Chicanonautica: Whither Goest Thou, Trumptopia?

by Ernest Hogan

I'm scheduled for the Fourth of July, so I should do something special, like take a look at whatthehell's going on and how it affects us Chicanonauts, here in Trumptopia. So yippie-eye-yo-tie-yea, cabrones! We're off to look for America!

I'm sure we left it around here somewhere . . .

Another election is off and running. Or did the old one every really stop? Trump sure never stopped campaigning, it being what he does best, and now he's promising a whole lotta deportations, and his fans go wild.

Are we Trumptopia yet? How's that wall going? Is a closed border possible without a police state to enforce it? That's what I guess ICE and Homeland Security are for . . .

Trump doesn't really have to do anything. He just says something that offends the right people, and his fans are orgasmic. After all, politics is about making people feel good.

They have made a rather spectacular horror show with brutalized children, concentration camps, and corpses around the border.

Latinos for Trump just eat it up.

Meanwhile, Democratic presidential hopefuls try to answers questions in Spanish . . . Hijo de la chingada!

It used to be that the right-wing political hacks would conjure up the brown boogieman early, get people riled up, then ditch him for other issues, but these days he is a main issue.

He looks a lot like me.

I suppose that a Chicano science fiction writer with a new story about social unrest shouldn't worry, but then I live in Arizona, and get these looks from some of my fellow Arizonans . . .

A couple of weeks ago, my wife and I did a jaunt around the state, just a one-day thing to get us out of the Metro Phoenix madness. We soaked up some fine, Arizona-style Americano culture, not to mention huevos rancheros and meat-loaf sandwiches. In a thrift store I bought a copy of P.J. O'Rourke's How the Hell Did This Happen? because I figured that I'd want to re-read it in the upcoming year.

Then we cruised through Prescott on our way home. In the city square, on their famous Whiskey Row where cowboys whooped it up before the United States border crossed Arizona, there were protesters.

On one side some white-haired folks with slick, professionally printed signs declaring their support for Trump. On the other side were more grandparent-types, but their signs were arty, hand-drawn renderings of slogans like “Honk for Peace.” They were all smiling—tight, tense smiles.

Further on, some people in a truck were making their way down the street, planting an American flag ever few yards; apparently they were out to do it all the way across town. Maybe it was for the Fourth of July, which was still weeks away.

We managed to get out of there without starting a riot.

Now it is the Fourth of July. I hope everyone has a happy one.

Maybe as we thrash about deciding how we want to re-create the country for the next four years we can come up with something that isn't a bloody mess.

Ernest Hogan's lucha libre slapstick satire “PeaceCon” is available in Unfit Magazine Vol 3.