June Was Not A Good Month For Democracy
by Justin Rosario
Republicans are not exactly a subtle lot and June was not exactly a subtle month in the GOP's continuing war on democracy and decency in the United States. Between the Republican wing of the Supreme Court declaring that Republicans can gerrymander themselves into permanent power, white Republican domestic terrorists overturning the will of the people in Oregon, and Donald Trump literally torturing children for the express purpose of political leverage, the American right wing continues to lurch towards pure fascism with zero indication they will stop until they're bleeding to death in the streets.
That's not a threat, it's a prediction. The right is sprinting towards domestic terrorism and these past few weeks are solidifying that reality.
Let's start with the concentration camps. Not only did we learn that the Trump's regime of soulless monsters is still stealing children from their parents in direct violation of the courts, they're keeping them in conditions that violate every conceivable child welfare law:
“The conditions within which [children] are held could be compared to torture facilities,” states a declaration by Dr. Dolly Lucio Sevier, a pediatrician who visited one of the facilities this month, in the lawsuit. “That is, extreme cold temperatures, lights on 24 hours a day, no adequate access to medical care, basic sanitation, water, or adequate food.”
“The declarations of class members also disclose that they are detained in what they call ‘hieleras,’ or ‘iceboxes,’ or in cages, under appalling, overcrowded, and unsanitary conditions which has caused a health crisis for class members and the deaths of several children,” the lawsuit alleges. “Class member children are held for weeks in deplorable conditions, without access to soap, clean water, showers, clean clothing, toilets, toothbrushes, adequate nutrition or adequate sleep.”
The children, including infants and expectant mothers, are dirty, cold, hungry and sleep-deprived, the documents state.
“Because the facilities deny basic hygiene to the children, the flu is spreading among detained class members, who also are not receiving essential medical assessments or prompt medical treatment,” according to the lawsuit.
The standard comeback from the right is that Obama kept migrant kids in cells as well bla-bla-bla. The difference, of course, is that when it happened under Obama, it's because there was a massive influx of unaccompanied children and we were unprepared for it. The government scrambled to find relatives inside the US to send those kids to or sent them back home and we did it as quickly as possible.
The Trump regime, on the other hand, is stealing these children from the adults they're coming here with and then doing nothing to find homes for them. That's the family separation policy that has never existed until Trump implemented it.
Worse, the prison guards in charge of torturing the children are stone cold sociopaths:
Girl, age 15
“I started taking care of [name redacted, age five] in the Ice Box after they separated her from her father. I did not know either of them before that. She was very upset. The workers did nothing to try to comfort her. I tried to comfort her and she has been with me ever since. [Redacted] sleeps on a mat with me on the concrete floor. We spend all day every day in that room. There are no activities, only crying.”Girl, age unknown
“The day we arrived, my baby became sick. She could not open her eyes and had a fever which got much worse during the day. I asked the guard for help and he told me to ‘just deal with it.’ I asked for help again, and was ignored. The third time I asked, I was crying because she was so much worse I was very worried for her. After two days, they took her to the doctor.”Boy, age 17
“I am in a room with dozens of other boys. Some have been as young as three or four years old. Some cry. Right now, there is a 12-year-old who cries a lot. Others try to comfort him. One of the officers makes fun of those who cry.”Girl, age 16
“The day after we arrived here, my baby began vomiting and having diarrhea. I asked to see a doctor and they did not take us. I asked again the next day and the guard said ‘She doesn’t have the face of a sick baby. She doesn’t need to see a doctor.’ My baby daughter has not had medicine since we first arrived. She has a very bad cough, fever and continues to vomit and have diarrhea.”
Just to be clear, when these stories came out, people who had been held prisoner by Iran, Somalia pirates, and the goddamn Taliban pointed out that they were given soap, toothbrushes, and regular showers. The United States of America, "Land of the Free," treats children and babies worse than some of the most repressive regimes in the world. We're lower than fucking pirates. Pirates!
Worse, we know it's being done on purpose because when concerned citizens flooded Border Patrol with soap and toothpaste and food and diapers, they were turned away. Border Patrol told them that they had everything under control and were fully stocked. In other words, they're admitting that they could properly care for these children but they are choosing not to.
Fascism Ascendant
On June 20th, Oregon Senate Republicans staged a walkout in order to prevent a vote on a climate change bill they opposed. They didn't have the votes to stop the bill but by leaving, they denied the state senate the quorum they needed to pass it.
This wasn't the real problem since Democrats have done the same thing although when they've done it in the past, it was to stop Republicans from rigging elections through redistricting and Voter ID. One party walked out to protect democracy, the other walked out to keep pollution as rampant as possible. It's not exactly a "both sides do it" situation.
Still, walking out wasn't the problem. The problem came when white nationalist militias threatened to murder anyone who tried to force Republicans to come back. And Republicans welcomed them with open arms:
One of the lawmakers on the lam, Republican Brian Boquist (R), warned that he would resort to violence rather than return to the state, implying in a local television interview that he would attack law enforcement officers sent to retrieve him.
“Send bachelors and come heavily armed,” Boquist said. “I’m not going to be a political prisoner in the state of Oregon. It’s just that simple.”
I don't know about you, but I'm old enough to remember when "Blue Lives Mattered." I should take a moment to point out that one of the single deadliest groups for the police has been right wing extremists.
Putting that aside, we had white nationalist militias literally threatening domestic terrorism and the national reaction was...meh. One of our two major political parties went all in with domestic terrorists and the media yawned.
The Oregon GOP tweeted that a "Heavily armed militia lays siege to Oregon's Capitol as Senate Democrats cower in fear" ostensibly as a joke but the Capitol had been shut down because of a credible threat of violence from right wing terrorists. When is a joke not really a joke?
While this was going on, the press was spending the better part of a week clutching its pearls because Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez accurately labeled the facilities on the border where children are being deliberately tortured, "concentration camps." Chuck fucking Todd, who can't seem to find any spare outrage for those children, threw a hissy fit at AOC for daring to speak the truth about we as a nation are doing.
So, to keep score: We are supposed to be mad at Democrats if they talk about the torture of children the wrong way, but we're supposed to ignore Republicans when they literally, not figuratively, literally, threaten to kill the police.
Since I started writing this article, the story broke about a Facebook group where the same Border Patrol agents who are not at all soulless monsters post about how much they hate the people they are abusing in their not at all concentration camps.
Amid a national discussion about the inhumane treatment of migrants at the US–Mexico border, the Facebook page provides insight into the mindset of those who are employed to secure the border. The page shows “a pervasive culture of cruelty aimed at immigrants within CBP,” Daniel Martinez, a sociologist at the University of Arizona in Tucson told ProPublica. “This isn’t just a few rogue agents or ‘bad apples.’”
AOC visited one of the not at all concentration camps and the guards, who had the guns, said they felt threatened by the tiny congresswoman as they acted in a decidedly unprofessional manner:
Eventually, we'll hear they were "just following orders." Just give it time.
And to get us ready for that, we have Tucker Carlson giving a thumbs up to atrocities on his nightly White Power Hour:
"On the other hand, you know, you’ve got to be honest about what it means to lead a country; it means killing people. Not on the scale the North Koreans do, but a lot of countries commit atrocities, including a number that we’re closely allied with. So I'm not a relativist or anything, but it's important to be honest about that."
Hey, what's a few genocides between friends, amirite?! We'll have the cattle cars rolling in no time because once you have enough of the country desensitized to the systemic torture of children, how much farther is it, really, to state sanctioned mass murder?
And it's not like we can fully count on the will of the people to solve this problem because Republicans are on track to steal elections for the next decade.
Supreme Corruption
June of 2019 was the month that the Republican wing of the Court finally stopped pretending to be anything other than an arm of the GOP by ruling that the judiciary has no say in political gerrymandering. Which is weird since most of them previously wanted very badly to stop independent panels from drawing district boundaries, a state-level practice that would effectively end gerrymandering.
Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. issued a biting dissent, accusing the majority of using a “magic trick” to impose its policy preferences.
“No matter how concerned we may be about partisanship in redistricting, this court has no power to gerrymander the Constitution,” Roberts wrote. He was joined in dissent by Justices Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas and Samuel A. Alito Jr.
So which is it? The Court can't get involved with state-level decisions on how to draw districts or it can? Oh wait! The answer is "Whatever benefits the Republican Party." Independent panels are very bad for Republicans therefore the Court should strike them down. Gerrymandering is very good for Republicans, therefor, the Court doesn't have the right to weigh in on what states do. That these things are in direct contradiction is irrelevant: Chief Justice Roberts has a party to protect.
And in case you think the Court ruling against allowing Trump and his white nationalist cronies to add a citizenship question to the Census was a win, think again.
Roberts is still trying to maintain the fiction of legitimacy for his Court and the Trump regime was so arrogant and sloppy in lying about how it came to add the question to the Census that there was no way to rule in Trump's favor and still maintain even the fiction of the fiction. Had Trump hired slightly smarter criminals, this would not have been a problem.
As it is, Roberts gave Trump a Mulligan:
Yet, while that is a victory for voting rights, it is an extraordinarily narrow one. Roberts emphasizes that “we do not hold that the agency decision here was substantively invalid.” Rather New York‘s holding is that “agencies must pursue their goals reasonably,” and “reasoned decision making under the Administrative Procedure Act calls for an explanation for agency action.” Instead, “what was provided here was more of a distraction.”
The result is that the Commerce Department will get another chance to explain its reasoning — though whether it is willing to admit the real reason why it wants a citizenship question is an open matter, as is the question of whether they can do so quickly enough to meet the deadline to print the 2020 forms.
Considering that the Republican wing of the Court has already ruled that partisan gerrymandering is perfectly fine, one imagines that partisan rigging of the Census wouldn't bother them too much, either.
As of this writing, the Trump regime has said that it will not continue to pursue adding the citizenship question to the Census. This would appear to be a victory for democracy based solely on the abject stupidity of Trump and his cronies. But one is forced to wonder how the Roberts Court will respond should Trump "accidentally" start printing millions of Census forms with the question included. Would the Republicans on the Court rule against Trump or conveniently throw up its hands and say "Well, since they're already started, might as well let it go?"
And even if the Court ruled against him again, would Trump listen? It's not like he's faced any consequences at all for blatantly violating the law so far. And with Senate Republicans protecting him, why wouldn't he keep doing whatever he wants?
As much as it feels like it, Trump is not the end of America.
Trump is not going to successfully stage a coup. Despite the fact that it appears Trump is grooming Ivanka to be his appointed successor, there will be no Trump dynasty ruling America. He and his family of grifters are simply not smart enough to overthrow a country this large.
He is, however, trailblazing the path for the Republican who will. Someone smarter and more capable. Someone more like Putin who will have people disappeared and surround himself with competent criminals. Right now, the GOP is propping Trump up because his regime is filled with bumbling buffoons and they need Senate Republicans to cover up their idiocy. But what happens when someone fills the government with people with a plan, people who are not just out to line their pockets and serve some corporate benefactors?
We already know Republicans will fall in line no matter what. We already know that millions of Americans will roar their approval and bloodlust as long as this successor to Trump hits all of the white nationalist high notes they crave. We already know that Fox News, AM Hate Radio, and right wing hate sites will act as state media, relentlessly pushing out propaganda 24/7. We even know now that conservative religious leaders will abandon every tenet of their faith in the pursuit of political power and their entire flock of mindless followers will sell their souls to feed their hatred of the rest of us.
Sooner than later, a Republicans will harness that power and use it far more effectively than Trump. Trump is the moron who accidentally mixes some chemicals together and blows himself up. The next guy will build a bomb to take down the American government.
If we allow another Republican anywhere near the White House again, that is. Think about that the next time someone tells you they want to "shake things up" or "give the other side a turn." The next time Republicans hold the White House, they're going to do everything in their power to make sure they never lose it again no matter how much blood they have to spill.
We have one chance to stop them, right now, and maybe prevent a civil war. But the right is so far gone, there may be no way to prevent it except by putting them down like rabid dogs when they almost inevitably take to the streets to "take back their country" when they can't steal elections anymore. Who knows how much worse it will be if they worm their way back into power?
(image via Vox)
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Democrats: Beware The Circular Firing Squad
by Ben Cohen
One of the best explanations I’ve heard about America’s fractured political spectrum goes something like this. The country can be divided into four broad categories:
1) The Far Right
2) The Center Right
3) The Far Left
4) The Center Left
These categories and their relationships with one another can be broken down as follows: