[Scam Likely]

I've been thinking about my Dad a lot lately.

He was born in the Netherlands. Saw the ugliness of World War II as a young teenager. Saw the futility of colonialism while serving in the Dutch army in Indonesia after the war.

He, his brother, and parents immigrated to the United States in 1950. They worked hard to form a new life here and, legally, to become citizens of the United States.

As much as he loved living here, he didn't have on any blinders. He told me on more than one occasion that the United States is a wonderful place to live unless you're poor, then it becomes one of the worst places on the planet because of how little we care for those in need.

Dad died in 2000. And as I've watched what's gone on in our country over the past year plus, I'm kind of glad he didn't live to see such times.

He learned English but maintained a Dutch accent. He worked as a bricklayer out in the weather, so his skin was tanned and reddened by a lot of exposure to sun and wind.

I'm convinced those facts alone would have made him a target of Immigration and Customs Enforcement had they been in Idaho in any strength and pestered construction sites like I've seen them do in the news.

He, a legal citizen of the United States, would very likely have been harassed and bothered, maybe arrested.

I know many people like this. People who've come into the country "the right way," who'd automatically be suspect. And possibly exposed to jail, violence, and worse if they -- or we who know them -- would try to tell The Man otherwise.

So tonight I got a call. Two, actually. Both from a cell number that were flagged as "Scam Likely:"

The first call I ignored, because scam likely. But when they called back, I figured "What the hell."

The call was an invitation to attend a virtual town hall going on RIGHT NOW during COMMUTE TIME, as you can see by the timestamp on my screenshot from Mike Simpson, our representative in the House.

So I jumped on it. I wanted to see what would happen. And I figured since there'd been no heads up about the town hall -- I am subscribed to his newsletter and saw nothing about it in the letter I got over the weekend.

The *3*3 you can see are two attempts -- the last one successful -- I made to indicate I had a question I wanted to ask. I had little faith that I'd actually be invited to ask a question, but I was. I told them it was to ask Rep. Simpson whether he supported an independent investigation into ICE activities, particularly in Minnesota, as our Senator Mike Crapo and Sen. John Curtis of Utah indicated they were in favor of, just today.

They fielded five or six questions before pulling the plug, with only the last caller asking a question that was contrary to the line Simpson has already shown he's been toeing.

Yeah. They filtered the questions they wanted to answer and pretty much answered only the questions that already fir their preconceived narrative, and now they can report that they "held a town hall" and "heard a lot from constituents" who think everything is A-OK in Washington, DC.

When we lived in Rexburg, a member of our ward ran for and won a seat in the state legislature. As I recall, he served one term and came back with his idealism for participatory government, learned from a father who had also served on the state level, kind of squashed because even back then in the 1900s it was hard to get anything done that wasn't already neato and popular with the cool kids in Boise.

So what I saw was this, writ large, controlled and moderated to make it seem like everything's OK at home for Representative Simpson, who can feel good that he held a town hall and only heard from one malcontent.

Yes, it seems that government continues to seem, and that's about it.