Slavery by Another Name "MAGA"

Whether or not you blindly support the impulsive and contradictory policies of the Trump administration or not, you would have to admit that the true agenda of Donald Trump has manifested itself. Trump ran on and some would say won the Election of 2016 by having a “Zero Tolerance” policy against immigrants. Don’t kid yourself, we are talking about immigrants from what Trump described as being from “Shithole” countries.

I had heard about the caravans of immigrants making their way through Mexico from Central America for months. John Kelly and Jeff Sessions have done interviews where they laid out the official policy of the Trump administration as to how they would deal with this inevitable problem. Make no mistake about it, it’s a problem. Now that we’ve concluded that we have a problem, let me offer a few observations based on comments and actions I have observed as this catastrophe of public policy has unfolded.

The overwhelming question is, “How will the kids be reunited with their parents?” I’ve concluded, “Never.” How soon do we as a nation forget, or perhaps refuse to acknowledge that this country was founded on the backs of slaves?

The Constitution that we claim to uphold to this day has a 13^th  Amendment that clearly states that slavery is still legal when it comes to those who find themselves incarcerated. Under slavery when a child was separated from their parents, there was never a provision to have them reunited. The Native Americans who had their children taken away were never reunited. If you can admit that this is true, my question is, “What makes you think that these kids will ever be reunited with their parents?”

With the news constantly covering the plight of the detained kids the fact that Trump is in the process of rolling back the Child Labor Laws is getting no coverage. They repeat the refrain, “What’s going to happen to the kids?” If Trump is successful in taking our Child Labor Laws back to a time when farming was the prominent engine of the economy, it wouldn’t take you very long to surmise that these kids will be a source of cheap labor.

You can call it adoption or whatever fancy name you want to give it but, these families from Central America didn’t give their kids over to be sold (adopted) as slaves. Neither did the parents from the continent of Africa or an Indian tribe that was driven off their land. I choose to call it what it was called from the creation of this country, "Slavery."

Surely this may sound absurd to you but, electing Trump as president was absurd to me. Can we admit that absurdity has a way of becoming American policy? Of course, you can admit that. And if you can’t, well you just might be the genesis of this present problem by helping to elect a man as president who told everyone from the first political speech he ever gave.  You remember, “Mexico is not sending their best, they’re sending rapist, they are bringing drugs etc. etc. etc.”

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 [WC1]

My People Perish From Lack of Knowledge

Fake News is a term that was introduced into the lexicon by a man who has spent his whole life living in an alternate reality. Norms that have shaped the perception of American citizens have been shattered in a matter of months even though it took centuries to develop those perceived realities.

America was and is an experiment that since its conception has offered an alternative to the rule of monarchs and dictators. The founding fathers dismissed the notion of having a king and instead set up a  Republic that would be governed by the majority. This type of rule is commonly known as a Democracy.

Richard R, Beeman, P.hD wrote an article for the "National Constitution Center" where he said:

If there is a lesson in all of this it is that our Constitution is neither a self-actuating nor a self-correcting document. It requires the constant attention and devotion of all citizens. There is a story, often told, that upon exiting the Constitutional Convention Benjamin Franklin was approached by a group of citizens asking what sort of government the delegates had created. His answer was: "A republic if you can keep it." The brevity of that response should not cause us to under-value its essential meaning: democratic republics are not merely founded upon the consent of the people, they are also absolutely dependent upon the active and informed involvement of the people for their continued good health.

When you consider that in the last presidential election there were more people who did not vote as there were people who voted. If this is not disturbing to you consider that the losing candidate received three million votes than the eventual winner. You may ask, "how did he win?" You have asked the million dollar question. It's called the "Electoral College." This system was basically a compromise given to the slaveholding states to give them a more equal representation by counting their slaves and all African-Americans as 3/5 of a human. Yes, they could be counted for the purpose of congressional representation by had no right to vote.

Herein lies the problem in America. African-Americans (and women) were given the right to vote but the powers that be have worked diligently to make their vote of non-effect. Everything from lynching to Jim Crow has been used. The flavor of the day now is Gerrymandering congressional districts. The process went into overdrive by the twice election of the first African-American president Barack Obama.

That election led us headlong down the road to allow the complete antithesis of Obama to emerge. America is a nation founded on racism, genocide, and slavery. We as a nation has never come to grips with this reality and it haunts us to this day. We can occasionally sweep it under the rug but the problem is still there.

Trump masterfully used the racist element of our society coupled with a targeted cyber attack by Putin to defeat all the Republican candidates in the primary and ultimately the most qualified person to ever seek the Oval Office. But, as the Constitution mandates there was a change of power and the new president was seated. The Constitution also put in checks and balances that have been ignored by the party in control.

The only hope for this democracy now is to persuade those hundreds of million voters who didn't vote in 2016 to show up in 2018. How ingenious was it for the founding fathers to put in a safety valve to allow us to correct the direction of the nation every two years instead of every presidential election.