There she was standing near the corner of Superior Street and 60th Avenue East in Duluth, right where the usual gang of fellow protestors lined up one day a week with their signs and positive attitudes.

It was a recent Saturday and I instinctively honked my horn in support as I approached. She was dressed in red, white and blue leggings and a red cap, holding a big bright sign that said “THANKYOU ICE” with red, white and blue hearts all over it and…

What the hell. I couldn’t take back my honk as I drove past and across the Lester River bridge. She was wearing a MAGA hat.

What the hell.

My mind sputtered a bit before I formed a plan as I pulled over and waited for traffic so I could turn around. When I pulled past her with a clenched face all I could yell out the open window was “bad, bad, that’s bad.”

So much for a smart response, if not a true one.

ICE is bad. People who think rounding up immigrants and citizens is a good idea are bad. Congress that can’t come up with a plan for a safe and sane immigration system is bad. We as a nation are in a bad place.

All I could think was here was another lost soul in America, a victim of the thought herders that are determining the direction of the country at this perilous time, a time of persecution, of war, of damaging misinformation that seems to be guiding the soul of the nation at this point.

Whew. I had to pull over again and get a grip. When I run into people who seem to have lost their way I find a certain empathy for their seeming aptitude to be schmoozed, bamboozled and lied to. I feel sorry for their gullibility.

We now have a pillow salesman running for governor and a former NFL sideline reporter running for the senate. When I say reporter I don’t mean a journalist kind of reporter, I mean an NFL sideline reporter who asks softball questions such as “You just scored the big touchdown, how does it feel?” Or, “You just limped off the field, how serious is the injury?”

That kind of reporter.

In the meantime we have people who stand on the corner dressed like a flag supporting an agency whose main concern is hitting the numbers, imprisoning those detained and killing a few innocent citizens all in the name of freedom.

The recent effort to stop Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for entire groups of people such as the Haitians in order to hit those numbers is an affront to the meaning of America.

Yep, there are 350,000 of those Haitian folks that ICE can round up now that the Supreme Court has allowed the government to deport people protected by TPS until the constitutional questions about the program can be determined.

Years ago I bought a drink for a Haitian fellow at the Fisherman’s Bar in Naknek, Alaska. He was there working in a cannery after a devastating earthquake and then a hurricane hit the island. Nevermind the trauma of gangs and their own government. He was a working stiff just trying to make it. Who knows where the guy is today.

The actual number of people affected by the decision number nearly a million and include folks from places like Ukraine, Venezuela and Syria, in addition to Haiti.

Now the federal government is buying a former private prison in southern Minnesota to house the increase in detainees, or deportees, as Woody Guthrie sang about back in the 1930s.

I will reiterate that undocumented immigrants and those seeking asylum are not facing criminal charges. To be undocumented is a civil offense. Those unlucky people can’t be housed in prisons but a detainment center might not be much better when you know your likely next step is deportation.

So there was the little ICE lady, free as a bird to showcase her feelings about people being arrested, locked up and deported.

Bad, bad, that’s bad.

Not much of a smart response but true. The soul of the nation, dressed up like a flag with a stupid hollow sign, hangs in the balance.