Category Archives: US Government

A King? Non, Merci!

I was reading through the Declaration of Independence this morning, when I came across these beefs with the royal boss back in 1776:

“He has endeavored to prevent the population of these states; for that purpose obstructing the laws for naturalization of foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new appropriations of lands.

“He has obstructed the administration of justice, by refusing his assent to laws for establishing judiciary powers.

“He has made judges dependent on his will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

“He has erected a multitude of new offices, and sent hither swarms of officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance.”

This whole “trigger the liberals” thing by having all the “long live the king” stuff with Trump’s image is starting to come off as a “clear and present danger” thing. A time to quote Harriet Tubman thing:

“I had reasoned this out in my mind, there was one of two things I had a right to, liberty or death; if I could not have one, I would have the other.” – Harriet Tubman

Tubman also said if she could have convinced other slaves that they were slaves, she would have freed thousands more. I look at the minds of enslaved Trump supporters and find myself in sad agreement with good Harriet Tubman.

Black History Month in effect, y’all.

“They Shall Be Ruled by a Child…”

There are now federal workers who accepted a buyout that are receiving termination notices anyway. Moreover, even if all federal civilian employees were dismissed, it would only reduce federal spending by $270 billion, and the government would still have over $1 trillion of deficit spending.

Keep in mind that federal civilian employees handle the Department of Veterans’ Affairs, which oversees the health care system for veterans. Also included are Department of Energy staff that oversee the safety and security of our nuclear weapons systems. And, yes, those departments are being targeted with indiscriminate firing actions that are dismissing all employees still in a probationary phase.

Who Is Next?

There are 1.9 million persons in US prisons, correctional facilities, jails, whatever you want to call them. This includes persons incarcerated for felonies as well as misdemeanors.

The MAGA have stated intentions to deport 12 million+ persons. That is six times the current US prison population. Even if the focus is supposedly on persons committing crimes other than a violation of immigration law, the 12 million number betrays that the focus is on ethnicity, not criminality.

Less than 15% of the persons in US prisons are not citizens of the USA. That’s less than 300,000, or 0.3 million. The other 11.7 million+ persons are not currently in jails, not currently convicted of crimes, and are not currently breaking laws other than those involving immigration status.

12 million+ people is over 3% of the US population. That would mean for every 100 people I know, 3 would be targeted for deportation, focused on those who have Latin American heritage, or who look like they have Latin American heritage. US citizens who are unfortunate enough to not have documentation on their persons when challenged for it are going to be in that 12 million+ number.

Most of the persons with unauthorized immigration statuses live in what are called “split households.” They’re either married to or related to US citizens in their household. This proposed MAGA mass deportation will rip families apart.

Every historical mass deportation I’ve read about has involved brutality directed towards the deportees, their deprivation of basic resources, their denial of access to medicines, starvation, diseases, suicides, horrific deaths…

And as that deportation is being cruelly considered, I do not yet hear anyone asking this question, so I will, out loud.

WHO IS NEXT?

Time to Speak My Mind

Lately, I have chosen to avoid making political statements most of the time. I make an exception to say that I do see a great and grave danger in the Republican Party platform, politicians, and recent history. I see their calls for voting security result in vigilantes suppressing black voters as in days of segregation. I see their calls to support the family result in laws that bind women and children to abusive husbands. I see their calls for cheaper energy not only pollute our nation more, but oppress Native Americans and violate treaties one more painful time.

I see them demanding better conditions for the common American, but they vote so often to line the pockets of the rich.

Not all legislation that emerged from Republicans or the Trump administration was terrible: there were some good things, and they deserve acknowledgement. It is not like Republicans are an enemy that must be destroyed. Rather, I see them as deeply misguided – a people that must be taught with patience and love.

But know this: I do see those who vote for Republican politicians as people who will one day deeply bemoan their choice. Their leaders obscure their true intentions and have repeatedly shocked their followers with cruel laws that the judges they have appointed will uphold. There is no question in my mind that a vote for a Republican is a vote against freedom.

Why do I say that? I say that because, collectively, the Republicans are polluting the nation, ignoring our international obligations, stripping women of rights and dignity, and restoring Segregation. I am opposed to those things, so I will speak against them and vote for the party that is opposed to those things, and that means I will vote for the Democrats in November.

My Political View

Since the foundation of the nation and before, there have been men, organized in whatever Party that would give them shelter, who gained and maintained power by placing other people, the weak and vulnerable, in separate classes, thereby depriving them of votes, economic choices, and equality before the law. This has been the great evil that stood for slavery, for disenfrachisement of women, against workplace safety, against overtime pay, against paid time off, against limiting the work-week. It continues to work to strip votes from nonwhite communities, refuses to pass legislation that would break cycles of poverty and imprisonment, and which obstructs legislation that would keep our lands and cities from being overwhelmed with pollution.

Its leaders are obvious in their love of money, and it is the love of money that is the root of all evil. They are obvious in their recycling of language and slogans used to support both slavery and segregation as they demand none speak or teach of the shame their political ancestors cursed our land with human bondage, lynch mobs, and cold-hearted justification of economic inequality.

In my own state of Texas, this Party has been in power for decades, and under their watch, with their knowledge, they have permitted school districts to take money that was supposed to service needs for the poor and handicapped children and merge it with the district general fund. This means that schools remain illegally underfunded and that services that could have prevented the Uvalde shooter and others like him from murdering children in schools were not provided, in violation of both federal law as well as our communal obligation to the most vulnerable and precious members of our nation, our children.

Make no mistake, money is involved in the politicians who preside over the deaths of our children. Those denials of services mean lower property tax rates, the savings of millions for those who support that Party – to them, the money is more important than the lives of children. They claim to be very religious, but so did the priests of Moloch, who sacrificed children to idols for the wealth of Carthage.

A Party that fights to reverse civil rights legislation, that works to make the rich richer, and that presides over the deaths of children in the name of lower property taxes is the enemy of freedom and the unity of the nation.

And that is why I do not support the Republican Party. I have to live, work, and worship alongside those who do and I know that the only true victory is through surrounding them with love, to the point where they willingly surrender the lies that sustain the illusions that justified their fight against peace, equality, and true justice.

Responsibility of Voters

The Voting Rights Act of 1965 that was passed in order to prevent legal and administrative maneuvers that deprived people of their votes is all but dead. There is a case going before the Supreme Court that will determine if private organizations or individuals can challenge voting restrictions. The Republican-appointed judges in lower federal courts ruled that, no, citizens and groups cannot challenge voting laws. If the Republican-appointed justices on the Supreme Court concur with the lower court, it will mean that the Republican Party will be responsible for both laws and jurisprudence that have returned the United States to the era of legal segregation. And although I have many friends who support the Republican Party who insist that they do not have an intent to support white supremacist agenda items, that is exactly what the Republican Party is doing.

When I was a young man in Boy Scouts, I earned the Rifle & Shotgun merit badge. I learned a lesson that I took deeply to heart – I am responsible for every round I fire. If I fire a round that causes harm or loss, I am responsible for that harm or loss, even if I did not want it to happen. Discharging a firearm involved care and safety to avoid causing unintended harm or loss.

It is the same with votes. True, we are never voting for angelic beings, but at the same time, we can limit the deviltry our votes unleash upon the nation with care and thoughtfulness. As it stands, I see the terrible impact of disenfranchisement upon the people it is so unjustly visited upon. Votes that supported the Republican Party are responsible for deeper racial divisions in the United States being codified in both law and judicial precedent. Votes that supported the Republican Party are responsible for advancing a white supremacist political agenda.

Memorial Day 2022

Memorial Day.

Let us remember the soldiers who did not fall in battle, but who fell at home due to mental health issues. Let us remember the soldiers who did not fall in battle, but who struggled with lost limbs, lost eyes, burned bodies, organ damage, and brain injuries the rest of their lives. Let us remember the soldiers who did not fall in battle, but who were lynched because they were a different color and believed that wearing a uniform gave them some kind of equality in this nation. Let us remember the soldiers who did not fall in battle, but who struggled to fit back into civilian life after seeing what they had seen and doing what they had done.

Let us remember the soldiers whose spirit of civic duty of self-sacrifice to make the world better is a spirit we all should aspire to, that there may be no more war among us again. There is an ultimate hope in the calling of a soldier: a hope that, through one’s discharge of duty, there may come a day where we ask no more for soldiers, that service no longer consumes one’s life, whether on the battlefield or in the years that follow the battlefield.

Memorial Day.

The Right Time to Start Talking About Gun Control

Now is not the right time to start talking about gun control. The right time to talk about it was probably September 7th, 1949, after 13 died in the Camden, New Jersey shootings. So, if we’re late to the conversation, we should still have it.

The Second Amendment was created not for national defense or for personal defense, but to allow states to have their own militias to suppress slave rebellions, out of fear that a federal army made up of troops from states opposed to slavery would not assist in suppressing slave rebellions. Following the Civil War, the emphasis shifted to maintaining White control of economics and politics through exclusive access to firearms. Whenever Blacks or Hispanics defended themselves from White mobs with firearms, they were swiftly and surely prosecuted and punished by Whites for daring to disturb the White supremacy.

At its roots, the Second Amendment has always, always been about racial oppression and inequality. There is mythology and propaganda placed around it to obscure those roots, but let us deal in truth. It is a legacy of America’s slaveholding past. It continues to be a right that has a “Whites Only” ring to it all too often for it to be a truly universal right. The solution to America’s gun violence problem is to first acknowledge that we no longer have any danger of a slave rebellion and that we want all people to live in freedom, safety, and equality. Then we acknowledge that it is still possible to have personal weapon ownership, but with restrictions. There are dozens of examples around the world of democratic, peaceful nations that have both regulated personal weapon ownership and murder rates much lower than in the USA.

That’s not to say that murders and gun violence are non-existent in nations with regulations. It’s that the gun violence is at a much, much lower rate. Imagine what it would be like here if, instead of having 17 mass shootings in the last 10 days that took 33 lives and hospitalized 76, we had only one? I’d rather none, but one instead of 17 is a start. In the last 10 *years*, Germany has had only 21 killed and 65 hospitalized as a result of mass shootings, and they permit regulated personal weapon ownership.

When, in our nation, we have lost more in 10 days than another has lost in 10 years, we have to confront our present with a realization that we have built up walls of illusions about weapon ownership that prevent us from seeing the truth and the better place we can be if we begin to have the conversation that should have started 73 years ago… or even before that… but we need to have the conversation and we need to be willing to compromise from all-or-nothing stances to find a solution that will work for reducing America’s gun violence. We have to believe in and have hope that such a solution can be found, and that it can be lasting. We have to be ready to shed our idols and happy illusions so that we can be comfortable with the truth as our chief tool that will build the future we want to live in.

I don’t want to exclude anyone from the conversation: even if you’re a White Supremacist, it’s time to have the discussion about reasonable regulations on personal weapon ownership, along the lines of any of the dozens of other democratic nations that have implemented them with success. We can look to Australia, Germany, Canada, Norway, Switzerland, Israel, Japan, UK, France, Belgium, Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden, and many others. When we make peace our path, a better world is our destination.

A Bargain with Hatred

If the Republican Party is unable to impeach Trump and to sever its connections with the mob violence he and his supporters encourage, then it is only sealing its bond with white supremacists, antisemites, and misogynists. It is a political movement that has made common cause with hatred, intolerance, and lawlessness.

There is no “whataboutism” that will work here – the Democratic Party condemns violent protests, sends sexual abusers to the political exits, and has made known its stance on supporting diversity to the point that the racists that once made up the Southern Democrats’ faction are now all registered Republicans.

The Republican Party is home to hatred. When I hear protests originating from its leadership, they are muted and refuse to go so far as to bring consequences to bear against party members who engage in insurrection, violence, and who make openly racist or sexist statements. I see Republicans either as people who actively support hatred or who lack the moral fortitude to do the right thing and cut their ties with evil. I am no perfect man, myself. I have my flaws. But I do not allow my flaws to extend into the places where the Republican Party finds its strongest base of supporters. I have my flaws, but I do not make a bargain with hatred in order to gain power.

1860 and 2020

In 1860, something in the USA had broken. When a contentious, 4-way election produced Abraham Lincoln as the president, states began to make good on their threats to leave the nation. Even more ominously, the states that had once done everything possible to cater to the whims of those departing states were now resolved to wage war, if needed, to re-establish the Union, no longer on the terms demanded by those departing states. What led to that situation and are those conditions leading to a similar situation in 2020?

In her work, The Field of Blood, Joanne B. Freeman explores that very topic. I strongly recommend it as a book for any historian or person interested in current events. And I equally strongly recommend close attention to the story of miscalculation on the part of the Southern Congressmen who trusted in threats of violence and secession to get their way while still preserving the benefits of the political union.

Is 2020 the same as 1860? No. We are not again at that most final of crossroads in history. But we are close. While the divisions are not truly regional in this current period of tension, we are nevertheless watching as resistance to threats of violence stiffens and attitudes towards a domineering minority change from attempted accommodation to exhausted, active animosity.

Before 1860, supporters of slavery would threaten beatings, duels, and street fights against their opponents. Their opponents would refuse to engage, which played well to both sides of the slavery conflict. Anti-slavery supporters applauded how their champions refused to stoop to the level of the slavery supporters. Slavery supporters mocked the lack of manhood and dignity among the anti-slavery faction, seen as too weak-willed to stand up and fight for what they believed in.

In 1838, Congressman Cilley of New Hampshire finally accepted a duel challenge from Congressman Graves of Kentucky. Graves killed Cilley in that duel. After that, things changed. Anti-slavery attitudes hardened against that act of violence: Cilley was seen as a martyr for the cause. Slavery supporters could not claim anymore that their opponents lacked valor, which had the result of forcing their own position to take an even harder line on the issue.

When Brooks of South Carolina nearly killed Sumner of Massachusetts in an attack in the Senate in 1856, it pretty much killed off any hope of reconciliation between the two sides of the slavery debate. The slavery proponents claimed that they had no recourse but to defend their honor with violence. The slavery opponents no longer called for the preservation of the Union at any cost as a slogan of appeasement, but of eventual military conflict. Those who wanted a peaceful resolution no longer saw a path of resolution together, but as a matter of “our side is better off without the other side.” Slave state politicians threatened secession: their counterparts were ready to let them go and be done with it.

Starting with the election of Ronald Reagan, the Republican position publicly hardened around the issues of a strong anti-abortion position and an equally unyielding, highly permissive interpretation of the Second Amendment. Other issues were associated with the Republican Party, but those were the most salient. Less well-pronounced was the full meaning of their “law and order” platform, which didn’t directly state a hostility towards minorities, but which did serve to further policies that had race-negative outcomes in terms of higher rates of arrest, conviction, and incarceration of minorities vs whites for similar offenses. In time, the conflation of racist imagery with Republican Party political ads became more and more overt, leading up to the events during the Trump presidency in which party leadership failed to offer up meaningful criticism of racially-motivated violence, even as perpetrators of that violence evoked Republican leaders and talking points as justification for their violent acts.

Meanwhile, Republican Party opposition to Democratic policy initiatives and appointments hardened to the point of refusal to cooperate at all. This was perhaps most starkly illustrated in their refusal to entertain the nomination of a Supreme Court justice in 2016, claiming that such a nomination must be made to wait until after the election and then turning fully around in 2020 to rush through a Supreme Court nomination in the days just prior to the election that year.

Domestically, this inability of Republicans to offer up meaningful compromises with the Democratic Party itself led to questions within the Democratic Party on whether or not they should continue to attempt to compromise. Progressives within the Democratic Party drew more political support, particularly in the wake of the MeToo movement and a string of cases involving police brutality or other abuses in the deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, Sean Monterrosa, Rayshard Brooks, Andres Guardado, Dijon Kizzee, Daniel Prude, Deon Kay, Ricardo Munoz, Deja Stallings, Jonathan Price, Alvin Cole, Marcellis Stinnette, Walter Wallace Jr, and Kevin Peterson Jr, among others. As Republican leadership rallied around defending its own members involved in sexual harassment cases or who had made racist statements, questions of compromise evaporated further.

At the same time, hardening attitudes in Democratic Party were also accompanied by a rise in anti-fascist violence. While such antifa violence was only a fraction of fascist and racist violence, Republicans seized upon the very fact of antifa violence as a sign of the existential nature of the conflict they now found themselves in. Democratic Party leaders did condemn antifa violence, but Republican leadership rejected such condemnations or denied that they had happened outright. Ironically, voices within the Republican Party that called for a second civil war to “cleanse” the nation were not condemned within the party.

While 2016 still saw most of the Democratic Party leadership calling for unity and compromise, the events of the 2020 election in which Trump refused to acknowledge the election of Biden left the Democratic president-elect in the uncomfortable position of finding Republican leadership unwilling to participate in the normal bipartisan cooperation that follows a change of party in an election.

Such refusal from the Republican Party has left many Democratic commentators asking openly if the nation would simply be better off without the Republicans. While not advocating openly for civil war as radicals within the Republican Party advocate, they are also not refusing to consider such a scenario. While not yet a scenario like in 1860, or even 1856, current tensions do lie on a path that leads to a similar situation.

In this, the Republicans are exercising a similar miscalculation as did the pro-slavery faction. They have spoken loudly and bullied their way around the political landscape, but are outnumbered. Now that their opposition has itself hardened its position, they are at a point in their existence that demands reconciliation and backing down from their hardline position before they are destroyed in a violent conflict that they have no hope of winning.

The Republic of South Africa faced a similar watershed in its history, when the whites-only apartheid government came to a realization that it could not maintain its control. Faced with the options of peacefully coming to terms with the African National Congress or the possibility of war in which they would detonate the nuclear weapons within their cities and key economic areas as part of a Samson act to deny their opponents what they could not themselves keep, the National Party chose to take the peaceful path, resulting in massive constitutional and organizational reform. Humanity has an example of stepping away from the brink: is the Republican Party leadership able to make the same moves as its right-wing counterpart in South Africa, or will it choose to maintain its hard line and autogolpe methods to subvert democratic institutions in America and take the nation down a path of bloodshed?

Freeman’s book shows us the parallels between the antebellum period and our own day. Our nation needs a Republican Party leadership to come to terms with reality and to come back to the table of compromise before they go too far and find that they have placed the nation into a period that parallels the years from 1860-1865.