Ark of the Lost Angels

World War II Memorial, Washington DC _{(Credit: Author)}

 There is nothing wrong with America that cannot be cured by what is right with America.

_{President Bill Clinton during his first inaugural address}

Yesterday showed both what is wrong and right with America.

Donald Trump is a blight upon this nation and its history. He and his cretinous minions are the perfect distillation of the horrific, selfish, destructive, evil moments of our history. They rank among the worst of the American monsters throughout this nation’s history. Not for their political beliefs, not for their supposed ‘love’ for the nation and its people, not for their religious beliefs.

But for subverting and perverting every aspect of what makes our nation truly great. For their callous and inhumane nature in dealing with what they perceive to be the greatest problems with America, which is merely an excuse to exercise tyrannical authority and indulge their insatiable appetite for power. For their abject disdain for competence and character because it means they might hear the word “No” to their desires.

Patriotism is in short supply these days. Patriotism means loving your country so much that you are willing to criticize it and its leaders. Patriotism means taking drastic steps to secure the future of a nation whose ideals have stood as a beacon for generations across the world. Patriotism means criticizing the shortcomings of reaching those ideals, holding ourselves accountable, and not just pledging ways to do better but actually carrying through. Patriotism means safeguarding the symbols of a nation so that they are not corrupted by nationalists.

Nationalism is the blind adoration of the greatest charlatans. Framing any criticism as being treasonous to the nation at large. Of wishing to crush political opposition to dust for daring to speak up against injustices. For believing, wholeheartedly, that the country can do no wrong and has never done wrong. For politicizing institutions to overthrow democracy. Nationalism is inherently a supremacist attitude, and it has no place amongst true patriots.

“Patriotism can be turned to good or ill purposes, but in most people it never dies. It’s a persistent attachment, like loyalty to your family, a source of meaning and togetherness, strongest when it’s hardly conscious. National loyalty is an attachment to what makes your country yours, distinct from the rest, even when you can’t stand it, even when it breaks your heart. This feeling can’t be wished out of existence. And because people still live their lives in an actual place, and the nation is the largest place with which they can identify—world citizenship is too abstract to be meaningful—patriotic feeling has to be tapped if you want to achieve anything big. If your goal is to slow climate change, or reverse inequality, or stop racism, or rebuild democracy, you will need the national solidarity that comes from patriotism.”

George Packer

Those who support Donald Trump do not love America. Christians who support Donald Trump do not love Jesus. They are nationalists who believe in a fascist future for America. One where this becomes, not a land of opportunity, but a kingdom of oppression for all but the chosen few of a mad tyrant. A tyrant whose will fluctuates so wildly as though it were a flag in a tornado. A tyrant already losing his grip on reality, who nevertheless grandstands and tries to appear strong, all the while destroying the nation’s ability to defend itself and serve its citizens. More disgustingly, his rhetoric inspires the dregs of societies, the kind of violent individuals who stormed the Capitol building on January 6^th, 2021, to overthrow a free and fair election on his orders simply because he lost. The kind of violent individuals who act as lone wolf attackers to advance, like terrorists who blow up marathons or go on shooting sprees at gay nightclubs or mail toxins or bombs to people they disagree with.

Or who kill members of the political opposition. Yesterday morning, a Minnesota State Representative and her husband were assassinated in a politically motivated shooting by a supporter of Donald Trump impersonating a police officer. Representative Melissa Hortman worked hard to deliver for the people of Minnesota, and by all accounts she and her husband, Mark, were good parents, friends, neighbors, and people. The shooter also targeted Minnesota State Senator John Hoffman and his wife Yvette. Both survived their injuries. Yvette shielded the couple’s daughter with her own body.

A scant few hours later, the military marched through the nation’s capital with a pathetic parade to ‘celebrate’ the Army’s 250^th anniversary and the President’s birthday. Such a grandiose state celebration draws unfavorable comparisons to the Soviet Union, who routinely held military parades through Moscow’s Red Square to show off their might to the world. The USSR was an authoritarian regime built to oppress its own people, and the only nation which formerly comprised the Soviet Union which holds any nostalgia for those days is Russia. The same Russia which is currently falling flat on its face in Ukraine with its pointless and brutal war of aggression against its neighbor. Russia was a paper tiger, and its shortcomings have been exposed, even while they still claim the crown as the second-most powerful military in the world. To emulate them in America, the nation with the absolute most powerful military in the world, serves only to undercut the nation’s perceived power. True strength does not need to show how strong it is. More damningly than that, it paints a society which exists as a free and liberal democracy as the type of nation which is all too willing to send in the troops at the first sign it isn’t getting what it wants.

Such as the people of Los Angeles not sitting down and shutting up about the disorganized, unlawful, and inhumane deportations of immigrants. Small scale protests were artificially enflamed by this administration in its press conferences and complicit media outlets to allow this president to ‘justify’ federalizing the California National Guard against the wishes of the California governor to ‘keep the peace.’ Then supplementing the illegally federalized National Guard members with active duty Marines, who are legally prohibited from performing law enforcement duties on American soil.

This administration hates immigrants on irrational and illogical grounds, merely because it plays well with bigots and cowards. Using federal immigration officers as unmarked jackbooted thugs is an abuse of federal tax dollars and the trust which the American people have placed in their institutions from a pragmatic standpoint. The economy is boosted with higher levels of immigration, and undocumented immigrants are a sin which this nation has swept under the rug in favor of economic development, using their status as a leash to pull on hardworking people who have come to this nation to build a new life for themselves.

The true sin is the lack of ability to handle immigration in this country with grace and decency, with logic and reason, with fair and just laws. “Illegal immigration” is an issue because the legal process is so convoluted, costly, and unfair to those who are willing to do the jobs the rest of us turn our noses up at. Furthermore, an administration repeatedly lying to the American people to create the narrative of, “all illegal immigrants are criminals and deserve to be treated with cruelty as they are ejected from our nation” is morally repugnant.

Due process is the bedrock of a nation governed by laws. That every person accused of breaking one of the rules is allowed a fair day in court to be proved guilty or innocent by a jury of their peers. Under Constitutional requirement, is not subjected to cruel and unusual punishment. The United States Immigrations and Customs Enforcement shipping detainees to a prison in El Salvador with no due process, no convictions of any crimes, and no timeline for their release is the same level of cruelty practices by the Nazis during the Holocaust. ICE carrying out the wills of a tinpot dictator is no different than Hitler’s Schutzstaffel. A federal ‘law enforcement’ agency with no regard for the legal system is not fit for purpose and should be swiftly dismantled.

In a civilized society, the state has a monopoly on violence. That is part of the social contract. In return, the state must look out for all of its citizens in a just manner. Throughout world history, including American history, when the state breaks its part of the contract or endorses the violence of others to execute its will, the people respond with violence in return. Often times the state blinks and reforms to better fulfill its end of the social contract. When it does not, conflict which threatens to consume everything arises. The state has not fulfilled its end of the contract in America.

And the American people said as much yesterday when they took to the streets in cities and towns all across the nation in the No Kings protests. This is the America we need to see more of. The ones who wave the flag alongside protest signs and banners laying out their gripes with the United States. Nationalists, tyrants, liars, bigots, and traitors do not get to own the symbols of America. They do not get to own the American identity. Every nation’s hands are stained with blood. Every country has skeletons in its closet. Allowing ourselves to be consumed by “only the bad guys love this country” plays right into their hands. In doing so, we ignore the good we are capable of. We empower lies to determine reality.

What is the cost of lies? Lies cost us a future. Lies cost us a nation which thrives on truth and justice in favor of one which exists due to fear and terror. In the shadows and smoke, we cannot see the storms bearing down on us. We lose our grasp on an objective reality and instead allow our world to be constructed by someone who simply shouts louder than the others. We allow ourselves to ignore reason, logic, nuance, and the uncomfortably gray nature of the truth in favor of easy falsehoods and comforting lies. We ignore the reality around us in favor of fantasy and illusion which don’t challenge our worldview or our beliefs. When the truth comes to light – and it always comes to light – the reckoning is always proportional to the scale of the falsehoods which covered it up. The cost of lies is paid in blood, in toil, in anguish, and in lives.

We are a nation now rejecting false realities. Ensuring we share information, we strike back against lies, and elevate the truth so that it is impossible to ignore. Donald Trump looks weak because of the weak attendance and amateur nature of his great military parade. Donald Trump looks weak because every decision he makes gets rolled back in court or countered in some other way. Donald Trump is weak because there has yet to be a challenge to which America cannot rise. An addle-minded, mercurial thrice-failed casino owner and former reality television personality doesn’t stand a chance against the people who truly love and believe in the United States of America.

This is the best of America. The America that stands for something. The America that refuses to back down in the face of tyranny. The America willing to confront monsters openly, as many of our family members did in the 1940s in Europe. We are a flawed, imperfect, troubled nation with a grotesque history. However, there are principles worth fighting for and a legacy worth protecting. We will struggle. We will lose. We will be faced with dark storms and even darker nights, but so long as we do not abandon the path, we will prevail.

There will be times when the struggle seems impossible. Tyranny requires constant effort, so it is up to us to ensure that tyrants don’t see a moment of rest. People, at their basest level, yearn to be free. Yearn to choose their fate. We must safeguard our democracy, our society, and the ability to choose our own fate today for those who come after. For all those who come after. For all those here now. The immigrants being unjustly targeted by a racist administration. The members of the LGBT community being targeted by ‘Christians’ who live in a decidedly un-Christ-like manner. The disabled who are being dismissed by federal officials as anything less than human beings with dignity and a right to exist. The women who are being told by misogynist dinosaurs that their bodies do not belong to them nor do they deserve a place outside of the home.

To. Hell. With. That.

This nation, which has stood for two and a half centuries, is too important to surrender to authoritarianism, fascism, and hatred. We have a foundation, flawed as it may be, upon which a great society can be built. If we build it. If we refuse to cower in the face of this administration, its henchmen, and the supporters who feel as though they are the most American by exhibiting the least American behaviors. If we remember the first words of our Constitution.

We the People of the United States, in order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

The words “a more perfect union” describe everything about the American experiment. This is a place where we can always do better. The Preamble of our Constitution is a challenge to America to push forward, to build better, to reach higher, to never give up. We established what that more perfect union is looking towards when we told King George III to kick rocks on July 4^th, 1776.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.—That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,—That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

It is our right and duty to fight tyranny in our homeland. People should not be afraid of their governments, rather governments should be afraid of their people. Dictatorships rise and fall by the willingness of the people to tolerate them. It doesn’t mean that there won’t be a struggle. It doesn’t mean that it won’t come with a high cost. Scared animals backed into a corner try to project strength so that they don’t have to fight because they don’t know if they can win. The more they try to make us afraid, the more we can be certain that we are winning. We are the United States of America, and we will not be intimidated by our own trying to destroy this nation. There is a bright future ahead of us, if we are willing to stand up for it.

Tomorrow comes, and only our actions today decide what kind of sun comes with the new dawn.