Journal of the Plague Years

June 22, 2018

Although Trump has signed an Executive Order pausing the forcible separation of immigrant children from their parents at the border, the reality is that this “new” policy is barely better than the one that it replaced. The order provides that families will be detained together, potentially indefinitely, setting it on a collision course with existing federal law which requires that undocumented minors be released from detention after 20 days.  Trump is looking to have that requirement waived by the courts or overruled by statute – to allow indefinite detention of minors.  Distaff Goebbels, Kirstjen Nielsen, privately threatened Congress that family separations would resume if they failed to pass such legislation (Source:  “Schiff:  Nielsen privately said family separations could resume,” by John Bowden, TheHill.com, 6/21/18). Continue reading “The architecture of genocide”

June 19, 2018

There have always been two Americas.  One is the America of the ideals expressed in our Declaration of Independence.  This is the America of the fairy tale we tell ourselves that what brings us together as a nation is a shared commitment to democratic principles like equality for all people and respect for the Rule of Law.  This America imagines itself as a country in which all cultures and colors are subsumed in a glorious melting pot of E Pluribus Unum.

The other America is the one where freedom for some required the enslavement of others.  It is one where the phrase, “all men are created equal,” meant only men, and only white ones.  One where the exclusion of people of color from real citizenship was enforced first at the end of a whip, then at the end of a rope and now at the end of a gun.  In this America, de jure second class citizenship for people of color was only eradicated after a bloody Civil War and an ensuing century of violent terrorism.  It is a country where even the modest victory of being able to sit at the same lunch counter, attend the same school, or vote, was met with a fierce backlash.

Continue reading “American Nightmare”

June 16, 2018

The strongest sign yet that our dying democracy still has a pulse came with Judge Amy Berman Jackson’s decision yesterday to revoke Paul Manafort’s bail and send him to jail. Her decision was precipitated by Manafort’s indictment on witness tampering charges while he was out on bail awaiting trial on multiple charges, including conspiracy, money laundering, tax fraud and making false statements. Judge Jackson rebuffed all of the defense arguments against sending Manafort to jail, acerbically noting, “This is not middle school. I can’t take away his cellphone,” (Source: “Judge Orders Manafort Jailed Before Trial, Citing New Obstruction Charges,” by Sharon LaFraniere, The New York Times, 6/15/18). Continue reading “History will not be kind.”

June 12, 2018

Yesterday, in a 5-4 decision, the Supreme Court erected another barrier to participation in democracy by people of color, the elderly and veterans, in its decision legitimating Ohio’s “use it or lose it” voter disenfranchisement scheme.  At issue in Husted v. A. Philip Randolph Institute was an Ohio law which purged voters from the rolls if they failed to vote in two successive elections and neglected to return a postcard confirming their address.  The Court overturned the 6th Circuit’s invalidation of the statute as violative of the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 (the “Motor Voter Act”), a law with the express purpose of making it easier for citizens to vote.  The majority reached the opposite result from the Sixth Circuit despite the fact that one of that law’s “key provisions limits the ability of states to remove the voters from the voting rolls ‘by reason of the person’s failure to vote,’” (Source:  “Sonia Sotomayor’s Dissent in the Big Voter Purge Case Points to How the Law Might Still be Struck Down,” by Richard L. Hasen, Slate.com, 6/11/18). Continue reading “Power: use it or lose it”

June 9, 2018

“The world is too much with us, late and soon

Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;

Little we see in Nature that is ours;

We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!”

After the week we have endured, Wordsworth’s lines are hauntingly resonant. Our world seems to be devolving at warp speed, our own country trapped in a real life version of Le Grand Guignol, an amoral horror show where children are tortured and decades long alliances are shredded.

Continue reading “The world is too much with us”

June 7, 2018

In the news yesterday we learned that border arrests have exceeded 50,000 for the third month in a row (Source: “Illegal crossings remain high,” by Nick Miroff, The Washington Post, 6/6/18).  This is three times the number from a year ago. In addition, the ranks of immigrant children being held in custody has swelled to 20,000, increasing by 20% in the last month alone, an undoubted consequence of Trump’s “zero tolerance” policy (ibid).

We have seen the footage of U.S. Senator Jeff Merkley being blocked from entering the former Walmart with blacked out windows that has been re-purposed as a detention center for immigrant children.  When Senator Merkley persisted in seeking entrance, the government officials at the Brownsville, Texas facility called the police.  Senator Merkley said that he saw children in another facility in McAllen, Texas being held in cages (Source:  “Senator Jeff Merkley denied entry into one migrant detention facility, claims he saw kids caged in another,” by Emily Tillet, CBSNews.com, 6/4/18). Continue reading “This is who we are”

June 5, 2018

We have been told that yesterday’s Supreme Court decision in Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission, 584 U.S. ____ (2018) was a narrow ruling.  The 7-2 majority decision held that the Commission was inappropriately hostile to baker Jack Phillip’s contention that his earnestly held religious beliefs compelled him to refuse to bake a wedding cake for Charlie Craig and David Mullin.  Justice Kennedy found evidence of “hostility” to religion in the Commission’s scathingly accurate statement that “freedom of religion and religion has been used to justify all kinds of discrimination throughout history, whether it be slavery, whether it be the holocaust…one of the most despicable pieces of rhetoric that people can use to -to use their religion to hurt others,” (Masterpiece, quoting Commission transcript at 11-12).  The fact that the Court was more offended by a righteous expression of contempt for the use of religion as a weapon of intolerance is telling indeed.

Continue reading “Neutrality in the face of injustice”

June 3, 2018

The news this week has provided the strongest evidence yet of the hollow hypocrisy at the core of Republican orthodoxy. Literally for decades, Republicans have insisted that free trade and unfettered market capitalism are best for the country. In light of that history, consider the major policy decisions made this week.

First, Trump launched a trade war with our staunchest allies, announcing 25% tariffs on steel and 10% tariffs on aluminum imported from Canada, Mexico and the E.U., in the name of national security, (Source: “White House to Impose Metal Tariffs on E.U., Canada and Mexico,” by Ana Swanson, The New York Times, 5/31/18). These inexplicable moves drew an immediate rebuke from Canadian Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, who condemned it as “an affront to the longstanding security partnership between Canada and the United States, and in particular, to the thousands of Canadians who fought and died alongside American comrades in arms,” (Source: “Trudeau: Trump tariffs are ‘an affront’ to Canadian soldiers who ‘fought and died’ alongside Americans,” by John Bowden, TheHill.com, 5/31/18). Continue reading “It’s later than you think”

May 31, 2018

Since the spate of stories regarding the Trump administration’s heinous policy of ripping children from their parents at the border and immediately transforming them into “unaccompanied minors,” we have learned more about the context of the 1500 “missing” immigrant children. That number represents children who were released to the custody of a sponsor, which in 80% of cases, was a parent (Source:  “Following Up on 1500 Missing Immigrant Children in the U.S.,” transcript of interview with Celia Munoz (Obama Domestic Policy Advisor in charge of immigration, Morning Edition, NPR.org, 5/29/18).  Their failure to appear is in all likelihood a result of their well-founded fear of engagement with the immigration authorities of the Trump administration. Continue reading “What can we do?”

May 27, 2018

This is how it begins. For weeks, we have read that the administration was going to separate children from their parents at the U.S. border to deter asylum seekers and other Latin American immigrants from coming to this country. Earlier this month, serial perjurer and committed racist, Jeff Sessions, announced that, as part of its stepped up prosecution of people crossing the border, ICE would separate children from their families, (Source: “U.S. says it will separate families crossing the border illegally,” by Jennifer McEntee, Mica Rosenberg, Reuters.com, 5/7/18). This was on the heels of a “zero tolerance” policy, announced in April, to treat each attempted border crossing as a federal offense to be prosecuted in court (ibid). Continue reading “This is how it starts”