Expectations – Biting Off More than You Can Chew?

 

Expectations – Biting Off More than You Can Chew?

MAGA – Destruction of the Deep State; Other Trump Voters – Secure Borders, Better Economy;

Russia/China – Unraveling America; Most of the Rest of the World – Schadenfreude*

Americans are so easily distracted. Unlike the hodgepodge of Europe – multiple borders, cultures and languages used to “diversity” – the United States effectively has two borders with what used to be friendly nations, 2.5 languages (English, Spanish and French/Quebecois), where recent elections voted for new leadership strongly based on anti-Americanism. We are mostly culturally isolated and illiterate, the third most populous nation on Earth, angry and arrogant. Our recent political leaders had to manufacture scapegoats and issues that simply did not exist. We are the only developed nation without universal healthcare, and, to protect the purported “job creators,” we tax the rich under a regressive tax scheme, where the middle and working classes often pay taxes (particularly when you add in sales taxes) at rates much lower than the billionaire class.

“Immigration” is a problem, because after a Republican president, Ronald Reagan passed the last comprehensive immigration policy in 1986 – which worked for the times – every Republican Congress since, slowly realizing that not solving our changing border issues gave them a perpetual issue to run on, blocked even the most basic immigration reform. Even sponsored by their own leadership. Remember when we were called the “melting pot,” later as the melt stopped, the “lettuce bowl”? Well, today those lettuce leaves are trained to hate each other – good rallying points for politicians on both sides – and we are so much better armed internally than any nation on earth not at war. We pardon violent criminals, encourage add-ons to guns to make them kill faster. What could possibly go wrong?

Look at the inane focus of social media and the mainstream press on the ugly Trump-Musk divorce, a reality most of us knew was inevitable. It’s a side show. President’s Trump’s massive grift is a side show. A bumbling, disunified Democratic Party is a side show. The BIG RIFT is the main show, and most Americans downplay that reality. After all, as Trump and his constitutionally illiterate cabinet, particularly our AG and HSI heads, and senior advisor Stephen “the New Rasputin” Miller amped up deportations from what was supposed to be focused on alien criminals into a demographic reconfiguration of the entire country, an ethnic sweep heavily targeting undocumented Hispanics, many of whom do work that no American citizen would do at any price.

I listen to elected officials, sworn to uphold the Constitution, who do not have a clue what it says. I sincerely believe our own Attorney General, Pamela Bondi, has never read it, end-to-end. Free speech, free assembly, the right of citizens to redress grievances, freedom of religion (and the ban on establishing a state religion), due process (particularly against wrongful incarceration), severe restrictions on how arrests can be made, the function of warrants, the right against self-incrimination, etc., etc. are at the core of the oath violated by elected officials every day, with increasing abandon and laced with a “we’re better than them” self-righteousness.

In a few days, I will post a blog entitled “What Did the Constitution Intend, and Is it Still Relevant Today?” Please read it. Here’s a teaser: the US Constitution was passed by a very small (under 4 million people), isolated nation, running away from European monarchies with a population that was more than 95% farmers. The Bill of Rights, the first ten amendments, quickly passed (in 1789) to fix some basic, overlooked fundamental rights. Since the 27th amendment was enacted in 1992, a non-controversial amendment about congressional pay, our Constitution has become the most unamendable such founding document in the democratic world.

So when the administration amped up the immigration sweep, expanding from those hardened criminals it touted as its campaign message to literally millions of working undocumented aliens living in our midst, most paying taxes, and helping to build and maintain what was and still will be for a short while, the most prosperous on the planet… what were they thinking?! That they could unilaterally amend the Constitution to deport any undocumented alien without a hearing, even those legally in the United States, then believing that they could deport American citizens because their parents weren’t born here… again without due process?! It was hardly a subtle reality!

The administration claims providing due process to the millions of undocumented aliens would be excessively burdensome, resulting in millions of hearings, costing billions of dollars. Therefore, fifth-rate lawyers and uneducated opinion-mongers decided that they, and not the US Supreme Court, would interpret the US Constitution as applicable solely to most (but not all) American “citizens.”

What were they thinking when they began the massive round-up, now exploding into peaceful protests with tear gas, all across the United States… that they could suspend or ignore the Constitution? Just listening to the irate rightwing pundits and masses of their followers that America should have an expedited means of throwing criminals, or people who looked like them, out of the country on the whim/opinion of a usually masked ICE agent… reminds me of the Jim Crow era, after the Civil War when lynching Blacks was just fine. 

I’m Peter Dekom, and I have news for those irate Americans: the Constitution intended that anytime the government wanted to deprive anyone within its borders of liberty or other constitutional rights, it was supposed to be seriously burdensome!!!