Civil War

It's Monday afternoon at around 3.30. Fernando had just finished grinding some coffee beans and getting a pot of coffee percolating in the back room when a regular customer enters the store. As he begins browsing the new release rack, Fernando greets him.

“What's this Game of Death?” he asks once Fernando has closed the distance somewhat.

“Oh, that's one of Wesley Snipes' last movies before his, ah, unfortunate legal troubles,” Fernando responds.

“Legal troubles? What happened?”

“He decided to not pay his taxes for a couple of years and Uncle Sam paid him a visit.”

“That's bullshit. You don't see Uncle Sam doing anything to all the Mexicans who don't pay taxes.”

Whoa. Had Fernando known his innocuous attempt at making conversation would lead to a misguided political screed, he would have omitted the part about legal troubles.

And the man continues: “You know that's all they do? They come here, take all the jobs, them and the Indians (Fernando assumes he meant the ones from the Indian subcontinent and not the ones seven miles down the road), and they never pay any taxes and after ten, twelve years they pick up and go home and we don't see a cent.”

“Well, they do pay sales taxes,” Fernando cautiously states. He doesn't want to too thoroughly dismantle the talking-points-laden tirade because people usually get finicky and offended when it's pointed out they're wrong, and finicky and offended people run full-tilt down a death-spiral of stupidity..

“Those don't matter. They don't pay income tax. And they get to go to school for free. Some Indian comes over here and gets paid by the gover—by our tax dollars to go to school to be a doctor, but if you,” and here he points at Fernando's chest, “want to go to school to be an accountant you're on your own!”

Fernando isn't sure what he can say in response that doesn't involve being relentless and forever losing, at minimum, one customer to a thorough debunking of the words that had just been said. Apparently this silence is taken as agreement on Fernando's part because the man continues, “What we need is a civil war, something to get rid of all the mooches once and for all.”

“That's just the way things go,” Fernando finally says, hoping to sound simultaneously diplomatic and finished with this conversation.

Thankfully, the man gets the hint and leaves.