If Donald’s ego-serving slither toward despotism continues at an unchanged pace, he will undoubtedly hasten into the spotlight and make the 4th of July something for which he can take credit. Lord only knows how he’ll work in “fake news,” hopefully not by condemning early pamphleteer Tom Paine. And he undoubtedly will find some way to defame Obama—which is pretty much a given for Donald whenever there’s a news camera on him.
From the Declaration of Independence, July 4, 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 to 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 shown 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 . . .”
Some of the charges against England’s King George III as listed in the Declaration also are of interest in the context of how we are being governed today:
—He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.
—He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.
—He has endeavored to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither . . .
—He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.
—He has combined with others to subject unto a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:
—For cutting off our Trade with all parts the world.
—For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent.
Etc., but these alone should suffice to give one pause these 242 years later as the nation jousts with the administration of Donald Trump.
ELSEWHERE, the timing seemed a bit odd on June 19 when the U. S. announced its withdrawal from the United Nations Human Rights Council. Just a day earlier, a news item read: “In a span of less than two months, U.S. officials have separated some 2,300 children from their parents after they crossed the border into the U.S., according to the Department of Homeland Security. And the administration's policy has attracted a sharp rebuke from the U.N. high commissioner on human rights, Zeid Raad al-Hussein. ‘The thought that any State would seek to deter parents by inflicting such abuse on children is unconscionable,’ he said Monday, in comments opening the 38th session of the Human Rights Council.”
The rest of the story is that Trump has aways been huge on Israel and given Palestine short shrift. Difficult to pin down his self-serving motivation here. Military alliance, anti-Arab bias? Wooing the New York-Florida Jewish vote? The administration’s argument seems to be generally that the hypocritical council, instead of focusing on real human-rights issues, has used its time and resources to bully Israel and question Israel's legitimacy as a sovereign state.
This U.S. withdrawal is not entirely supported on the Democratic side. As Rep. Eliot Engel, the ranking Democratic member of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, said in a statement, ”But the way to deal with this challenge is to remain engaged and work with partners to push for change . . . By withdrawing from the council, we lose our leverage and allow the council's bad actors to follow their worst impulses unchecked.”
Meanwhile, the Trump regime’s action is arrogantly silly and unthinking considering the manner in which it is dealing with human rights, and humanity in general, along the Mexican border.
After tearing apart families and caging/warehousing children everywhere short of Guantanamo Bay, King Donald had the gall June 22 to stick to his main propaganda themes of “fake news” and “tremendous crime” by refugee immigrants. dismissing reports of family separation as “phony stories of sadness and grief.” The real victims, he said, are Americans killed by those who cross the border unlawfully.
He shamelessly lies on all counts, promoting racism and paranoia among the loutish portion of his “base” supporters—and fear in the public mind in general. Consider for starters that even members of Congress have been denied access to holding facilities where young immigrant children taken away from their families have been herded into cages—to be dispersed hither and yon to sites unknown to their mothers and fathers.
On June 22 Donald managed to round up a dozen or so of to whom he gave the buzz-word descriptions “angel families”—who have lost loved ones at the hands of people in the country illegally. Young migrant children are likely to be reunited with their families, he said, unlike the victims of murders.
Donald persists in refusing to recognize statistics that show violent crime is, per capita, less among immigrants than among American citizens. The populations of prisons around the nation, the daily news in papers across the country, in addition to official records, bear this out. Yet Donald insists on creating in the public mind a world based on his “alternate facts.”
And he tweets on. This one of June 19 is one of his most insane yet, as he transfers his personal guilt onto the back of one his favorite scapegoats, hoping to influence the mid-term elections: “Democrats are the problem. They don’t care about crime and want illegal immigrants, no matter how bad they may be, to pour into and infest our country, like MS-13. They can’t win on their terrible policies, so they view them as potential voters.”
It’s a long, long way from the Rio Grande to a voting booth, Donald, especially with you in charge. And by then, you and your ilk—if allowed to maraud unrestrained—undoubtedly will have found a way to suppress even more votes on a basis of ethnic bias than you do now. Appointing more judges who will uphold GOP gerrymandering also should help.
Where were you in October, Donald, when a white guy killed 58 and wounded another 851 during that shooting in Las Vegas—the deadliest-ever mass shooting by an individual in the U.S.?By May you were at the annual NRA convention in Texas, telling the assembled crowd: "Your Second Amendment rights are under siege, but they will never, ever be under siege as long as I'm your president.” And here you are trying to make violent crime synonymous with illegal immigration by associating all Hispanic refugees with a notorious gang formed back in the later part of the Carter administration—and which apparently flourished during Ronald Reagan’s eight-year nap . . . then just has continued on. .
So Hispanics from Honduras, Mexico, etc. refugees at our border seeking shelter, food, sanctuary for their children and themselves are seen by sociopathic Donald not as our human brothers and sisters of the same mother but as some form of bug or rodent infestation (see tweet above). Better jack up your proposed new space branch of the military, Donald. You may need it in yourx campaign for world supremacy and adulation of your personal way of life. Take the necessary funding out of all current social programs recognizing the poor, the ailing, the disadvantaged in general
“You are the heart and soul of the Republican party,” Donald said to one cheering pep-rally group the other day, fresh from his latest all-out assault on immigration. I know Republicans with heart, and I know Republicans with soul. They are not who Donald envisions as “his people.”
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