BELL VIEW--Last week I went to Chicago to help my mom downsize her living situation. Her next-door neighbor kindly agreed to take a couple extra-large couches off our hands. Nice guy. As I helped him carry the couches across the expanse of lawn separating his house from my mom’s, he mentioned that he used to live in Southern California back in the 90’s.

“How’d you like it?” I asked.

“Oh – I liked it,” he said, “but I don’t like your governor.” My mom lives in what qualifies as Trump Country – so, when anything political comes up with the neighbors – I try my best to keep things light. I chuckled a bit when I said “I kinda like him.”

I mentioned that Jerry Brown – like any politician – has done some good and some bad. He could have been stronger on issues I’m passionate about, but – overall – I think he’s been good for the State of California. Like I said – I try to keep it light out in actual Trump Country.

“Well,” my mom’s neighbor said, “He’s got to do something about MS-13.”

MS-13, if you’re not familiar, is an international criminal gang that originated in Los Angeles in the 80’s. Most MS-13 members can trace their roots back to Central America – mostly El Salvador. East Hollywood – where LA politics first took hold of me – has one of the largest Salvadoran communities outside of El Salvador. So, MS-13 has a visible presence in East Hollywood.

I looked at my mom’s neighbor and chuckled again – the way you might chuckle at a child who told you he was afraid of the dark – and I said, “You know, MS-13 is actually inmy neighborhood, and I’m not afraid of them.”

I understand MS-13 has done some bad things. When I lived in East Hollywood, MS-13 gunned down a young man a block from my house. The day after the shooting, the gang tagged the corner to make sure the target audience got the message.

The target audience did not include me.

I would not be surprised to learn that members of MS-13 may, on occasion, have viewed me as an easy mark for a robbery. I don’t mean to make light of violent crime. But MS-13 almost never broke through to my particular reality during the time I spent in East Hollywood. And I was almost never a part of theirs. As a community activist, I regularly interacted with people in and around the gang, but those interactions never presented the possibility of my becoming a victim.

So, why should MS-13 concern my mother’s neighbor in an isolated community in the woody Southwest Suburbs of Chicago? MS-13 couldn’t find the place on a map.

Let’s see … who’s to blame for this. Yeah – it’s the President of the United States. The president and his enablers at Fox News regularly tell the portion of this country still listening to them that MS-13 marauds around the streets of America raping, murdering, vivisecting, and – yes! -- beheading people. Beheading regular folks in towns and cities across America.

The president also tells his fans that hordes of MS-13 gang members regularly flood over the border in caravans. Right-wing commentators tell Trump’s people that Democrats create sanctuary cities for the purpose of allowing MS-13 cossacks to rape and murder Americans. Why? Because they hate America and love MS-13.

I know this because I converse with these people and they tell me so. When they tell me that everyone in California is going broke through over-taxation and cowering in fear of roving bands of murderous immigrants, I remind them that I live here and fear neither the cops nor the crooks irrationally.

Why? Because I am a middle-aged, middle-class, white man and I ride a wave of privilege through American society that would make virtually anyone not like me feel like she won the lottery.

I am virtually invisible to threats from either the good guys or the bad guys. Everyone leaves me alone, all the time.

I’m not saying bad things can’t happen to me. They can and will. I’m not saying some men and some women of color don’t have it waaaaaaaaaaaaaay better than I do. Lots of them do.

But, if you’re a white guy and you see yourself as the biggest victim in the world you need to grow a pair. If you live in the leafy suburbs somewhere, you can take MS-13 off the list of things you need to be afraid of. M’kay?

Stop acting like a child. Be a man. Grow up. You think men built this country? Fine. We can debate that after you let go of your blankie. But stop tearing down the country because you’re afraid of the monster under your bed. The dark can be scary sometimes – but, really, it’s nothing to be afraid of.

Real danger surrounds us everywhere. Stop hiding from ghosts, grow up, and help the rest of us put the fire out in the kitchen.

(David Bell is a writer, attorney, former president of the East Hollywood Neighborhood Council and writes for CityWatch.)

-cw