[19 June 2018]
I was planning to write next
week, nearer to July 4. However, the spreading/deepening tragedies
associated with the morally indefensible ‘zero tolerance’ actions by the Trump
et al administration and supported (from passive tolerance to shameless
endorsement) by millions of Americans demand some comment now. We must
resist being distracted by our privilege/security and instead protest with
those who are categorically opposed to and painfully distressed by this
brutal/inhumane scarring of thousands of children and their families.
This administration – with federal government complicity – contradicts yet
again core values which I thought (mistakenly) a strong majority of Americans would
sacrificially endorse. We are searching every day for ways to be informed,
to speak, to act. We are increasing our financial support for a
non-profit medical practice with mental health services that cares for indigent
and immigrant families. We cannot imagine the parents’ despair when we
see/hear their desperate children torn away from them. We know we must do
more. I recommend two books I began reading a few days ago to reinforce
my intent to be aligned with those who will be purposefully marginalized and
threatened by most Independence Day events – Philip Foner’s We the Other
People collection of alternative declarations by the disadvantaged and
powerless since 1776 and Elliot Gorn’s Mother Jones: The Most Dangerous
Woman in America biography of a courageous activist who was a seminal
spirit/voice of the labor movement a century ago. Based on decades
studying closely the generation that came of age after World War One, I find
the indications incontrovertible that the American society today is shockingly
near the mix of fear, disinformation, intolerance, nationalism, self-interest,
intimidation, and violence that led millions to accept/embrace the totalitarian
and dictatorial brutes who emerged in Germany, Russia, Italy, Spain, and Japan
after World War One.