Funny the associations the mind can make when it wanders.

As this is written, I am listening to the sound of feet stomping around on my roof. No, this is not the patter of tiny reindeer, but rather, the clomping and hammering of a crew of roofers. Our 135-year-old slate had given up the ghost, and if we want to have insurance, well, the slate had to go over the rainbow bridge, or whatever might be the slate equivalent.

I’m not here to write about slate, but, unbidden, the first association crossed my mind.

Most of this very hard-working crew are of the “brown” people ethnicity we heard so much about in the recent election, many of whom are marked for deportation according to our president-elect. While I don’t generally believe much of what you-know-who says, over the years I have come to accept he often makes good on his threats.

Then I wondered what the effect would be of such a reverse Exodus. Instead of Charlton Heston and the Israelites heading to the Promised Land, millions among us are slated (no pun intended) to be escorted from what has been their promised land and booted unceremoniously back to their place of birth. That’s assuming their place of birth is willing to take them in, a small but not insignificant detail which has not been part of the discussion. If we have the right to control our borders, which we undoubtedly have, so too have those nation states we cavalierly assume will run the risk of having their own economies, fragile as they may be, upended by the influx of this reverse flow.

Then came the second association.

In a recent issue of this award-winning newspaper, there was the headline “Ripple Effect” with the sub-head “Business Interests: Deportations could upend Indiana’s economy.” You might want to burrow into your Google machine, or better yet, buy a subscription to this award-winning newspaper while it’s still here, because the numbers are significant.

Granted, the source of the numbers is the American Immigration Council, which sounds like a cabal of left-wing liberal extremists, not to mention elitists. But for the sake of argument, they estimate there are 104,500 undocumented immigrants in our beloved state, 7,100 of whom are also entrepreneurs providing goods and services to the rest of us. These folks have household incomes totaling $3.1billion with total spending power of $2.4 billion, much of which is going to be spent in local economies around the state. The same group is estimated to contribute $247.3 million in state and local taxes, and a whopping $400.3 million in federal taxes.

For the mathematically inclined, according to numbers felt good enough to be printed on the front page of our local award-winning newspaper, the taxes alone amount to a grand total of $647.6 million dollars – not bad for a bunch of so-called “rapists and murderers” by any measure, and a number the absence of which would be felt, and probably would have to be replaced from somewhere, most likely from the wallets of those of us who remain after the great departure.

Remember, the folks whose panties are currently in a bunch over the possibility of losing these workers are the same business interests who a few weeks ago were trumpeting the need for, well, you-know-who.

Which brought me to my third association.

There is, of course, another side to almost everything. In a recent “Sound Off” column appearing in our award-winning journal, the author rhapsodized about the trouncing you-know-who gave Kamala Harris. You-know-who won with about 50 percent of the total vote and less than a 2 percent margin over his opponent (about 2.5 million votes out of a total of about 155 million cast). Not exactly a trouncing (except in an archaic Electoral College), but nevertheless a clear victory that must be admitted.

It should also be remembered that the number of votes cast for Harris, coupled with the fewer votes cast in 2024 than in 2020, means that a majority of eligible voters did not vote for you-know-who. Talk of a mandate should probably be taken with several grains of salt. A clear win certainly, a mandate? That remains to be seen.

Which brought me to my fourth association.

Since the infamous (to some) 2020 election, America has been force-fed a constant stream of inflammatory rhetoric about what was going to happen in 2024 as the result of a corrupt and quasi-criminal election system. Strangely enough, not a peep has been heard about this crisis since the election. Apparently winning cures all. It also makes you wonder if all the dire predictions were all froth and no beer in the first place. Just saying.

Which brought me to my fifth association.

The author of the Sound Off column piously recites that entering the promised land illegally is a crime, therefore, as the Red Queen said, “off with their heads!” Ironically, this call to action appears next to an editorial cartoon from the Chattanooga Times Free Press depicting a gentleman looking a lot like you-know-who is holding a book titled “Law” (right side up this time) and laughing uproariously. Pot calling the kettle black perhaps?

Rather than incurring the cost of mass deportations, and the hit they will inflict on our local, state, and national economies, might it make more sense to first seal the southern border, which is a policy decision the president-elect has every right to make, subject to congressional and judicial clean bills of health that would be expected from a Congress and Supreme Court controlled by you-know-who. If it takes a wall, build the wall, but don’t expect anyone else to pay for it other than the good old American taxpayer.

And what about the millions of undocumented immigrants who are embedded in our society and contribute significantly to its strength and success? When the border is sealed to the new administration’s satisfaction, why not install a path to citizenship for those already here? Make it tough. Make it so that, after extending a due process procedure, those really found to be murderers and rapists (which is certainly a tiny minority by anyone’s standards, despite being you-know-who’s bete noire), then deport or incarcerate them in at least more manageable numbers.

Admittedly, for those who got in under the wire, it’s like being awarded one of Willie Wonka’s “golden tickets,” but that might be a preferable outcome rather than risking the destruction of the chocolate factory itself.