“How soft your fields so green can whisper tales of gore of how we calmed the tides of war. We are your overlords.” From Immigrant Song, written by Jimmy Page and Robert Plant.

You might have heard about this. Then again, you might be ducking the news these days, and I can hardly blame you. Trigger warning: this story might make you want to go find a real trigger.

Here’s the story. Twenty-eight year-old British cartoonist Rebecca “R.E.” Burke was in Portland, Oregon on a four month backpacking trip across North America. She travelled up towards Vancouver in British Columbia for the Canadian portion of her trip but the border authorities in Canada said she didn’t have the right kind of visa and returned her to the United States.

At the border, United States I.C.E. agents, a branch of the American Nazi Party, declared her an illegal alien. She wasn’t an illegal before she hit Interstate 5 so I assume the gun-toting morons at I.C.E. mistook her for a Negro Muslim trafficking in brushes and pencils who just couldn’t be bothered to speak American. She has been locked up since February 26th.

According to The Daily Cartoonist, “Burke has asked for voluntary departure, but ‘the process of appearing in front of a judge as part of voluntary departure could be delayed because several dozen of the approximately 700 immigration judges had resigned or been fired by the Trump administration.’ Compounding her plight, her family cannot add money to her inmate account for her to buy essentials because of they are foreigners so they rely on American friends to deposit support money for her.”

Has anybody told President Trump we already won our wars, both of them, against the British crown? By the way, if not for the United Kingdom, America’s best-known neo-fascist wouldn’t be playing golf.

Note to the MAGAts: “North America” refers to a lot more than just President Rapist’s conquered turf. It also includes Antigua and Barbuda, Aruba, The Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Bermuda, Bonaire, The British Virgin Islands, Canada, Cayman Islands, Clipperton Island, Costa Rica, Cuba, Curaçao, Dominica, Dominican Republic, El Salvador, The Federal Dependencies of Venezuela, Greenland, Grenada, Guadeloupe, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Jamaica, Martinique, Mexico, Montserrat, Nicaragua, Nueva Esparta, Panama, Puerto Rico, Saba, San Andrés and Providencia, Saint Barthélemy, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Martin, Saint Pierre and Miquelon, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Sint Eustatius, Sint Maarten, Trinidad and Tobago, Turks and Caicos Islands, The United States, and The United States Virgin Islands. Together, we encircle the Gulf of Mexico, which is actually and legitimately called “The Gulf of Mexico.”

So Ms. Burke’s friends and relatives set up a GoFundMe page to raise money to cover legal costs, in-prison food (a situation exacerbated by her being a vegan) and get her the fuck out of this, in the oft-quoted words of Frank Zappa, “scab of a nation driven insane.” They wanted to raise at least $10,000.00, and I’m pleased to report that of this writing they have met and exceeded that goal.

But this is not enough. Trump and his blackshirts have unlimited resources and an axe to grind on the heads of those who are not native-born white Christian Nationalists, and they clearly prefer humans with penises. If this nightmare ever ends and they have money left over, they will be donating the overage to other groups in the northwest corner of this “land of the free.”

Of course, this isn’t just happening to cartoonists — the United States of America has been severely fucking over thousands of normal people as well, mostly brown and Black and others who do not present as Aryan. This ain’t your father’s United States any longer. It’s our approach to the Fourth Reich. Will our country ever revert back to its roots of freedom?

Probably not in my lifetime.

There are thousands of human beings in the United States legally who are being similarly persecuted by a xenophobic monster and his frightened, violent, grossly stupid goose-stepping votaries. I am singling out this particular case because I’ve got to start somewhere and R.E. Burke is one of our own.

“So now you’d better stop and rebuild all your ruins, for peace and trust can win the day, despite of all your losing.” Ibid.

(Special thanks to the wonderful folks at The Daily Cartoonist for, well, for existing and from whence the author procured this week’s featured logo.)