The evil of Epstein’s world was how children were treated. The evil of the ICE detainment camps is that children - and adults! - are treated just as terribly there. I hope more and more Americans will begin to register both with equal horror.
Of course DHS denies that the detainment centers are basically concentration camps. Then why won’t they let anyone, including our elected representatives, go inside to see for themselves? Meanwhile, people who have been detained come out and tell stories of profound cruelty and abuse.
Once again, there’s a cover-up. Once again, we’re ignoring stories of survivors. It’s difficult for many people to accept all this: to get over the idea that if the American government does it, it must not be all that bad. It’s an uncomfortable awakening process for all of us, but it’s important. If the American government does something, that makes it no less suspect if we know in our hearts it’s wrong.
ICE is a private paramilitary force, the detainment centers are a massive private prison-building scam, and the entire enterprise is a white nationalist agenda whose express purpose is to dismantle our democracy. Ignoring this is not an option. In the words of the late great James Baldwin, “Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.”
Many Trump supporters argue that “This is what we voted for,” and when it comes to mass deportations they are correct. They did. I remember watching people on TV waving signs at the Republican convention that said MASS DEPORTATIONS, and feeling a chill go up my spine. “My God,” I thought, “do those people know the human reality of trying to do that?” Yet he won, and it came to pass. It’s accurate to say that many if not all of Trump’s voters did vote for mass deportations.
But that should not be the end of the story. There’s more than a what’s at play here, however; there’s a how. The President of the United States - at least until the Roberts Supreme Court’s absurd and unConstitutional decision to grant Presidents immunity for crimes committed in office - was never intended by our Founders to be above the law. “No man is above the law” was a foundational principle in the United States, but apparently it’s not anymore. It’s extraordinary how many Americans seem to think that our President acting like a dictator is for the best. That they do think that, by the way, is a horrifying consequence of failing to make Civics a mandatory class in our public schools. I grew up attending public school in Texas, today one of America’s reddest states, and I learned before the 8th grade that in America we don’t allow those kinds of things.
On the other side of this McCarthy-like chapter, we’re going to have to repair this mess. So American children failing to learn the basics of our Constitutional system and the strictures of a rules-based order must never, ever again be seen as an option.
Choosing ICE as his personal paramilitary was a shrewd move on the administration’s part, as SCOTUS had already placed it beyond the reach of the Bill of Rights unless and until Congress makes it so. Mass deportations? One can argue that “Hey, he won the Presidency.” But acting like thugs, terrorizing communities, kidnapping children, arresting Americans, disappearing people, and killing protestors? Absofuckinglutely not. We are not to be ruled by tyrants. Electing someone president does not give them dictatorial authority. They too should have to play by the rules.
ICE has undergone a massive hiring surge, using $100 million in advertising to lure new recruits with $50,000 signing bonuses, and student loan repayment. They’ve actively courted far right groups such as convicted January 6th rioters who were pardoned by Trump on his first day in office - who do you think is behind those masks? They’re then trained for a full 47 days before being put on the street with guns and lots of ammunition. Perhaps even more dangerously, they’re sent onto the streets with a mental attitude, coming straight from their boss DHS Secretary Kristi Noem, that anyone trying to protest what they’re doing is a domestic terrorist.
We should always remember - and maybe place it on the front of your fridge so your kids will be sure to see it - these crucial words of President Theodore Roosevelt in 1918:
To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public. Nothing but the truth should be spoken about him or any one else. But it is even more important to tell the truth, pleasant or unpleasant, about him than about any one else.
As I said to Tim Miller on the Bulwark podcast last week, I don’t think it’s hyperbole to say the situation in our country today is catastrophic. But I also said, and I do believe, that we’re going to come out of this one day better than ever. The decent character of the American people will yet prevail.
To be saintly at a time like this is simply to be decent. “You meet saints everywhere,” wrote Kurt Vonnegut. “They can be anywhere. They are people behaving decently in an indecent society.”
Above all, let’s be decent.
I have read your article today Ms Marianne and I would boldly say that in terms of our supremisist behavior since the beginning of the colonizers stepping their greedy feet on this land. THIS is a manifestation of exactly who we are and who we have been to the rest of the world. This is the moment that we see this filth as it is and how it is even self loathing to the point of murdering their own Good and Preti children. The viciousness you very well are aware of in your mastery of us politics is EXACTLY who we are🤬. I had high hopes that a morally intact person like yourself could help us dismantle the war machine but no ma’am. They would not even allow you to step into the Democratic Convention as a legit presidential candidate. On the contrary this IS the face of the american people to the world. Because the moral and ethical force of one Good and one Preti has yet to form a flood of love to overtake this depraved hate and greed. We are infected by it. Let’s join with the native peoples everywhere and reclaim what was their’s from the beginning of “the states”
Yes, lets be decent. As chapter 32 in ACIM teaches, "I have invented the world I see." Fortunately, chapter 42 says, "God is my strength. Vision is his gift." Hopefully with God's help we will all see the true Love in each of us. Lets pray for a miracle.