POST 1205
It’s About One Thing and One Thing Only
The Trump immigration cruelty, breaking of laws and the rest have nothing to do with immigration. They have nothing to do with the economy. They are unrelated to international trade or safe borders, disease prevention, ending war or the Nobel Peace Prize.

Click me for the story.
The cruelty is about getting rid of Brown and Black people, which is why ICE locks up even legal Brown American citizens and doesn’t discriminate between immigrants with or without a criminal record. In fact, ICE doesn’t even check for criminal records. They just kidnap people, zip-tie them and send them to a hell hole prison. Make America White Again!
The cruelty is about establishing public fear of Trump so that he has all the power. Even big law firms, major universities and financial institutions are chickening out and bending the knee for what they seem to believe is their short term advantage or perhaps protection from Trump’s cruelty.
That is compounded by Trump’s incremental militarization of our cities – notably only where there are Black mayors. Trump threatens several more cities with the deployment of our military and none of them is near the top of the list of cities with the most crime. He threatened New York, Baltimore, Chicago and Oakland, all Democratic strongholds with large African-American populations. They could be next and won’t that be a fine distraction from the withheld Epstein files?
Militarization is what dictators do to suppress and control the population.
During his first administration Trump ordered Gen. Mark Milley, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, to have his troops “shoot [protesters] in the legs.” Milley refused, but now that Trump has fired the generals most likely to refuse his illegal orders and has replaced them with Trump sycophants, what do you suppose will happen when there are peaceful protests that Trump doesn’t like and they are surrounded by our troops carrying weapons of war?
That’s essentially what happened at Kent State in 1970 when Ohio National Guardsmen opened fire on unarmed peaceful protesters (full disclosure: they were saying mean things about the administration). Guardsmen killed four and injured nine kids. Who was the idiot who issued live ammunition?
Surely, Trump figures that fear will keep we rubes in line.
Again, this is what dictators do to suppress and control the population.
All of that is diabolically supported by a cowardly Republican controlled Congress and the Supreme Court that was hand picked by Trump. Whatever their beliefs, they are all receiving death threats from Trump thugs, making it most unlikely that they will stand up to him.
Every Trump outrage is about one thing and one thing only: Making Trump a king. Der Führer.
Can we drop the pretenses and denial now?
Gov. Gavin Newsom’s Address of August 14*
In urging you to read her whole post, here’s an excerpt from Prof. Heather Cox Richardson’s report of August 14.
Noting that “this time requires us to act anew, not just think anew,” Newsom nodded to President Abraham Lincoln’s famous call from 1862: “The dogmas of the quiet past, are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise — with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew, and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country.”
The Staples Singers
Trump bungled every aspect, every detail of his meeting with Vladimir Putin in Anchorage on Friday. The bungling began even before the two met. Trump landed first and Putin showed up late, causing Trump to have to wait for him for nearly an hour, making Trump look like a chump.
Then Trump treated Putin to red carpet treatment and gave him a ride in the presidential “Beast.” At the end they parted, saying false, hollow niceties about one another and Mr. Art of the Deal flew away with no deal and with no pathway to a deal. Trump just plain got played by Putin – again. That affects all of us and, oddly, connects to The Staples Singers.
I listened to their wonderful hit Respect Yourself the other day and heard their message a bit differently than I did in 1972 when it topped the charts. Back then it was a message to our angry and disrespectful and the violence prone people, suffering in the midst of great and largely justified public rage in our country. Today I heard it as a message to all of us to respect ourselves and one another by proudly standing up for what we know is right.
We know the Alaska meeting was wrong for America and the world. We know this Epstein stuff stinks 16 different ways, that disappearing people is wrong and awful and unlawful, that the assaults on our healthcare, the education of our children and the security of old people who paid into a system that now owes them are all wrong. And we know that abandoning Ukraine, giving it lies instead of munitions and turning our back on those embattled people is wrong on so many levels.
So, have a listen to Respect Yourself for a message – see if it speaks to you, giving you guidance for your actions today. And do, indeed, respect yourself.
The Deconstructing Trump Corner
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- Truth is on
- the march
- and nothing
- can stop it
- Émile Zola, 1898
- We must always take sides.
- Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim.
- Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.
- Elie Wiesel, in Nobel Prize acceptance speech, Dec. 10, 1986
- _______________________________________________
- * Watch the entire session. This is what you’ve longed to hear. It will fill your heart and stiffen your spine with resolve.
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Mid-Term Election
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Goes fast, doesn’t it?
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