ArcaMax

I knew a guy once, clerical type guy, had a stroke, couldn't work anymore. He was a few years shy of retirement age, so he needed to get himself on disability and the health insurance the state provides for people in his situation.

He lived alone, had worked since he was old enough to work and was able to walk unsteadily and live alone after the stroke. It was maybe 20 years ago.

Even in the days before mass DOGE firings, it took a while to get the disability and the health insurance going, and he and I were having a beer and he was telling me about the long process he was enduring to get his health insurance and finances straightened out.

"If I was an illegal immigrant, I'm sure I'd get it right away," he said. "They give those people everything. I was born in this country, and I gotta jump through hoops."

I was good friends with him, and I'd never had a political discussion with the guy. We talked about our jobs or some minor car trouble we were having and sometimes about women.

We would have been a very boring podcast unless you enjoy long periods of silence and then a middle-aged man's voice starting a story with, "I had this girlfriend in high school ... "

But I looked in his eyes that day and saw the pinpoints of anger in the pupils and heard his voice rise when he said "illegal immigrant," and I knew, and I didn't think less of him.

There was something he couldn't get, something he needed, wanted and deserved, here in America, where his family had come prior to 1800, and he didn't have any proof that illegals were getting what he couldn't.

He got straightened out. I never heard him mention any kind of immigration again.

We went back to having conversations that started with one of us saying, "You like that new Chinese buffet over by there by the auto parts store?"

But I'd seen him mad, and the whole country is mad like that now.

So, I see the disputed deportation of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, and I think of my angry friend, and, as always, I think like the bartender's kid I used to be.

Garcia came to America illegally. He got a little straightened out on that, but not all the way. Maybe he would have.

At the time of his arrest and deportation, he was in a union sheet metal worker apprentice program, which is a very good thing. If you're laboring on construction sites, becoming a union sheet metal guy is a boost up that'll straighten you out right away, and for good.

That's a big deal, a union apprenticeship program. Decent wage. Good health insurance. Seniority rights. Pension.

So, if you don't have that, even if you never even tried for that, and you see Abrego Garcia came to the country illegally, you say, "What the hell. How'd he get that? I don't have that, and I was born here."

And for that you get called a bigot.

It's impossible to tell people not to be mad when they're already mad. Try it with your wife sometime.

Down here at the dollar store end of the economy, things are shaky, and that makes a lot of us mad about the things we don't have or have but may not be able to keep.

To find out more about Marc Dion, and read words by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit www.creators.com. Dion's latest book, a collection of his best columns, is called "Mean Old Liberal." It is available in paperback from Amazon.com, and for Nook, Kindle and iBooks.