Liberal Democracy in Danger: Putin Is Its Enemy & Trump Agrees With Him - Heather Cox Richardson

In 2019, we have a Republican president who is so steeped in Movement Conservative Plutocratic rhetoric - which deems all Democrats and Moderate Republicans to be "dangerous liberals" - that he has lost touch with our founding principles. He agreed with Putin, a geopolitical enemy, that western liberalism is obsolete.

Here we are, with the autocrat Putin telling us our days are over, and our president agreeing as he misunderstands the comment. How did we get here?

After WWII, a few leading men hated the idea that the government would reflect new voters: people of color and women.

As government increasingly supported schools, hospitals, and clean cities, and as it regulated business, protected workers from dangerous workplaces, mandated minimum wages and maximum hours, and required businesses to clean up the pollution they put into the public environment, these men began to argue that anyone who wanted to expand the liberal idea was, in fact, a dangerous "socialist" or "communist."

Since it was quite clear that no one was arguing for the hallmark of those systems of government - they both depend on public ownership of businesses - they argued that the taxes necessary to pay for government programs redistributed wealth from rich to poor.

They insisted that anyone who reinforced the idea of western liberalism - Republicans and Democrats both - were dangerous "Liberals." By demonizing their opponents, that fringe group of businessmen came to dominate the Republican Party, and to take over America.

Now, in 2019, we have a Republican president who is so steeped in that rhetoric he has lost touch with our founding principles. He agreed with a geopolitical enemy that western liberalism is obsolete.

Putin's comment was not about politics; it was about the future of humanity. The head of an enemy power has taunted us with the idea that the principles on which the United States' democratic experiment was founded are "obsolete."

Clearly, Putin prefers his own authoritarian system that sets up a few people over the rest of the population. Putin has turned Russian into a deadly oligarchy in which he and his cronies hold all the power. Do we want the same?!?

The full article is available here

In 1922, My Great Grandmother Wasn't Going To Be Allowed Into U.S. With Her Husband and 6 Children - Jeff Wiersma

It is only because a person with enough financial means agreed to be her sponsor that the officials at Ellis Island reversed their ruling and allowed my Great Grandmother Sadie to enter the United States.

My Great Grandfather, Louis Jacob Wiersma, immigrated to the U.S. from Holland with his wife and 7 children in 1922. (Cornelius, in center of photo to the left, is my late Grandfather).

Louis left his homeland due to the economic woes that followed World War I - a situation so bad that his cousin - who was already in the United States - urged him to immigrate so that his family of 8 wouldn't starve!

Being that Louis was laborer and not a land-owning aristocrat, the family of 8 had to make the trans-Atlantic trip down in steerage as 3rd class passengers.

Before arriving at Ellis Island, they were split up by people called groupers into different groups; first by boat, then into women and children, and men, and then into smaller groups of about thirty or so. (In that era, they weren't treated as criminals and were assured that they would be reunited as a family after processing).

Once the boat finally arrived at Ellis Island, they were all examined by U.S. doctors. The first federal immigration laws passed in 1882 prohibited anyone who was physically incapable of taking care of themselves.

My Great Grandmother, Sadie, was detained since she had a limp that was the result of an early childhood injury. SHE WAS NOT GOING TO BE ALLOWED INTO THE UNITED STATES.

This mean that the family of 8 would either (a) have to all return to Holland and potential starvation or (b) only send Sadie back, meaning Louis and his 7 kids would enter the US without their wife/mother.

Fortunately, a member of the Kroll family came to Ellis Island from Whitinsville and promised to serve as her sponsor. It is only because a person with enough financial means agreed to be her sponsor that the officials at Ellis Island reversed their ruling and allowed my Great Grandmother Sadie to enter the United States.

It's no wonder that people today fleeing starvation being called "rapists," "thugs," "not the best being sent" and "animals" upsets me so much! No wonder families being forcefully separated at the border has me emotionally distraught!

Some Thoughts On Interacting With People We Have Political Differences With - Jeff Wiersma

I really, really enjoy debating and discussing ideas and issues. I've always found it enlivening to drill down to the core of the beliefs that we hold and philosophies that we adhere to. I've always been interested in ultimate questions and examining given assumptions.

The reality of life is that not every operates from the same ethical and philsophical framework.  People who see things through differing lenses are bound to arrive at different conclusions, and this what often stirs debate and discussion.

Sometimes, I've debate and discussed in a productive manner. Sometimes, I have fallen short of engaging in a productive manner. It turns out that I'm not perfect; but I do try to at least be aware of when I've missed the mark and to own up to it.

In reflecting on the instances when discussion and dialogue went well, the following thoughts occurred to me.

* We can agree to disagree with those of different beliefs. 

* However, dehumanization need not be tolerated. Beliefs which deny the full humanity of all (and thereby deny equal protections to those deemed less-than-fully-human) are necessarily inferior ethically to those which recognize the full humanity of all. The negating of someone’s existence goes well beyond differences of opinion. 

* Someone’s continued and unrepentant use of dehumanizing rhetoric and bad faith arguments are legitimate grounds for ending discussion with them, but never for completely writing off those that utilize them in their entirety. The future is not fixed - and though it is more rare than one would hope - people do change their minds.

* Be discerning about who is able to engage in intellectually honest dialogue and who is unable to, and then proceed accordingly.

* Fact check what you say before putting it out there. Having accurate and verifiable citations from trustworthy sources helps bring objective clarity to otherwise subjective discussion.  

* An effective approach to stated opinions that don’t hold up to scrutiny and fact-checking is to ask clarifying questions. Why does the party that offers untenable and disprovable opinions believe that what they claim is the case? This can be helpful to getting down to the nitty gritty of the fear that is steering the ship. 

* Impact always takes priority over intent. Whether on not one intended to cause offense with a statement; if its impact made the recipient feel badly, an apology for that causing that impact is the appropriate response. 

* Assertively stating and defending one’s beliefs doesn’t mean one has to be disagreeable. Being assertive is the healthy middle ground between being passive and being aggressive.

* Good faith debate is only possible with intellectual honesty. It's often the case that many things that we believe to be true are based merely on what we wish to be true or what we feel should be true. Good faith debate requires moving beyond unexamined and rote statements of opinion.

* Ignorance is not an excuse. Beliefs held for ideological reasons - but lacking an awareness of the negative impacts their resultant policies have on marginalized groups - are not a carte blanche; even if there was no intent to be harmful.  

Even POW's Are Guaranteed Hygene Items That Trump Thinks Detained Kids Don't Need

Children At Risk In U.S. Border Jails - Human Rights Watch

“A pediatric emergency physician at Stanford who formed part of our team, told me if a child came into her emergency room and reported this kind of treatment, she would be obligated to report it as child neglect."

The full article is available here

Trump's Fear-Mongering Mimics That of Slave-Owners Pre-Civil War

White nationalist autocrats once again pose an existential threat to our constitutional republic.

The Youngest Child Separated From His Family at the Border Was 4 Months Old - NY Times

“At the airport, Constantin’s father refused to board the plane without his infant son. The immigration officers, he said, told that his infant son would be handed to him once he took his seat. But the plane lifted off and the baby never came.”

The full article is available here

‘Never again’ means nothing if Holocaust analogies are always off limits - Rabbi Danya Rattenberg

We know that the path to atrocity can be a process and that the Holocaust began with dehumanizing propaganda, with discriminatory laws, with roundups and deportations, and with internment. Those things are happening in our country now!

If done with caution, Holocaust analogies can be useful. Looking at Holocaust history — thoughtfully, carefully — can help us to see the parallels between then and now.

It can also help us to understand when those parallels are not apt, and what that does and doesn’t mean about news as it breaks.

Of course, analogies are imperfect, and every situation has its own nuances and context, but looking at monstrous events of the past can help us understand where we are in ways that can be difficult to see in the day-to-day.

We must remember that the Holocaust didn’t begin with gas chambers, and it’s not business as usual in U.S. right now.  We already know that the path to atrocity can be a process, and that the Holocaust began with dehumanizing propaganda, with discriminatory laws, with roundups and deportations, and with internment.

Those things are happening in our country now, and they’re known as some of the stages of genocide first articulated by Genocide Watch in 1996.

The full article is available here

Impeachment, Trump, and The Rule of Law - Heather Cox Richardson

According to a court filing from Trump's lawyers, his justification for refusing to cooperate at all with any investigations is that Congress cannot investigate the president. Trump and his lawyers believe that he is above the law.

This is a line many Republicans are now also taking. Since they're unable to deny that Trump is lawless, they are simply adopting Nixon's argument that when the president does something, it's not illegal.

Republican members of Congress are are abetting the rise of a dictator.
And remember this: as soon as he is not in office, he's in trouble. This equation makes it reasonable to think that his "jokes" about staying in office permanently are not a joke.

This is exactly why the Founders came up with the concept of impeachment, a way to remove a bad president without criminal penalties.

The full article is available here

In Court, Trump Administration Argues Detained Migrant Children Don't Need Soap, Toothbrushes - Newsweek

“The Trump administration went to court this week to argue that migrant children detained at the United States-Mexico border don’t need basic hygiene products like soap and toothbrushes in order to be in held in ‘safe and sanitary’ conditions. Trump's team also argued that requiring minors to sleep on cold concrete floors in crowded cells with low temperatures similarly fulfilled that requirement.”

The full article is available here

Pentagon and intelligence officials fear they cannot trust Trump enough to brief him fully on new US cyber operation against Russia for fear he will "countermand it or discuss it with foreign officials" as he did before with Russians.”

The full article is available here

Expert on Concentration Camps: That's Exactly What U.S. Is Running at Border - Andrea Pitzer

The definition of a concentration camp is mass detention of civilians without trial.  Many of the people housed in the U.S. border detention facilities are not so-called "illegal" immigrants. They are refugees who have committed no crime, yet they are being detained. 

Andrea Pitzer, author of One Long Night: A Global History of Concentration Camps, who has researched instances of concentration camps in France, South Africa, Cuba, the Soviet Union, and - with Japanese internment - the United States.

She contends the U.S. is operating such a system right now at our southern border. 

“We have what I would call a concentration camp system,” Pitzer says, “and the definition of that in my book is, mass detention of civilians without trial.”

Not every concentration camp is a death camp - in fact, their primary purpose isn't extermination, and never in the beginning. Often, much of the death and suffering that occurs is a result of insufficient resources, overcrowding, and deteriorating conditions. 

So far, 24 people have died in the custody of Immigration and Customs Enforcement under the Trump administration, while six children have died in the care of other agencies since September.

Many of the people housed in these facilities are not so-called "illegal" immigrants. If you present yourself at the border seeking asylum, you have a legal right to a hearing under domestic and international law. They are refugees who have not committed a crime and are fleeing violence and persecution.

Yet they are being detained on what increasingly seems to be an indefinite basis.

The full article is available here

What The Nazis Learned From The Early 20th Century Racially-Segregated U.S. - Jessica Blatt

1930's Nazi thinkers and lawmakers were especially drawn to U.S. legal codes based on white supremacy. They also admired the U.S. scientific racists and white-supremacist propagandists of the early 20th century.
Unfortunately, when the Nazis looked at the early 20th-century United States, they were inspired.

The United States' models of legalized racial segregation and discrimination inspired the Nazi lawyers who crafted the Nuremberg laws that stripped German Jews of their citizenship, barred mixed marriages, and prohibited interracial child-bearing.

Nazi lawyers saw the U.S. as the "leading racist jurisdiction," the prototype of a legal regime designed to control "foreign races" living in their midst.

Nazis admired the U.S. scientific racists and white-supremacist propagandists of the early 20th century. Hitler famously admired the United States' "wholesome aversion for the Negroes and the colored race in general."

Hitler's writings and speeches exhibited an approving awareness of the U.S. policies of compulsory sterilization for "undesirable" people, restricting immigration of those that eugenicists deemed to be "inferior races," and the history of exterminatory policies towards Native Americans.

The full article is available here