My friend Bill sends me memes every day for both my edification and my amusement. Here are two I must pass on:
Obama announcing: “We got Osama bin Laden”
Trump announcing: “We got Maria the maid at Holiday Inn.”
And Andy Borowitz:
“The Epstein Report is the first thing Trump didn’t want his name attached to.”
Some of you are wondering if it is correct to aid undocumented residents and interfere with the work of ICE agents. Martin Luther King addressed something similar in his “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” dated 16 April 1963:
We should never forget that everything that Adolf Hitler did in Germany was “legal” and everything the Hungarian freedom fighters did in Hungary was “illegal.” It was “illegal” to aid and comfort a Jew in Hitler’s Germany. Even so, I am sure that, had I lived in Germany at the time, I would have aided and comforted my Jewish brothers.
There is a reason why we celebrate Martin Luther King day and why we will never celebrate Stephen Miller or Kristi Noem day.
If you are an American citizen, you or your ancestors came into this country in only one of four ways:
You were an American Indian. Indigenous people are citizens, although it took some time for that to be recognized.
You were a slave. Citizenship came with the 14th Amendment, although some states recognized citizenship for freed slaves before that.
You were an immigrant. Again, the 14th Amendment said if you are born in the U.S., you are a citizen. It’s right there. If you are born here, you are one of us.
You were a refugee. Under international law countries are obligated to give asylum to refugees who are in danger in their home countries. While this is sometimes ignored, that is the fourth group.
That’s it. The next time someone starts rant about citizenship, explain that and ask which category they or their ancestors fit into.
At one time I liked John Fetterman, but I always thought he was a bit of a phony. He visited Carbon County twice to speak to the Carbon County Dems for Progress and sounded good, but his actual accomplishments were rather meager.
He was mayor of Braddock, PA, but that was not a big deal. Braddock has fewer residents than either Nesquehoning or Lansford. I thought the tattoos of the homicide victims in Braddock were a bit much, and his handling of his health problems was immature at best. Then there was the whole hoodie/shorts silliness.
The person I really liked was his wife. She was smart and gave a much better stump speech than her husband.
I don’t know what to make of his current attitude. I can understand the need to reach out to Trump supporters, but to make the pilgrimage to Trump’s lair in Florida did not sit well with me. The statements defending ICE are reprehensible. His behavior toward his staff is reprehensible. His driving puts people at risk and is reprehensible. If he is unable to carry out his duties, he needs to resign.
The whole thing makes me very sad.
One of the issues early abolitionists argued about was what to do with the slaves provided they ever received their freedom. One proposed solution was to transport them back to Africa, and a colony was set up on the African west coast for that purpose. The colony was called “Liberia,” and its capitol was Monrovia, named for the President of the United States James Monroe. Thousands of freed slaves and freemen eventually repatriated to Liberia.
This idea persisted into the 20th century. The best known advocate for African-Americans repatriating to Africa was Marcus Garvey and his Universal Negro Improvement Association in the 1920s. Garvey also believed that African nations (then mostly colonies) should unite, and this doctrine is known as “Pan-Africanism. I wrote my college honors paper on that topic in 1964.
Trump, of course, knows no African history. He does not know the official language of Liberia is English. I’m sure he thinks of Liberia as just another “shithole” country, as he has referred to countries like Liberia in the past. Our president is basically an idiot.
If we have to live in an authoritarian state where political enemies are punished, the rule of law is set aside, the courts are complicit with illegalities, and the legislature is a rubber stamp, could we at least live in an authoritarian state where the trains run on time.
China is phasing out fossil fuels, is building cheap electric cars, has banned crypto-currency, and does not have a homeless problem. It is giving aid to third world countries, has a strong military, a government-run space program, and a health system that does not mistrust vaccines.
I know that people are jailed there without legal safeguards, but that is true here also. At least in China things seem to work.
Sen. Charles Sumner, one of the most prominent abolitionists in the U.S., annoyed South Carolina congressman Preston Brooks in an anti-slavery speech. 1856 Brooks attacked Sumner on the Senate floor, beating him with a metal-tipped cane. Blood was everywhere, and Sumner barely survived. The response of the South was to send Brooks more canes.
Sumner recovered and, as a U.S. Senator during the Civil War, pushed Lincoln to make emancipation the goal of the war.
Early in his political career he told an audience there were three things to look for in a politician. “The first is backbone, the second is backbone and the third is backbone.”
Given the current state of Congress, those are words to remember.
