know I turned the oven off.
That, comrades, is all I got as I blink my way free. Be well, take care.
Sorry about that eye. Border Patrol excesses acknowledged, what do you think should be done with the border? Unlimited access is not acceptable to our population.
Those are the worst headaches, and your experience illustrates why they are sometimes referred to as "ice pick headaches." My deepest condolences, and dearest hope that the universe elects to spare you from more of these. I'm well aware of all of the other names for these.
My current speculation is that conservative planners are already on-board with global warming and contribute to push overreach in anticipation of mass migration northward. I mean we already know the DOD considers it a very real global threat.
The real question will be, what are the Canadians going to do about all of this?