September 2021
John Smith was a true patriot. He knew that the United States of America is the greatest place on Earth. “I am lucky to be born here,” he was thinking. “My country guarantees me personal freedom, and I am ready to fight for that freedom.” Even more, he was ready to die fighting for that freedom. Other countries were not so fortunate. For example, in Europe and in Canada everybody must have a medical insurance, whether they like it or not. Also, in those countries motorcyclists must wear helmets. To John, those examples represented a clear interference into the lives of its citizens. But John also believed that USA is a country of white people, and the increasing influx of coloured immigrants worried him. Even worse, he read that sometimes round the year 2045 whites will become a minority in his own country. John was prepared to do something about that.
But all those patriotic intentions had to wait. John have just finished the high school, and since there was a great demand for truck drivers, he got himself a job of driving a truck for a moving company. Moving furniture requires two people, so John got a helper. They got along OK, crisscrossing the country, moving American families, and enjoying the freedom of the road. John also wanted to have his own family, to be like the people they were moving. So, he married his high school sweetheart Mary, made her pregnant and became a father. All was well until his helper found a better job and quit. John needed somebody else, and to his disgust the boss gave him a Mexican, most likely an illegal immigrant at that.
“I am not going to work with no stinking Mexican!” shouted John angrily in his boss’s office.
“I have nobody else. Take it or leave it. But if you want to continue working here, you must be amenable to him.”
John tried to be amenable to the Mexican but found it difficult. He hated him and had a hard time to suppress his anger. Once, in a spur of a fury, he pushed him out of the truck, the Mexican fell and broke his arm. The boss had to call the ambulance and then he turned to John and said: “You are fired.”
When John came home with the news, Mary also had something to say.
“You are so stupid with your racism. What are we going to do now? Where are we going to get the money? With your reputation for violence, nobody is going to hire you now.”
John did find a job driving a small delivery track. There was no helper needed, John did all the loading and unloading himself. It was a hard, poorly played work, but better than nothing. John was spending long hours by himself and had a lot of time to think about the way his life was going. He lived in the best country in the world but didn’t seem to benefit from it. Whose fault was it? Surely not his own, he was the true, white American, born in this country. The immigrants were outsiders who didn’t belong here, bringing with them their own habits and customs, destroying the American way of life. That must be stopped, and John was ready to help in stopping it.
He wasn’t the only one who felt that way. There were plenty of people who agreed with him, and John had no problem to join various anti-immigrant groups.
“Stop hanging out with those violent people. You will get yourself into a real trouble!” Mary warned him, but John wouldn’t listen. Unfortunately, Mary was right. One of those anti-immigrant demonstrations got out of hand and turned out violent. Shots were fired, there were injuries, police arrested the participants and investigated what had happened. Somebody made a video which showed John beating someone and firing a gun. This was a criminal offence and John was charged with a hate crime and with unlawful discharge of a firearm. Then the police found out that there were previous cases of his violent behaviour and John was looking at several years in jail. Finally, with a considerable help of his defence lawyer and with a lenient judge, he ended up with one year of prison sentence.
“I warned you and you didn’t listen,” was the first what Mary said when she visited him in jail.
“It wasn’t my fault, they provoked me.”
“It was your fault and I have enough of you and of your violence. I want a divorce.” And that’s exactly what she did, claiming John’s violent nature as the cause of the marriage breakdown.
The year in jail passed slowly. Again, John had plenty of time to think about his life. To the old question: “Whose fault was it?” came a new one: “Was the United States of America the greatest country in the world?” John wasn’t so sure anymore. Then, when he got out of jail, a new, more practical, question appeared: “What now?” Nobody wanted to employ a person with a criminal record, and John stayed unemployed for fair bit of time. At the end he found a job as a helper at a farm, working with, out of all people, Mexican immigrants. But this time he couldn’t harass them, there were many of them, and he was alone. The Mexicans tried to be friendly, they talk to him in broken English, but when he didn’t respond, they left him alone.
John was alone in more than one way. Mary and the kid moved out of their apartment and didn’t leave the new address. To be honest, John wasn’t even interested. He felt as a true victim, a defeated soldier who fought against the foreign invasion. But then something else happened. A severe, deadly epidemics spread out, people were dying, and everybody was ordered to wear a face mask to slow down the transmission of the disease. For John, that was the last strew. Where was his personal freedom? Who could order him what he must or must not wear? And again, there were many people who felt the same way. There were anti-mask demonstrations where the participants formed large groups and, of cause, wearing no masks. For a brief time, John didn’t feel lonely anymore, he was part of a group, but then he started to have problems with breathing. It was getting worse, and he had to go to the hospital. There they put him to bed and attached an oxygen mask to his face, but it didn’t help. In fact, he stopped breathing altogether and his wish came true. He died defending his personal freedom.