At the foot of the Statue of Liberty, a few lines from Emma Lazarus’ 1883 poem The New Colossus are inscribed on a brass plaque…

Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!

Like millions before me, I have read them in person, and been humbled by the majesty of honor and sentiment they represent. Yet in 2019, sentiment is about all they do represent.

Today I received yet more bile-inducing, promotional material for July 4th sales of pens and stationery celebrating Liberty and Justice for All since 1776.

Ask the children taken from their parents at the United States/Mexico border, and held in U.S., concentration camps by the federal government about those lines from Lazarus’ poem, or even about liberty and justice.

This is a government who thinks that depriving children of safe and sanitary conditions is not only justifiable, but necessary (Christophi, 2019; printable version available here):

“You’re really going to stand up and tell us that being able to sleep isn’t a question of safe and sanitary conditions?’” U.S. Circuit Judge Marsha Berzon asked the Justice Department’s Sarah Fabian Tuesday.

and…

“Are you arguing seriously that you do not read the agreement as requiring you to do anything other than what I just described: cold all night long, lights on all night long, sleeping on concrete and you’ve got an aluminum foil blanket?” Fletcher asked. “I find that inconceivable that the government would say that that is safe and sanitary.”

And these are—and make no mistake about it, they are—concentration camps where, “once a month a child is dying in [federal] custody” (Christophi, 2019).

Ask Heather Heyer about liberty and justice for all since 1776—my apologies, you can’t. Heather Heyer was murdered by a white supremacist during a rally for equal human rights in 2017; an act tacitly supported by the “leader” of the United States. Someone elected in a manner that has been amply proven to bear little relationship to a legitimate democratic process, but stopped just short of being overtly criminal (Mueller, 2019, p. 9, 66, 173).

Ask Kevin Richardson, Antron McCray, Yusef Salaam, Korey Wise, and Raymond Santana, five innocent black children (the eldest at the time, being 16 years of age); jailed for a vicious offense foisted upon them by law enforcement organizations, and for whom the current U.S., president publicly demanded the death penalty. Something which he steadfastly refuses to retract to this day.

Ask the surviving friends and families of the 4391 people shot dead by U.S., police from 2015 until now—306 of which were unarmed; and despite black and hispanic individuals representing a minority of the population of the U.S., 145 of those shot were black/hispanic vs. 120 white (Washington Post Database, 2019).  Even that data is likely to be skewed, as the Washington Post does not track the “deaths of people in police custody, fatal shootings by off-duty officers or non-shooting deaths.” (Washington Post Database methodology, 2019).

Lastly, you could try asking any of the reported 200 friends and relatives who followed the hearse bearing the bodies of Oscar and Valeria Martinez.

Simply on the basis of solid, observable, verifiable evidence, the United States is far from a democracy—partisan rigging of elections has been given the clear go-ahead by none other than the Supreme Court of the United States (Rucho, et al., v. Common Cause et al., 2019). The U.S., is a long and painful journey from representing freedom and liberty for all, and all of the fourth of July celebrations of American Independence, won’t make that any better, or the road any less daunting.

I have featured one or two of the graphics used above in posts I have made before, and people I would like to call friends have asked me to take them down—on the grounds that they are distressing for many. Most Americans do not support the actions of the federal government as described above, and the only recourse they have is to vote in numbers too great to falsify in 2020. For them I offer nothing but support, and sincere, heartfelt grief. Yet even the election system is stacked against them (Mueller, 2019; Rucho v. Common Cause, 2019). So I would say that people should be distressed. The American people should be very distressed. I  am very distressed because I know and love America, and many, many Americans, who abhor, even more so than I, what is happening in their name, and to their country.

Some people may even attack this post on the grounds of politics. I have made no secret of how left-wing my political stance is, but this is not about politics. This is about having a fascist, conscience-less regime, willing to watch children die in concentration camps of their own making, just for power, wealth, and the childish ego of a criminal president. This is about basic right and wrong, not political left and right. There have been people like this president on the world stage before, and it has never ended well. In fact, America once stood in proud opposition to such world powers, when some of the concentration camps I’ve mentioned were built—to house American citizens with a Japanese heritage. Now they are occupied once again… by children; what an obscene irony. We should all be worried about the creature that currently occupies The White House; his failures have far-reaching consequences.

Some may say that a ridiculous little stationery blog is not the forum for such deep and heady discussion. I would normally agree, but what I just cannot understand, is why every single U.S., blog and opinion outlet is not exploding with outrage, at the monstrous nature of their current regime. When I am asked why do you care so much about what happens in the United States? I ask, why don’t you?  If we all cared a whole lot more about our fellow human beings, children wouldn’t be dying in United States government concentration camps.

Buy a red, white and blue pen from an American supplier on Independence—or any other—day, while that abject failure of humanity is in power? I think not.

 

 

 

 

References

Christophi, H. (2019, June 18). Feds tell 9th circuit: Detained kids ‘safe and sanitary’ without soap. Courthouse News Service [Web-based news service for lawyers and news media]. Retrieved from https://www.courthousenews.com/feds-tell-9th-circuit-detained-kids-safe-and-sanitary-without-soap/.

Mueller, R. (2019). Report on the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, volume I of II. Submitted Pursuant to 28 C.F.R. § 600.8(c). Special Counsel Robert S. Mueller, III, Washington D.C. Retrieved from https://drive.google.com/file/d/1qsHQrRydcBY8pwPrTB8xBlT79XNcecjl/view.

Rucho, et al., v. Common Cause et al., (2019). 588 U.S. 18-422 (2019). Retrieved from https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/18pdf/18-422_9ol1.pdf.