Statue of limitations

I’ve been wondering about the Statue of Liberty lately.

It’s been a while since I’ve been in school so I don’t know if this happens anymore, but we used to be taught in civics and/or history classes that the United States is a melting pot. Not the Soylent Green kind of melting pot, but a nation of many races and creeds all coming together in a mixing bowl and oozing into each other.

Or something like that. It sounded like a horror movie, but the idea was that we should all get along and work together. It seemed like a nice idea — if you can get past the melting image.

I don’t have to tell you that the current federal government does not want to melt. I don’t need to summarize recent news for you. It’s too depressing.

And now I’m worried about Lady Liberty. What is the Trump administration going to do with her?

Our president, as you’ve probably noticed, likes to put his name on things and/or censor cultural messages so none of us need to feel guilty about anything.

Yet here we have this giant woman — clearly a DEI hire — standing outside the nation’s largest city. She’s from France, has no proof of citizenship and bears a sign inviting huddled masses and the homeless to waltz on into the country.

There’s no way Trump and his gang can stand for this. What will they do?

Yes, they could send in a bunch of masked ICE construction workers to arrest her and ship her to a detention center or maybe a rock pile in El Salvador. Picture the torch zip-tied to the book.

But that won’t happen. That hunk of rock is worth some serious money and Trump isn’t going to let that go.

Rechiseling may seem like an option. How hard could it be to put some pants on her, add a beard and reshape the torch into a hammer? Instead of a welcoming woman, we’d have a God of Thunder warning foreigners to stay away.

But that won’t happen either. The statue would be trans and you know how those guys feel about that. And Pete Hegseth would object to the beard.

What I’m afraid we’re going to see is a Melania hat on top of the crown and a new poem to replace the boring one that’s there now.

Did you know there’s an entire sonnet on the statue’s plaque? It’s not just the “huddled masses yearning to be free” line. There are a whole bunch of other words. No MAGA person is going to stand for that.

What will replace it, obviously, is a limerick. It will be something like this:

“Huddled masses please don’t come

“It matters not where you’re from

“It costs a million to stay

“Then we’ll say you’re OK

“With money, you’re not a bum.”

Schoolchildren will have to memorize this.

SINCERITY

OK, I know I’m being cynical, but it’s hard not to be these days.

Note the recent news reports that billionaires have started a $35 million campaign against a proposed billionaire wealth tax in California. Part of that money is going to initiatives to make housing more affordable and billionaires more lovable.

That’s good, I guess. Why didn’t those guys think of this before?

I can’t help but noticing that $35 million is a little less than the $900 million or so per billionaire that the wealth tax would impose.

But maybe we should take what we can get.