I have told the story before about how, in the days after 9/11, I called up an acquaintance who worked at the Pentagon to see how I could volunteer for the National Guard or similar, to patrol airports or do something equivalent that would involve protecting something or someone.
As it happened, he was busy brushing concrete dust from his hair, in a manner of speaking, and he told me a) that if the ragheads attacked the North Side of Chicago, I’d get a call from him, and b) to fuck off and stop bothering him because he had better things to do than deal with a cranky overweight old fart who couldn’t patrol a living room without frequent rest stops. (I was 47 years old at the time.)
I mention this tale of woe only because of this development:
DHS Secretary Kristi Noem announced that Immigration and Customs Enforcement is now waiving age limits for new applicants “so even more patriots will qualify to join ICE in its mission to arrest murderers, pedophiles, gang members, rapists, and other criminal illegal aliens from America’s streets.”
Well, even though I’m now a sprightly youngster of 70 — soon to be 71 — that magic phrase “waiving age limits” was like a spur to my civic consciousness, and I thought, “Why the hell not?”
Surely I could do something for the cause, even if it was just working a desk or driving a vehicle, thus freeing up some younger guy to perform, shall we say, more energetic activities?
Alas. The very next statement from the lovely Kristi ended that little dream:
“All ICE law enforcement recruits will be required to go through medical screening, drug screening, and complete a physical fitness test.”
Ah, shit. Medical screening: no problem. My doctor has assured me that I am, if anything, healthier than I’ve been in over a decade. Drug screening: forget that, unless a positive test for BP meds or statins is a disqualifier, I’m good to go.
But a physical fitness test? Aw, shit. No way will I get through that, because even though I’ve lost considerable weight (thankee Ozempic), I doubt whether I could do more than a few pushups, and as for running some distance longer than, say, running to catch a bus to the pub, I’m screwed.
As the saying goes: the spirit may be willing, but the flesh is weak — in my case, beyond redemption.
I think I’ll go to the range.
“Surely I could do something for the cause…..”
Isn’t there a box on the Form 1040 that lets you volunteer?
.
Fifteen years ago I had a friend that went through basic training at the FBI Academy in his quest to become an agent. He was blazing through all the physical fitness tests. Run X distance in Y time or less.. check. Do Z sit-ups… check. Complete a certain number of pull-ups… check. Then came the push-ups.
He could easily do the number of push-ups, but his instructors kept not counting scores of them because of his “bad form”. His back wasn’t straight enough, or he didn’t dip down low enough. He told me that no matter what he did, he could never complete the number of push-ups they wanted in the allotted time because they only counted a fraction of them.
I told him that if I had a 6’7″ white male candidate that didn’t speak Arabic and looked like every other proto-typical white male agent already in the ranks; and if I wanted to hire someone different who maybe wasn’t as qualified (what we now call DEI hires), I’d find some test with very subjective scoring and use that to drum them out in favor of other candidates.
He didn’t like my analysis or necessarily agree with it, but knowing him, his intellect, his mind-set, and his physical fitness, it’s the only thing that makes sense to me.
Whatever happened to “If you run, you’ll just die tired.”
These bastards are invading alien scum, they should die seeing their insides exploding out of their chest like they’re in an “Alien” movie.
Old guys with marksmanship skills should be valued for their ability to eradicate the scum.
I was watching some of the boats coming across the channel from France to England and thought, “This is not migration, this is a straight up invasion.” If the Limey’s of today were the Limey’s of yesteryear the RN would be on the channel, machine gunning them.
Maybe the Nazi’s or the Imperial German Army should have shouted “allah ackbar” (Capitalization deliberately omitted) and they could have easily made their way in.