Syria Me

In the wake of the dreadful terrorist attack on Paris (which, I promise, I won’t mock till early 2016), the US reaction has been typical. We blame the most disenfranchised colored people du jour – the Syrian refugees. Blacks and Hispanics can all breathe a sigh of relief as we turn our collective hateful prejudice eastward.

We once again prove that our leaders are largely uneducated children when State officials say they’ll bar immigration. (If you guys actually wanted real power, you should have fought a little harder in the 1860s.) Meanwhile, GOP candidates rally to block the entrance of Syrian refugees into the US. I haven’t been following the election at all, but I know the name Jeb Bush in the same way a Roman from the 100s would have known the name “Caesar,” with, probably, a deep sigh and a healthy roll of the eyes. (Here we go again, Cloelius…)

I don’t really care about the plight of the Syrians…or anything, really. But as the refugees flounder hopelessly in our gently tilting world, I thought back to a conversation I had with my neighbor. The Syrian refugees are our greatest source of slave labor in nearly 200 years!

I was on the back porch of my posh multi-million dollar home, sipping rare cognac laced with the adrenal fluid harvested from Muslim children, when my neighbor came up with a brilliant idea. She was draped in a suede gown sewn from the flesh of Chinese people and looked quite comfortable in the soft, autumn light. She said, with a serious glint in her eye, “The end is coming for us, Nacho.”

I sipped at my cocktail and ruffled my fingers through the spiked hair of the Rwandan child who always crouched beside my chair, ready to spring to service if I needed more Pretzel Goldfish. “Oh?” I replied lazily.

She nodded, the silver-plated skull perched on her head wobbling slightly. “All of this can’t last.” She raised her arms to take in my back garden. Several Burmese workers who I had set to dig a hole and then refill it over and over again until I said stop froze momentarily, perhaps misinterpreting her movements. I hissed sharply at them and they resumed digging.

“We’ll be fine,” I said, “At least, until we die. And, as I have no children – “ I flicked the ear of the Rwandan child, who knew better than to flinch – “I have nothing to worry about.”

She shook her head. “No, no, Nacho. It’s going to happen soon. It’s coming. I feel it. We can’t maintain this for much longer.”

Mogron, head of my personal guard, couldn’t contain himself. He growled, “Then we will defeat whoever rises against us!”

I threw my crystal goblet to the ground and, in a rage, screamed, ”Be silent, Mogron!”

Mogron shivered and stepped back, the Burmese diggers tried to sink into their hole.

My neighbor smiled and flicked her long, feathery blonde hair over her shoulder. “I have an idea.”

She proceeded to outline her plan to start a commune of worthies who would all live off the grid in Pennsylvania. We would produce our own power, grow our own food, raise animals, and remove ourselves from the world like in that movie by the guy who couldn’t make a decent movie after his first movie was a hit.

I laughed at her. “Come on! I wouldn’t know what to do with a cornstalk if you raped me with it! And raising animals! I’ve never even touched a farm animal. I’ve never been closer than 20 feet to a farm animal. Horses are things I only see on TV.”

She shrugged. “Same here. But here’s the core of my idea: Syrian refugees.”

I cocked my head, curious.

She continued, “We submit a request to the government for, say, 20 Syrian refugees. We use them to work the farm, to deal with the animals, and to keep everything running.”

“So…slaves?”

“No!” She seemed to be appalled by this word, and I glanced at Houseboy 12’s remains, still hanging in the gibbet by my hyacinths.

She closed her eyes and gathered herself. “What we do is we create a currency.”

“We print money?”

“No, no. In exchange for their work on the farm, they are paid with food and board.”

“That’s slavery.”

“They’re not slaves if they’re free to leave at any time.”

“With no money or property, and with the status of their sponsorship held by us. Serfdom then.”

She shook her head sadly. “Nacho, you’re so linear-minded. These people are refugees. They want us to help them. They want this. Can you imagine how happy they’ll be? They get to come to Pennsylvania and work on a farm. No more bombs, no more explosions, no more terrorists. And, when the end comes, they’ll be under our benevolent protection.”

The more she explained it, the more the plan made sense to me. In fact, the day after the Paris attack, I ran into my neighbor and she stood by her proposal. She’s bought land in Pennsylvania and was currently paying dayworkers to build up the infrastructure. “Just imagine if we could get all that work done for free, and without any of these workplace restrictions. Did you know dayworkers have some protection there? It’s bizarre. Another sign of the apocalypse!”

With the IS threat to DC weighing heavily on me, I’ve started to pack up and get ready for a desperate flight to our commune in Pennsylvania. So I would like this article to stand as a petition to the governor of that fine state to allow a controlled immigration plan for the Syrian refugees. We will claim full responsibility and, if we suspect any of them of terrorism, we’ll simply melt them down to make candles and furniture. We need 20 to start with but, having seen pictures of the property, we may need as many as 150. We’ve purchased two cargo containers and converted them to dormitories, so the refugees will be safe and secure in terms of avoiding the elements.

I’m also going to need to handpick 17 female refugees for other services. Is it possible that we can get photographs of them? You can just snap these in the field and email them. And don’t do that thing fat women do where they take the shot at a weird angle so it’s just their face in the picture. I’ll need full body shots.

Thank you for your consideration.