A couple of months ago, I wrote in this blog about how the U.S. Embassy in Cambodia had insidiously blocked me from registering my 1-year-old son as an American Citizen.
Their website, mytravelgov.org, would not allow me to enter because I hadn’t linked to an Authenticator app. So I set up the authenticator, which gave instructions as to how link to a website. It said to go into the website and look for the security settings. This turned out to be a perfect Catch-22. I needed to go into the website to set up the authenticator, but I needed to set up the authenticator in order to enter the website.
I was temporarily defeated, but had some other ideas as to how to enter the website and set up a new account. I started to do this on Monday, but when I clicked on Citizen’s Report of Birth Abroad (CRBA), the screen went bright red with a warning from Microsoft that the site was unsafe, so please go back. Similar to the image below:
A US Govt website? Unsafe?
What’s that? A US Government website hacked or otherwise compromised with a warning not to use it? I suspected Elon Musk and DOGE, who somehow compromised hundreds of government websites in order to extract information, especially about foreigners or immigrants.
I was so amazed by this outcome, that I wanted to send a screen shot of that red warning page to a friend. Today, however, the site had been changed — the CRBA option had been completely removed. Vanished.
It appears that it is now completely impossible for American citizens living in Cambodia to register their children as American citizens. What is going on?
The US Government shutdown has produced a lot of misinformation about healthcare for illegal immigrants. That seems to be taking on the role of the central issue of debate.
First, the very term used usually indicates which side you are on. Republicans will say ‘illegal aliens’, while Democrats will say ‘undocumented immigrants.’ If I use the term ‘illegal’, rest assured that I am not taking sides; it’s just easier to type.
So what are the facts? If you are in the US legally, such as a Green Card holder, you can pay into social security and receive ‘free’ benefits of Medicare, Medicaid, etc. If you are an illegal, you cannot, so you are ineligible to receive ‘free’ treatment. Therefore, any discussion about healthcare must include whether you mean legal or illegal.
A recent poll on Yahoo! conflates illegals with legals, simply asking whether ‘non-citizens’ should receive healthcare benefits. It is impossible to answer such a question fairly, if you don’t know whether they are talking about legals or illegals. Many of the answers to the poll show precisely that confusion, and show that many people think of ‘non-citizens’ as illegals. Yahoo should be harshly called out for asking such deceptive, biased questions.
The second confusion lies in the fact that ANYONE (legal or illegal) with an emergency condition must be accepted by hospitals. If a person arrives at the hospital in a coma and a pool of blood, the hospital must admit them, no questions asked about legal status. In this sense, an illegal could receive free treatment. But that rule is not at issue in the shutdown argument. It’s not in the ‘Big, Beautiful Bill’, and will continue to be the case, whatever the outcome of the shutdown. It’s a red herring.
Therefore, Trump’s ad nauseum repetition of the slogan that Dems want illegals to receive free healthcare is bogus on two counts: the fact that illegals are ineligible for Medicare, etc. and cannot just blithely go in for free treatment, as well as the fact that the rule of emergency treatment is sacrosanct precludes its inclusion in shutdown discussions.
Johnson, JD, and Trump himself all seem to think that by repeating the ‘free healthcare for illegals’ mantra, people will believe it and will heap scorn on Democrats.
I think this misleading strategy may backfire. It is to the Dems’ advantage to make healthcare the central issue. If people see the facts, they will realize that the Repubs are trying to cut (Johnson insists on the word ‘reform’) THEIR healthcare, including Medicare and Medicaid. Trying to spin the argument to being about illegals will show that the shutdown has absolutely nothing to do with illegals. It is all about cutting Medicare, Obamacare, and Medicaid (MOM) for EVERYONE, including white, Christian, middle-class American-born citizens. People of both parties will not like that.
I haven’t written about Gaza and Hamas for quite a while, mostly because I am pretty bored with the same killings day after day. I think a lot of people, like myself, are just tired of seeing Gaza in the news every day. The media report that Israel has just bombed a high-rise building, but then there are photos that show vast areas of rubble. It looks as though there ARE no high-rises left.
Gaza – is there anything left?
There have been, however, some recent developments. For one thing, several countries are now recognizing Palestine as a country. What I find bizarre about this, is that there are two ‘countries’, Gaza and the West Bank. They have different governments – Hamas and the Palestinian Authority, who hate each other and have even fought each other. Which government is being recognized by France and other nations? Oddly, it appears that it is the PA that is being recognized, as a political statement about what is happening in Gaza, not the West Bank.
Part of my boredom with the situation is the realization that Jews and Arabs have hated each other and killed each other for centuries, and this trend is likely to continue for more centuries. Normally, I would just say, “Let them fight it out.” The trouble with that attitude is that Israel is receiving billions of dollars in military aid from the West, and in fact, Hamas is receiving support from Qatar and the Arab world. It’s a sort of proxy war. If the US and Qatar would stop supplying arms, I’d guess the conflict would end PDQ.
Unfortunately, as in all wars, there are rich people profiting from those arms sales. It is in their interest to prolong the war. I’d even like to compare the situation with the Epstein files. The rich and powerful can act behind the scenes with impunity, either in sex trafficking or arms trafficking. I have to wonder how much Trump himself, along with his family, is enriching himself from the war.
Also contributing to my boredom is the fact that siege warfare has been the norm around the world for thousands of years. One side surrounds the walled city and starves the people out – women and children. Meanwhile they catapult in some fireballs to kill more civilians. So Gaza is nothing new. Civilian casualties? It’s always been that way. Even in the past century, the US fired-bombed Dresden and killed some 25,000 people in a day or two. Not to forget Japan, where hundreds of thousands of civilians were killed (either immediately or long-term) by the A-bombs. Even before that, the US carpet-bombed Tokyo, killing an estimated 100,000 civilians, and leaving a million homeless. Then there’s the My Lai massacre in Vietnam. The US shouldn’t be lecturing other countries about civilian casualties.
‘Disproportionate response’ is another over-used phrase. I guarantee you that if Cuba sent just one rocket into downtown Miami, Havana would instantly be reduced to rubble.
So now there’s yet another peace proposal on the table. Yawn! Trump’s “20 point proposal” to Hamas could be reduced to one point, nay, one word: “Surrender”. Hamas may be pretty well defeated on the battlefield, but I doubt they will outright surrender. And the fighting will continue.
In summary, I can’t see how the Gaza story will, or even WHETHER it will end. For Hamas, ‘winning’ means simply surviving, so they will fight to the last Gazan. And Israel claims they must eliminate Hamas, which is impossible. And the rich and powerful will continue to make their millions in profits. I can’t see this ending any time soon.
From time to time, my wife takes me on deep dives into Khmer culture. Every September we travel to her native village to celebrate Pchum Ben, the highest religious holiday in Cambodia.
Very briefly, Pchum Ben is the festival of offering food to the ghosts of ancestors who leave hell for a fortnight. Indeed, when we went to the pagoda, people were either contributing sticky-rice cakes or else cash to the monks.
Pretty much the scene I witnessed. The head monk blesses the kneeling gatherers, who then give offerings of food or cash to the monks seated alongside.
However, what I saw at the pagoda was not people undergoing a personal religious experience from offering food to the ancestors. Rather they were just mindlessly going through the motions of what one is supposed to do on Pchum Ben.
I do not wish to take this observation as a condemnation or negative comment. Rather, this repetitive act, performed collectively by hundreds of other worshippers, brings them into contact with the deep roots of their traditions. I saw the entire pagoda experience of these throngs of local people as immersing themselves in a tradition of community solidarity.
Western religions stress individual communication with God through prayer, meditation, and self-reflection. I saw none of this at the pagoda. It was a group exercise, with hundreds of Cambodians reaffirming their connections to their culture and traditions. If anything, they were losing their individual identities by submerging their psyches into the collective consciousness.
Related to this feeling of solidarity is a feeling of continuity. Cambodians can feel the flow of tradition through generations. This is why the family is so important at Pchum Ben. I could feel that sense of cohesion among the members of my wife’s extended family – infants, parents, grandparents, and even great-grandparents together, not to mention the myriad aunts, uncles, cousins, niblings, of all ages. This is not just family solidarity, but the flow of family through the generations.
The afternoon after our visit to the pagoda, a monk was invited to the family homestead to offer blessings. He chanted (in Pali, unintelligible to the thirty or forty family members kneeling at his feet) and sprinkled holy water on us. Again, this was no individual meditative experience, but rather approval from on high of the family values and traditions. In the tradition of Pchum Ben, food and cash were offered as symbolic gifts to the ancestors for the monks to distribute.
The evening after the Pchum Ben gathering (and I was told that ‘Pchum’ actually means ‘gathering’), the extended family came to our family house to party. And Wow! Did they ever party! Dancing, singing, and drinking beer for hours and hours into the night. I have to add that it seemed like good, clean exuberance. I saw no evidence of hard alcohol, drugs or sexual misbehavior. The party was all part of the family solidarity, and should be considered an integral part of the Pchum Ben ceremony.
I want to close with the observations of my wife. She is so happy when visiting her native village – even staying in the house she was born in. She is really ‘in her element’, ‘like a fish in water’, in the bosom of her extended family and all the cultural memes with which she is so familiar. She danced, sang karaoke of her childhood songs, prepared some deliciousl traditional meals, and visited old friends and relatives. Multiply this beaming happiness by the hundreds of people celebrating together in the same way, and you get a feeling for the clan happiness and reaffirmation of family values and traditions.
I said that Pchum Ben was not so much a personal religious experience but a ‘gathering’ of the clan to reaffirm its traditions. However, the transformation I saw in my wife indicates a profound personal experience, as she connected to all the clan members present.
As a post script, I want to refer you to the work of the sociologist Émile Durkheim, who in the early 1900’s outlined a sociological theory of religion. A brief summary of his ideas follows:
Collective consciousness, representing shared beliefs and moral attitudes, emerges through religious practices….. religion is less about your private thoughts and more about the shared experience of being part of something bigger than yourself. Religion isn’t some random set of ideas that people just made up. Instead, it mirrors and strengthens what society already values.
Durkheim’s observations are exactly what I observed in the Cambodian countryside over this Pchum Ben holiday.
I want to examine the honoring of Charlie Kirk by comparing it to the honoring of other Americans. Think of famous Americans honored by statues, etc.; they are often honored in spite of their other weaknesses.
We all know that Thomas Jefferson and George Washington owned slaves. Still they are not honored because of their slaves, but because of other deeds and character traits that somehow override the charge of slavery.
Consider the controversy over the statues of Robert E. Lee. Critics wanted to remove those statues because Lee not only advocated slavery, but committed traitorous acts by fighting against the Union in order to promote slavery. Advocates want to re-erect those statues because, in spite of Lee’s views, he was in fact a great general and an important figure in Southern history.
My favorite example is the composer Stephen Foster, the “Father of American Music”. His well-loved songs – Suwanee River, Old Kentucky Home, Jeannie with the Light Brown Hair, Camptown Races, O Susanna, etc. — are known to all Americans, and there are statues, State Parks and many other memorials to him. What is swept under the carpet is his blatantly racist lyrics – so insulting that many of his songs, especially Kentucky Home and O Susanna, have had their lyrics altered and sanitized.
Foster’s early career was in minstrel shows, especially those in which white people painted their faces black and ridiculed the behavior of black people. However, my point is that Foster is honored in spite of his racist background, certainly not because of it. For many more examples, and a rational discussion, see the website Tra-vers-ing: The Stephen Foster Problem – tra•vers•ing
To turn to Charlie Kirk. Why is he being honored? I claim this is precisely because of –not despite — his racist, homophobic, misogynist, and otherwise bigoted statements. Some different crusader, say, for equal rights, DEI, due process, gun safety, etc. would never be put on such a pedestal. No, any monument to Kirk will be a monument to racism and bigotry. In this way, the honoring of Kirk is totally different from that of other Americans.
His supporters say, “No, he is being honored as a crusader for 1st Amendment free speech rights, as he spoke his mind in all sorts of venues.” I would argue that he was a crusader for his own rights, but decidedly not for others. Now, after his death, hundreds of Americans are being fired from their jobs for speaking out against Kirk. Free Speech?The Daily Beast really lays this out in no uncertain terms:
Opinion: Why MAGA’s Canonization of Charlie Kirk Is Truly Monstrous
Kirk is being praised as a champion of “free speech.” He was not. He mercilessly attacked those with whom he did not agree. He was an enemy of truth and of equity. Kirk perverted the idea of our First Amendment rights to suggest they required universities to embrace lies, as though there were some obligation to present unfounded idiocy and malice simply because some special interest or political group supported them.
At first, Kirk’s supporters, especially Trump, used his assassination to attack the alleged violence of Democrats and the Left. Flying flags at half staff was done to remind everyone how the despicable radical Leftists had murdered this honorable crusader. The wind was taken out of Trump’s sails when it was found that the assassin was actually a to-the-right-of-MAGA nut job. Still, Trump manages to continue blaming Democrats. The argument goes – somehow – that Democrats inflamed the rhetoric of violence, so that ultra-Rightists adopted those violent ideas.
So now, House Republicans are trying to erect a statue of Kirk in Congress.
This will be, in essence, a monument to racism, hatred, and bigotry, set forth as honorable goals for Americans to strive for. If they want to place one of his best-known quotations on the statue, it should be this one:
“I think it’s worth to have a cost of, unfortunately, some gun deaths every single year so that we can have the Second Amendment to protect our other God-given rights.”
Note 1: this quotation applies to his own gun death. His death was a cost of preserving the Second Amendment.
Note 2: Gun ownership is not up for logical debate. It is a God-given right.
Next up? Trump will be demanding the arrest of anyone caught saying anything negative about Charlie Kirk. A victory for freedom of speech?
One study, reported by the European Medicines Agency, found that the Covid vaccines caused 8.2 deaths per million vaccines. That is .0008% Another study in https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/article-abstract/2837831, showed that Covid vaccines saved 2.5 million lives. Are those 8.2 deaths a reasonable sacrifice for saving a million lives? This is an extreme version of the ‘Trolleycar Problem’, used in philosophy and ethics classes around the world.
Suppose the trolleycar is the Covid virus, that there are a million people on the straight track and 8 people on the switched track. Pulling the switch means applying the vaccine.
If you don’t pull the switch, a million people will die, but you will claim no responsibility. But if you pull the switch 8 people will die by your hand.
Most pundits believe that you should pull the switch and save a million lives.
However, suppose the mortality rate was not 8.2, but 8000 per million. Would a government be justified in sacrificing 8000 people in order to save a million? That’s a harder ethical question. What if the mortality were 80,000 per million? In that case, there would be a revolution if the government required vaccines, even though the government could claim that 80,000 predictable deaths is a small price to pay for saving a million lives.
So where do you draw the line? I don’t know, but if you sacrifice even one life, you are sliding down a slippery slope.
There is also a question regarding which people you are saving. The JAMA study showed that a disproportionate number of the 2.5 million saved lives were elderly. Would that fact change in any way a government’s vaccination policy? Maybe not, but it might. Suppose vaccines saved a higher proportion of white lives than black lives?
A word on ‘herd immunity’, which should not be necessary. There seems to be a feeling out there that governments should just let a pandemic take its natural course, without vaccination, because that will lead to herd immunity, in which case the pandemic disappears. That may be true, but only after millions of people die first. People may quote the following finding:
When a critical proportion of the population becomes immune, called the herd immunity threshold (HIT) or herd immunity level (HIL), the disease may no longer persist in the population, ceasing to be endemic . (Somerville M, Kumaran K, Anderson R (2012). Public Health and Epidemiology at a Glance)
However, that finding includes the use of vaccines to achieve the immunity level of HIL. Thus, vaccinations still may save millions of lives, because they cause the HIL to be reached sooner.
Last week, a small boat was seen in international waters. No one knows who was in it, what it was carrying, or where it was headed. But the Trump administration declared – with no evidence – that they were Venezuelan Tren de Aragua gang members headed for the US with drugs, so Trump murdered them all, literally blew them out of the water.
Murder, just because Trump thought they were bad guys
This act crosses a red line and establishes a new principle in Trumpworld:
If Trump thinks you’re a bad guy, he can murder you.
Once society has accepted that principle as normal and justified, there is no telling what slippery slopes it will slide down.
I actually lived in the Philippines while Duterte was gunning down people he suspected of drug trafficking. Many filipinos supported these murders, arguing that Duterte was ridding the streets of drug dealers, just as many Americans support the deportation and torture of non-white people whom they consider, with no evidence or due process, rapists and murderers.
Gavin Newsom has irritated Trump. What might Trump do?
He could simply order Newsom shot. After all, the Supreme Court has ruled that the President is above the law and could kill anyone he wants. However, I think that even Trump is more subtle than that.
Trump could take lessons from his mentor, Putin. Newsom might mysteriously fall out of a window, and there would be no conclusive investigation. This scenario is quite possible, given Trump’s adulation of Putin. Still, it’s not very subtle.
A MAGA cultist could shoot Newsom — perhaps at Trump’s behest, perhaps not — with the full knowledge that Pam Bondi and Trump’s personal Justice Department will not prosecute, and will undoubtedly lie to cover up the assassination. Or, as Jan. 6 showed, Trump will pardon him as a patriot. I see this scenario as a distinct possibility.
Trump could declare Newsom a terrorist, would send in masked ICE thugs to kidnap him and ship him off in the middle of the night to an unknown country, never to be heard from again.
Now that I’ve brought up concentration camps in faraway countries, here is another scenario.
At present, many innocent people are being sent to these torture prisons for the rest of their lives. The conditions are so awful, I would guess the inmates don’t last very long there without dying. So, Trump and his partner dictators may reason that “we might as well assist the dying process” by installing gas chambers. A gas chamber at a concentration camp in the 45-degree Sudan desert would hardly be noticed. Those prisoners might even be grateful to be put out of their misery.
Al Dabbah desert, Sudan
Many Nazi concentration camps, especially Auschwitz, were located outside Germany. Let that sink in. Hitler shipped millions of victims (including not just Jews, but thousands of political opponents and critics of Hitler) out of Germany to be gassed. The German people had no idea what was going on.
Here’s the scariest part: Trump’s gas chambers may already be operational. Thousands of innocent people may already have been murdered in countries that few Americans could find on a map (Could YOU find El Salvador, Uganda, Sudan, or Eswatini?), without anyone in America knowing it. Any leaked information about them would be called ‘fake news’.
I feel that the US is closer to many of these horrible scenarios than people would like to admit.
The MAGA cultists surely realize that Trump is all the horrible things the media say about him: 34-count felon, child rapist, grifter, etc. He is the most horrible person imaginable. He is often compared to Satan. Yet his followers still worship him. Why?
It is worth examining the literature on the psychology of Satan worshippers, to see whether there are similarities with, and perhaps explanations for, Trump-worship. Let’s look at some websites that discuss Satan worship.
Investigating the human relationship to various types of religion, Erich Fromm [psychologist popular around 1960] shows that some people manifest towards the divinity an attitude of absolute dependence, of blind and irrational obedience, of a passive acceptance of any norm. As a result, they think of themselves as inept and wretched creatures, capable of acquiring a certain strength only to the extent that a supreme and unchallenged power [e.g. Trump] reaches out to them.
Such an authoritarian and inhuman vision of one’s relationship with the divinity and, in the case of Satanism, with evil beings, although encouraging the loss of independence and moral integrity, offers the advantage (so to speak) of feeling protected by a formidable power which one somehow comes into contact with and becomes part of. Furthermore, this helps create the image of a despotic and terrible supreme being, jealous of his supremacy, arrogant and opposed to any relationship based on solidarity and on the promotion of values.
One often asks why Trump voters vote against their own interests. They vote for programs that actually harm them. The Satanic psychology explains this.
[Satanists display] a clearly masochistic tendency, manifested by a weak temperament, by the inclination to self-deprivation, by the need to feel weak and impotent, by the voluntary renunciation of all sense of freedom and personal responsibility. The basic tendency, then, is one of self-destruction: damage to oneself becomes preferred, caused or tolerated either to prevent hostility on the part of others, or to encourage others to have positive feelings or pity towards oneself. In this regard one need only think of the passive and irrational acceptance of “unquestioned leaders”, whose orders are obeyed without any resistance.
A third characteristic is tied to the introjection in strong, imposing terms, of the demands of one’s surroundings, which leads one to perceive the world of law and, in a more general way, the world of culture, society, and the family, as tyrannical. On the one hand, these lead to the fear of destruction, and on the other hand, paradoxically, to the relentless drive to act in negative and self-destructive ways.
Trumpism is about the rebellion against society, especially Government and the ‘Deep State’. That trait is also found in Satanism. Here is another instructive description, from an article in the website BETSHY:
The Dark Side of the Mind: Exploring the Psychology of Satanism
At its core, Satanism is a belief system that values individualism, self-empowerment, and personal freedom. Unlike the traditional view of Satanism as devil worship, modern Satanism is more about embracing one’s own desires and rejecting societal norms and restrictions. This can be seen as a form of rebellion against authority and a way to assert one’s independence.
Another aspect of Satanism is the belief in moral relativism, or the idea that morality is subjective and can vary from person to person. This can be liberating for individuals who have felt judged or restricted by societal norms and rules. By embracing Satanism, they can reject the idea of a universal moral code and instead create their own set of values and beliefs.
Satanism can also provide a sense of community and belonging for individuals who feel marginalised or misunderstood by mainstream society. By connecting with like-minded individuals who share their beliefs, they can find acceptance and support in a world that often rejects them.
It can be a way for individuals to assert their independence, embrace their desires, and reject societal norms. It can provide a sense of empowerment and self-actualisation, as well as a sense of belonging and community.
A study in the journal Analyses of Social Issues and Public Policy found that more people associate Trump with the Devil than with God. Thus, the constant media reports of calling him ‘The Chosen One’, and his constant photographs with Bibles, are actually eclipsed by people feeling that he represents Satan.
New research reports that, while 17.2 percent of Americans believe Trump’s election “is a reflection of God’s will,” 27.7 percent believe he is “working for the devil.” That same percentage replied affirmatively to the statement: “The devil is using Donald Trump for his purposes.”
These psychological analyses go a long way towards explaining some of the strange behavior of the Trump cult. The general psychology is that they feel threatened by modern society and want to turn the clock back. Trump is their symbol of rebellion against modern society.
Evil is applauded. The more inhumane Trump acts, the more his followers cheer him on for rebelling against the norms of society. The stronger the media reports of his child rape, the stronger the cult’s affinity for him. He, like Satan, is their anti-hero.
Self-destruction. Trumpists vote against their own interests, just to ‘own the libs’. They can actually support the termination of their own Social Security or Medicare.
Science and education represent the organized society they detest. The hatred for Dr. Fauci, the promoter of interventions against Covid-19, was so intense, the cultists wanted to kill him. They support ending research against cancer and other killers. And they clearly hate those elite universities like Harvard.
Their god, Trump, is always right. He can say that the sky is pink today, and they will applaud. Then, when tomorrow he says the sky is green, they will applaud again. When the media point out lies or contradictions in what he says, it does not faze them.
The system was invented to discriminate while appearing to be fair.
I wanted to apply for U.S. citizenship for my half-Cambodian son. I assembled a vast amount of documents for the big interview at the Embassy. However, the rule states that I must pay for the interview online, through a website called MyTravelGov. In order to log in they have to send you a 6-digit code for security/identification. I tried several tricks, but they never sent me the code. I contacted all sorts of U.S. Govt. website, Help pages, FAQs, YouTube videos, to find out what I was doing wrong. None of them even mentioned the sending of the code. All of these sources knew, but refused to inform me, that those security codes are not sent to Cambodian phones or computers. My application for my son’s citizenship was therefore intentionally blocked. No one at the Embassy offered any help or any answers – it was all kept secret from me.
I have described the above process at length to show how the U.S. Govt. pretends to offer citizenship to kids born to Americans in Cambodia, but in reality blocks this from happening. It’s a Catch-22, since you need the security code to log in, but they refuse to send you the security code. This is a conscious policy, concocted deliberately by the Trump régime, to keep half-caste Cambodians from becoming U.S. citizens. It’s insidious, because the policy is not written, nor is it ever divulged. The Embassy won’t admit that the hidden, unstated aim is to prevent foreigners from gaining U.S. citizenship. If you play by the rules as stated, you will be thwarted, and wonder what rule you have broken.
This is an excellent example of what Critical Race Theory (CRT) studies: the systematic and deliberate machinations that governments go through to discriminate against certain races. Advanced level students study complex systems in order to identify the subtle and secret ways that the systems discriminate.
Here’s a hypothetical example I just invented. Suppose a black woman in a predominantly black zip code applies for a license to open a business. She jumps through all the hoops, of course, and is promised a business code number. However, she never receives the code, despite being shunted from office-to-office, from website-to-website, from telephone-to-telephone, making all sorts of attempts to find out what went wrong. What is kept secret from her is that the codes are not sent to her zip code, in order to discriminate against black businesses. She is made to feel like the guilty party – like she was the one who made some sort of mistake.
I’ll bet every black person in the U.S. can tell you a story like the one I just invented. MAGA cultists don’t believe them. To MAGA, CRT just means teaching about slavery or Black History, because they don’t understand the subtle ways that systems discriminate. But CRT is really studying how systems can be rigged to discriminate.
I have now witnessed CRT first hand, as the U.S. government claims publicly to facilitate citizenship for foreign-born children, but in practice consciously and on purpose develops a system that blocks such citizenship. My further evidence is the stonewalling I got from the Embassy staff, who would never inform me or admit to the heinous system they had invented. I had jumped through the hoops the first time around three years ago – for my first son – and wasn’t discriminated against like this. That was under Biden. I attribute this new discrimination to the Trump régime, or at least, to the anti-foreigner attitude that permeates his régime.
Today’s news is evidence that Trump has crossed a couple of subtle red lines.
First red line: lying. For most of us, lying is about trying to make someone believe something false. However, for others, it’s a means of exerting power over someone. In this type of lie, you are not even expected to believe it. I have had bosses who tell the most blatant and obvious lies to my face, and I know that they know that I know that they are lying. But they know that I would not call them a liar to their face. This is a form of power trip over me.
When Trump claims that the price of gasoline has fallen below $2, that’s the first kind of lie, which can be fact-checked to see whether we should believe him or not. But when he claims that the price of eggs has fallen 1500%, any fourth grader can instantly see that this is impossible. Still, you can’t just point out the idiocy of the statement directly to Trump. You might end up in jail. This is the second kind of lie.
Trump has now crossed that red line into the second kind of lie. He doesn’t care whether you fact-check him or not, because everyone knows he is lying.
Now today, Ghislaine Maxwell told the second kind of lie. She doesn’t expect anyone to believe her, but she knows that Trump has made a deal with her – possibly a pardon. All her fawning superlatives about Trump and Epstein are stomach-turning, but the media report it and let it stand as fact, because if they challenge it, they may wind up in jail. She will wind up a free woman.
Second red line: ‘investigating’ and arresting your enemies without evidence. Go back to Hunter Biden. They got him for buying a gun and ticking the box stating that he wasn’t addicted to drugs. Horror of horrors! Worth years in jail, but at least they got him for SOMETHING and had the evidence to prove it.
Now consider the search of John Bolton’s house and probable arrest, reportedly for including classified material in his book. You can be sure that he double and triple checked with lawyers and legal experts, who assured him that his material was not classified. However, that no longer matters. Trump will find (i.e. bribe or intimidate) a judge who will convict Bolton and send him to jail, because TRUMP has declared the material as classified. Evidence no longer matters; whatever Trump says is fact. This crosses a red line from the Hunter Biden case, because this time there is no legal case against Bolton.
Trump is also going after Obama for something-or-other. The media report that legal experts say the charges are ridiculous and frivolous. They’re missing the point. Trump can now invent any charges he wishes and convict Obama of any crime he wishes. He has crossed the line of evidence-based arrest.
I also notice that Trump is going to ‘investigate’ Muriel Bowser, the mayor of Washington, D.C., for publishing statistics that crime has decreased over the past few years. Since her data don’t corroborate his own claims that crime has increased, he’s going to indict her and put her in jail for disagreeing with him.
These two red lines are related. For the arrest of political enemies entails false and evidence-free statements that everyone can see are ridiculous, but that no judge will contradict, for fear of Trump’s retribution.
Relate this to the kidnapping of innocent brown-skinned Americans and deportation to torture prisons. First, if Trump, with no evidence, declares them terrorists or M-13 gang members or invaders from Venezuela, no one, including the Supreme Court will contradict him. Second, Trump no longer needs evidence or courts to deport his victims. Therefore, the simultaneous breach of the two red lines of 1) non-questionable lies, and 2) arrest, conviction, and sentencing without evidence, poses a double-barreled threat to the entire justice system. Trump can go after you or anyone else he chooses by inventing some lie and then arresting you based on that lie.
P.S. As a post-script, I just saw that Trump has stated that he knew nothing about the raid of Bolton’s house. That’s a clear example of a Type II lie. Of course he ordered it, and doesn’t expect anyone to believe otherwise, but he lies anyway, just because he can.
