“Who can we get on the case?… Someone to put you in place.”

A♦

 

 

 

For those readers that have been paying attention, it should be noticed that I’ve reserved the Ace cards for tidbits regarding myself, personally.

 

To continue that particular trend, I’ll share some facts regarding my past with INS/DHS.

 

To whit, although I was fired for “incompetence”, here are the top three things I created/did during my near decade service with my country’s government.

 

1} I wrote a citizenship test that caught applicants trying to cheat their way past the process. Understand that if an applicant has been a “green card” [I-551] holder for ≥ 20 years, then the requirement to speak English is officially waived. This allows them to have translator present during the exam. Now, I quickly realized the translator would feed the applicant answers or outright lie for them, claiming they’d given the correct answer when they did not. Now, there were – at the time – a pool of 100 questions, of which I was permitted to choose only 10. Thus, to beat the cheats, I asked questions that had only English names as answers. I failed so many this way, my bosses told me to stop failing them if they were fed less than three answers.

 

2} When swearing in applicants at the beginning of the process, I gave directions with words but remained perfectly still. Few people realize just how much body language is the primary means of exchanging information. I failed innumerable applicants unable to speak English (and not exempt the requirement) simply by asking “Raise your right hand” prior to my doing so. So many, in fact, that my first-line supervisor stole the technique to speed through his interviews.

 

3} Prior to those techniques, I was a “badge and gun” officer that briefly questioned those entering the USA via aircraft. Bosses and lawyers would pick apart reasons we front-line officers had for stopping them. So, adapting my training to the pedanticism, I invented the phrase “stress-indicative, non-verbal communication” (to laymen, this means “the person in question was acting suspicious”). Thus, giving bullet-proof articulation to my memos. Within a month, all the dedicated officers at my duty station adopted it.

 

 

 

While this isn’t a technique, I feel I should mention:

 

Officers would look forward to me questioning suspects.

 

Why?

 

Because, far more often than not, I’d catch a good one.

 

In fact, one fellow officer [a former border patrol agent] used to get a shit-eating grin on his face when he’d see me and say:

 

“Alright! [Spadille], is here! Time for [an illegal] to get sent home!”

 

 

 

So for all of those claiming to defend Western civilization:

 

I did.

 

As long as they let me.

 

 

A♦

13 Responses to ““Who can we get on the case?… Someone to put you in place.””

  1. Competence is incompetence in the world of government sinecure.

    If more people did their own jobs – well – the number of “required” personnel would plummet; there’d be a culling of government workers that would put the Great Purge to shame. Taxpayer expenses would follow suit.

    Can’t have that now, can we…

  2. ‘ Few people realize just how much body language is the primary means of exchanging information.’

    Which is getting more lost the more we dive into the internet and smartphones.

    Shoot if people just knew how strong eye contact can tell you a world of information…they’d do it more.

    • Man, is that ever true – I grow more and more disenchanted with modern communications technology.

      It can be great for some things, sure, but it certainly has created some deep trenches between people, and turned social interaction into a sort of no-man’s-land

    • Earl,

      Agreed 100%

      Very good to see you again, by the way.

      Hope you’ve been – and remain – well,

      A♠

  3. A♠,

    You were metaphorically stabbed in the back. But you spared some of your fellow Americans from being stabbed for real. For what it’s worth sir, well done.

    Western civilization is under attack from within. The arrow in your back came from inside the city.

    As painful as your odyssey has been imagine for a moment if you hadn’t been fired. Standing watch on the walls for another decade, looking down upon open gates with “Welcome” mats in three languages and spotlights shining on them.

    And not being able to do anything about it. You might not still be among us anymore.

    These are the things we are wrestling with now. How do we neutralize the poison that was intravenously fed into our world? First for ourselves, and then for the wider society?

    I’m encouraged by the uprising we’re seeing now. I think we will have a role to play.

    Phineas stopped the plague among the Israelites by gathering his priests and wading into the bacchanal with swords and spears. Works for me, man.

    Best, JD

  4. 1. Please write done, all of your techniques and tricks some day. I’d pay to know them for when I create my own country to leave for posterity after the foundations of the country were laid and we had the luxury to be sought after as a refuge from the ‘modern’ world.

    2. Being able to read body language and facial expressions is so crucial for understanding what people mean. It’s often why when a young man and a woman, foreigners to one another, can communicate well enough even if both of them can only speak broken sentences in one another’s language.

    3. As you’re intimating and outright saying at times, getting fired from the government now is more a badge of honor than anything. I only wish that you could give pragmatic wisdom from the future to your younger, idealistic (though not necessarily naive) self so you can seen the writing on the wall and given yourself a Golden parachute rather than kicked out the door of the plane with rags instead.

    4 I really enjoy these posts about yourself – I hope you keep them up as much as you are able (privacy comes first, of course).

    Posts like these, along with your tendency to reply to almost all comments on your blog are nice reminders that I’m reading a blog written by a fellow human. Too often I read blogs that were written by robots, programmed to send a message just because or because they had [future] eBooks to $ell me.

    All my best,

    Wald

    • Wald,

      “I only wish that you could give pragmatic wisdom from the future to your younger, idealistic (though not necessarily naive) self so you can seen the writing on the wall and given yourself a Golden parachute rather than kicked out the door of the plane with rags instead.”

      Very well said.

      I appreciate both the sentiment and the phrasing, immensely.

      All the best to you & yours,

      A♠

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