Going first class on coach

Strange as it may seem, most indigenous people travel first class via our 22 year old airline “US Citizenship” but find out at cruising level that it’s still coach. We can’t get the same food (though we’ve paid for it) like our next door neighbor. We hear rumblings in the fist class cabin that pilots, stewardesses and even passengers are conspiring to deny paid for services for fear that we resemble descendants from planet Mars.

The triad (pilots, stewardesses and first class passengers) impose their own form of harassment insisting that we show them our passports. When they view it, they’d dish out condescending racist remarks of “Oh, you’re US Citizens, too!” Then they ask such stupid questions like “where did you get your passport?” At international airports (Honolulu, LA. and Seattle), customs officials turn racist remarks up a notch with queries like “how long are you going to stay in the US mainland?”

We walk out of these situations fuming with smoke protesting whether our US Citizenship has any meaning to the bunch of ignoramus who double up on stupidity. In the first instance, when you check into an airline’s counter, ticket agents ask for your passport. Next, when they’re not sure about your passport because you have a strange gift from Him that makes you look strangely suspicious, i.e., someone who hails from the Middle East or some Muslim country, they insist to see your passport once more. The irony: it’s the same airline staff who must have forgotten protocol as they show-off their unearned authority of superficial superiority. Our detractors?

Next, you’re quizzed to death by customs officials whose primary role is limited to contraband checks like drugs, plants and prohibited meat products. Is it any of their business to find out my length of stay when in fact I’m a US Citizen? Perhaps they just ask stupid questions in passing for they have also parked their common sense behind their customs badge. What lousy godly attitude that instantly kills a pleasant family vacation.

I recall a return trip home from Washington right after the New York Trade Center was bombed. I was accosted by federal agents who asked to see my passport. I proudly showed them thinking it should answer any and all questions. The agent asked where was I going. Told him “home”. Puzzled: “Isn’t this home?” Two things came to mind: 1). I must suspiciously look like Bin Laden’s relative. 2). Their orientation of being US Citizens is limited to the contiguous land mass of the US. Most US mainlanders don’t even know we exist. Take for instance, students demonstrating in front of Gap Inc’s. stores in San Francisco. They don’t even know where the Mariana Islands is located. But then their demonstrating is being bankrolled (when not in class) by the US Textile Labor Unions.

But I’ve gotten accustomed to being a Third Class US Citizen on a document that is supposed to guarantee justice and equality only to find out that such grand concepts are oceans apart from what we were taught in high school. It often entails strange trips to the battle front to protect your rights as a citizen. At no time in our 22 history as a US possession is this fight more prevalent than today–plans for a federal takeover of these isles–which included, among other invasions, private investigations bankrolled by the US Department of Interior to scrounge up dirt so they could kick it up against our face.

Be that as it may, I look toward our more sober national policymakers for their pearl of wisdom in protecting our rights to self-government over liberal views that more government is good government. Sad to say, but President Clinton can’t be trusted as our commander-in-chief though he ranks a sterling number one as our commander-in-mischief! If he and his Pinto Boys disagree, a quick glimpse into his economic policy (uneven application) tells it all. And we’re supposed to be US Citizens? Yeap! It’s going first class in coach!