Soldiers' Mothers

The dictatorship by Executive Order has begun, with idiotic mean-spirited life-destroying edicts that only a fascist monster could be proud of.  The selective banning of 'nationalities' and religions was gleefully and intentionally imposed without warning, resulting in desperate families with children caught 'in-transit' with no place to go despite having spent years carefully collecting all the proper paperwork to come here.  They had been screened and interrogated and investigated and had valid visas with photos and crying children.  They had endured bombings, living in rubble, abandoned everything, moved through their home airports terrified of being stopped; and then America, the country of Dreams, slammed the door shut and told them to drop dead and get lost.  If you are a billionaire, you cannot possibly imagine what its like to be stranded at a foreign airport surrounded by your luggage, three dead-tired crying children who are hungry and have to poop, holding your sheaf of valid entry papers in shaking hands and trying to explain to some uniformed unsmiling bureaucratic bully who does not understand you, that you were told that you would be welcome here.  "What, what? But but....The children need to use the toilet!  Please, why are you doing this?  For God's sake!"

The unspeakable cruelty is not what this country is all about, until now.

The morning after the signing, families were separated, grandmothers were held in handcuffs for hours, and the mother of a United States Army active duty sergeant was denied entry and deported despite having all the proper papers and a visa.  This nation's Acting Attorney General, who pointed out that this chaos was unconstitutional, was 'fired,' effective immediately, as if the federal government of the United States of America was some stupid third rate reality TV show.

I'm sitting here writing this at home in America where I was born, a 70 year old proud patriotic American military veteran of ten years service, because some Immigration Agent on Ellis Island in 1938 let my mother in despite her having arrived as a humble Refugee.  She got here after a horrible terrifying months-long escape from the heart of Nazi Germany, with the shirt on her back and a tiny cardboard suitcase.  It makes me sick to tears, to know that now an American president is viciously turning back people just like my own mother, who only want freedom.  It is a horrifying kind of national-shame that until now only elderly Germans have felt.  Signing this decree on Holocaust Remembrance Day is not merely tone deaf; it is an offence against humanity.  The Nazi genocide of millions began with a few decrees removing the rights of selected ethnic 'nationalities' and religions.  Once it starts, it doesn't stop.

And then there is the Executive Order about building the asinine 20 billion dollar Wall.  Imagine how that wasted fortune could be better spent establishing a guest worker program, providing medical care, education, or decent housing, and facilitating the integration of immigrants to this welcoming nation.

Of course, there has been non stop signing of Executive Orders from the first hour of this presidency.  The unsystematic destruction of our federal agencies that protect our environment, job safety, equal rights, health, housing, well being, and so much more, seems to serve the wishes of our worst enemies.  Not to mention the refusal to reveal relations with foreign dictators, tax information and personal financial dealings with other nations that were mysteriously left out of the travel ban.  All this within just the first week and a half.

So, where is the rest of our national government that was so cleverly designed by our nation's founders to have checks and balances?  Where is our Congress of righteously elected representatives of the people, what are they doing in the face of this incredibly disastrous incompetence?  A few have spoken up.  But as yet, for the most part there has been pusillanimous silence.

In short, what the hell is going on here!  Can the ultimate democracy be simply flushed down the toilet in one week by an incompetent idiot?  In 1989 the great Soviet experiment collapsed in ruins at the hands of an alcoholic drunk who pulled off some parliamentary trick and stood on top of a tank for 5 minutes.  That nation is now an absolute dictatorship without even the pretense of the social good that socialism had promised.  We knew all along, here, that American values would never fail, that this country was and is righteous in its constant pursuit of social progress, until now.  And yet, now, in little more than a single week, our entire security and system of government has proved so fragile that one single imbecile can flush it all down the toilet with the stroke of his pen.

So, what to do?  As I wrote last month in the weeks before the coronation, stand up and speak out before that right is also removed by the stroke of a pen.  As the last weeks of January have shown, the indignation of our our nation has been awakened in massive demonstrations across the country.  That is who we are, that is our patriotism to our true values.