celebrating July 4th on the Eve of America’s Fall

It feels like one of the greatest ironies of all time that this country will celebrate its independence from English monarchical rule as its leaders continue their intent to replace this democracy with autocracy.

It is hard to accept what is going on. It feels like anarchy, as the president and his hand-picked cabinet and government officials blatantly disregard and ignore the “rule of law” in their pursuit of total control. The checks and balances system, put in place by the Founding Fathers, is either non-existent or non-operative, and too many Americans seem either oblivious or purposely ignorant of the implications of what is happening and how it will affect them and many generations to come.

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Where are the Americans, the people who actually do love this country and who are willing to put allegiance to it in front of a desire to be loyal to the man who is leading the effort to destroy it?

It is the height of hypocrisy to listen to the MAGA/GOP members talk about their love of country and that this is a country of laws, as they simultaneously ignore or have stated that they intend to ignore rulings of the courts that threaten their agenda. (https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2025/02/11/jd-vance-trump-executive-power-supreme-court-00203537) (https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2025/01/28/trump-tiktok-bailout-00200800).

In Project Esther, the document prepared by the Heritage Foundation, the writers continue to talk about law and order and how what they plan to do to fight antisemitism is nothing less than clear evidence that they love this country. “This is a nation of laws,” the document says, and while it defines antisemitism as that which is evident by people who protest in this country against the actions of the Israeli government and the resultant massacre of innocent Gazans, they are strangely quiet about the antisemitism that has been practiced historically in this country. The document makes no mention of the attacks on Jews that have included the bombing of their synagogues and the constant denigration of Jews by Americans who simultaneously reveal a love and respect for Adolf Hitler.

Long before the October 2024 attack on Jews in Israel by Hamas, American antisemitism was felt deeply by Jews in this country. (https://www.npr.org/2024/02/13/1230928104/large-majorities-americans-antisemitism-serious-problem-ajc), but Project Esther uses as the reason for its creation only to the October 7 attack.

Law and order do not exist in this country; “due process” has never existed for African Americans in this country but the lack of due process is now being felt by immigrants in this country as masked “ICE” agents have been given the freedom to kidnap people of color for no reason – off public streets, out of their homes, and off their jobs to deport them.

https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/BwXdna3iA7o?rel=0&autoplay=0&showinfo=0&enablejsapi=0

) (https://calmatters.org/justice/2025/07/la-immigration-raids-lawsuit/) What we are seeing feels like accounts of how Africans -some enslaved and some free- were kidnapped at gunpoint by civilians deputized to capture them. The “crime” of the yet enslaved Africans was fleeing plantations in their quest for freedom, but others committed no crime but were hunted and arrested as well. (https://www.tpusa.com/live/princeton-professor-compares-ice-agents-to-slave-catchers) (https://www.freep.com/story/opinion/2019/10/01/ice-immigration-agents-slave-catchers/3824310002/).

Immigrants, naturalized and undocumented, are living in fear, many staying home from work and school because they don’t want to be kidnapped, and yet the people in the highest levels of government are doing nothing. It feels like we are seeing the 21^st-century version of the heinous practices allowed by the Fugitive Slave Laws of the 19^thcentury.

Our freedoms are being challenged, including freedom of speech, assembly, the press, religion, and the right to petition the government. Those who say they love America are either quiet or are boisterously working to destroy the government, MAGA called “the deep state.” These people are angry and feel like they have been unheard and disrespected. With their president in the White House, they are seeking power with a vengeance, and it does not appear that they care who will suffer and perhaps die because of the policies that are being put into place.

As the House wrangles with a final version of the Trump “Big Beautiful Bill,” those lawmakers who admit that the bill is bad and will cause many people a lot of pain are caving. The country whose birth came about as a result of it defeating an autocratic government, led by a king, is working with all deliberate speed to make sure the man they elected will stay in power and continue the transformation of this country from democracy to an aristocracy, powered by oligarchs whose only goal is to make money off the backs of the people whose hard work produced the funds that propelled them to wealth.

The Fourth of July was never one where I consciously thought about how America became independent; when we gathered as a family on this holiday, we would often make mention that even though Black people had never enjoyed full American citizenship, we never gave up the fight. With the passage of the Civil Rights and Voting Rights laws in the mid 60s, we felt we were a little closer.

But whatever ground we made is being chopped up, and not just for African Americans but for a whole group of people who wealthy white men believe do not deserve full American citizenship.

So, forgive me if I am confused about what the fireworks that are about to be launched over the next couple of days really mean. American bigotry, hatred, and ignorance are exhausting, but that portion of Americanism is here to stay and will continue to wrest the concepts of “liberty and justice” away from people as it always has. We are celebrating freedom and liberty on the eve of America’s fall.

A candid observation.

God help us all.

Waiting for God and Justice

I heard a very disturbing story on the podcast “Code Switch,” told by Chenjerai Kumanyika, where he related a time when he and a friend, walking home from their school in Baltimore, decided to race each other. “Out of nowhere, a cop car showed up. They did the thing. They put us up against the car, they grabbed us (we were in 6^th or 7^th grade) and they spread us out and patted us down, looking to see if we had stolen something.” (https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/code-switch/id1112190608?i=1000683056935)

Kumanyika recalls thinking, “How can they do this?” He and his friend were surrounded by multiple police officers with guns and handcuffs, and it was scary, to say the least. The police officers finished the search of their bodies, asking them if they knew anything about some items (not specified) that had been stolen, and they said no. Apparently satisfied, they let the boys go, but the damage was done; they abandoned their desire to race each other and walked the rest of the way home. He recalled that a few seconds after he got home, the police knocked on his front door, explaining that they’d noticed that Chenjerai had just run into the house. His stepfather had answered the door, and when the police gave their reason for their unwanted visit said, “Of course, he ran into this house. He lives here.”

Kumanyika is the host of another podcast, “Empire City,” a show about the history of the New York Police Department.

I listened to this story several times and shuddered because I know it is not an uncommon experience for Black males – young and old. The fact that two kids could not engage in a footrace with each other, something kids naturally do, drove home the reality that Black people, regardless of age, profession, or economic class, are not safe in this country. “Law enforcement” looks for reasons to stop and harass Black males, and the system does very little to address it or stop it from happening.

This country has a history of “law enforcement” targeting and detaining – people of color, especially Black males. The incoming administration’s vow to get rid of immigrants will make these types of occurrences more common; those who are or who have already been deputized to round up undocumented residents have been empowered to wield their power even more than they have in the past.

Just as police officers use the line “I was in fear for my life,” or give as an excuse for stopping someone, “he looked like …” someone who committed a crime, these deputized persons now will use as a reason for stopping people, “he/she looked like an undocumented immigrant.”

What does an undocumented immigrant “look like?”

In New Jersey last week, federal immigration agents raided a business. Without having a warrant, they entered the business through the back door and detained what they said were undocumented people. At least one of those detained was an American citizen and a military veteran. He reportedly tried to show his ID and veteran’s card to the agents, but they would not look at the documents. (https://www.cbsnews.com/newyork/news/ice-raid-newark-new-jersey-business/)

“People were fingerprinted. Pictures of their IDs and faces were taken there,” Ras Baraka, the mayor of Newark, New Jersey said, “I was appalled, upset, angry that this would happen here in this state, in this country, {and} that this would be allowed,” he said,

But his protestations, and those that will come from others as raids increase, are not going to stop the unjust treatment of people who others think may be undocumented. The quest is not seeking justice; the quest is to carry out a political promise to get rid of people this country does not want. (https://www.nbcnews.com/news/latino/immigration-raid-newark-new-jersey-mayor-angry-rcna189100)

Before the election, I talked with a few immigrants who drove for Uber, which I use when I travel. Most of them with whom I talked were in favor of getting rid of undocumented persons. They had come into the country the right way, they said, and they believed everyone should do the same.

When I asked if they thought they would ever be targeted by law enforcement, all of them said they did not, and some lifted up their belief that the incoming president would make sure that did not happen – noting that they had voted for him. “He won’t let anything like that happen to us,” I was told. But again, law enforcement officers, or people deputized to do the work of “catching the bad people” have historically grabbed and detained people, forcing innocent people into the system or robbing them of their freedom. (https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part4/4h1554.html)

Their reaction communicated to me a naivety and sense of idealism that is not real. Many law enforcement officers seem driven by a willingness to display their power, which seems absolute, not a belief in justice and fairness. They know they can do what they want to do for the most part and get away with it. That has been the case in this country ever since people were deputized to catch enslaved persons who had escaped; they were not kind or fair. The people who are being deputized now to “catch” the undocumented people here will probably act in much the same way.

The most troubling factor in all that is going on is that faith in a “good” God can waiver. The downtrodden, ignored, unserved, and underserved look to God for hope. In the current situation, the “other side” seems to have claimed God as being behind and in favor of their policies and practices. The avenues for help and vindication feel scarce; Black people and other marginalized groups cannot depend on police, federal or state legislatures, or the courts to protect and support them. Large groups of marginalized people are simply not safe in this country.

The most important work people must do in light of the current situation is to figure out how to hold onto hope when all logical avenues of help are owned, populated, and controlled by forces and systems that favor the wealthy and powerful.

The vast majority of persons in this country are in a scary place; immigrants, documented and non-documented, face a particularly precarious time, and minority groups seeking protection can expect less of it going forward. The people in power will use that power and authority to ignore, suppress, and oppress whomever they want and there will be little recourse for those who are targeted. The prayer is that “we the people’ will call on a God many are not sure hears or cares about them and live, as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said, with “infinite hope” and not descend into a place of “finite disappointment.” There is a God who loves justice. That thought and belief, even in the face of gross injustice, will keep us pushing against the forces that want those whom they consider to be “others” to crash and burn.

A candid observation …

White Supremacy: America’s Incurable Virus

I learned early that having a virus was much more deadly than having a bacterial infection. The latter could be treated with antibiotics. On the other hand, There was no miracle drug for viral diseases. Viruses had to “work their way” out of our bodies.

I remember reading stories in Readers Digest about the predicaments of young children, many of them babies, falling ill and succumbing to viruses and I learned to fear them. Being sick was one thing; being sick but having no medicinal cure or treatment was quite another.

When my mother was diagnosed with ovarian cancer, I remember watching in horror as she suffered. Her cancer was treated with radiation and chemotherapy, and yet she remained sick and got worse. In the end, the disease won. Cancer consumed and killed her – and I remember thinking that cancer must be a virus because medicines could not kill it. At that time, it seemed that there was nothing effective enough to kill the seed or abnormality that caused it, and it refused to “work its way out” of affected bodies. To me, it was like a cold, only far worse. The difference is that the virus that causes head and chest colds can be forced out by consuming liquids and resting.

But there is no liquid, no tonic, that this country can consume that will push this hatred and bigotry out of the American political and sociological ecosystem Our country has a sociocultural belief system that behaves like a virus, carved out of the need to find justification for the treatment of Black people in this country. While that belief system was always in place, it seems to have gotten worse for white evangelicals twice: once after the end of the Civil War and during Reconstruction, and once again after the US Supreme Court’s 1954 decision in Brown v Board of Education that determined that “separate but equal” was unconstitutional.

Necessary for white people in this country to feel comfortable was for non-white people and women to “know their place.” White people determined themselves to be dominant. Black people, Native Americans, and women fell into lower categories. As long as these people did not rise against white authority or challenge white men in power, things were said to be going well.

But when, after slavery and during Reconstruction Black men were given the right to vote and did so, tipping the scales of power toward a more equitable society, those who had been in power began to wretch with fear and anger, and they rebelled. They intensified efforts to keep Black people under their control, creating Black Codes and Jim Crow laws, designed to put and keep things “back” to where they were “supposed” to be. That included taking away their right to vote.

I have not researched how prevalent was the fear of miscegenation when Black people were enslaved and white men raped Black women at will and were never held accountable. But what did happen was the “race mixing” they feared would happen between Black and white children as they railed against the 1954 US Supreme Court’s decision in Brown v Board of Education that “separate but equal” was unconstitutional.

Though the race mixing had already been put in motion by the actions of white men free to rape whomever they wanted, now, with Black and white children attending the same school, the issue of “race mixing” gained a seat in the front row of the American drama of race relations. The government was going against the will of God, who, some said, was the “original segregationist,” using selected scriptures from the Hebrew Bible including the story of Ham and the story of the Tower of Babel, among others. The government was breaking divine law in pushing for racial equality and an end to segregation anywhere, but especially in public schools. So enraged with the ruling were the people of the South that they intensified their fight against racial equality using their conception of God and their interpretation of the Bible as proof. In 1954, Rev. Carey Daniel of Dallas, TX preached a sermon entitled, “God, the Original Segregationist.”(https://crdl.usg.edu/record/usm_hmp_mus-m393-0031) Daniel and others posited that God intended for all races to live separately, which was why the Bible said that God created separate continents and scattered the people who were in the Tower of Babel. Had God intended the races to live together, God would have created the world’s geography in such a way that supported full equality of all. The government, they said, was encouraging people to go against God’s will.

What they did not mention in their diatribes was that it was they who had apparently gone against the will of God, as they were the ones who explored and “discovered” lands that non-white people already inhabited, took residents of those lands out of their country, and brought them to the Americas. The miscegenation they so feared had been begun by them.

This virus of white supremacy has so badly infected this country that it has spread, like the virus that caused COVID-19, around the world. The United States has created its own strain of white supremacy that it has taught to everyone in the world who, in turn, recognizes and uses it as a point of attack, and pounces on at every opportunity to weaken the country that has boasted that it is better than others.

Our enemies are quite familiar with our peculiar virus and have no qualms about attacking us at times when the virus rises up.

We are an infected country. The question is, “How do we address it? How do we get rid of the virus that is still swirling around in our national digestive system? We cannot pass laws that will get rid of it, nor is there a quick sociological fix. The virus has settled into the American DNA and is multiplying.

Will the virus work its way out of our national constitutional framework? Or will it finally dehydrate us as a nation and cause us to become so weak that we will be ripe for the enemies that want to overtake us?

A candid observation …

Who Will Pick the Strawberries?

Mass Deportation Will Affect the American Economy – or Will It?

During the General Election campaign of 2024, a person who appeared to be an immigrant asked the now president-elect who would do the work in the fields if he were elected, given his plan to implement mass deportations.

The president-elect did not answer the question directly, but it is clear that if or when the deportations take place, the American economy will take a big hit. According to Mike Madrid, a Latino GOP political consultant and a co-founder of the Lincoln Project, the planned deportations would have a devastating effect on the American economy.

The American Immigration Council estimates that the cost to the economy could be over $315 billion, and that figure is thought to be very conservative. (https://www.fresnobee.com/news/politics-government/article294848924.html)

person in gray hoodie holding green and brown carton — Photo by Tim Mossholder on Unsplash

But it is hard to believe that the creators of Project 2025 have not already figured in the toll on the economy if immigrants are seized and either deported or thrown into detention camps.

Those who have salivated for this crackdown on the presence of immigrants in this country have certainly looked back and studied how after slavery was outlawed. Following the Emancipation Proclamation, the powers that be found a new way to use African and African American bodies to continue to do the work that created this economy, not as enslaved persons, but as criminals, whose sentence was to work in agriculture, companies, and corporations and not get paid.

Slavery was prohibited except in instances where Black people had committed a crime, according to the 13^th Amendment. The work, then, was to get people arrested – making them criminals – and then enslaving them legally. People of African descent were arrested and jailed for things like vagrancy, breaking curfew, walking on the wrong side of the street, and not having a job.

There is no reason to believe that the Project 2025 authors and supporters of the policy it has proposed have not already figured out how to use immigrant labor while simultaneously keeping them detained, denying them rights even if they are American citizens, and doing it all by taking away their independence and keeping them dependent on the government for food, water, and shelter, which in effect would become their “pay.”

Just as Black people were re-enslaved following the Emancipation Proclamation, immigrant labor will be used to continue to use immigrant labor, using new techniques, thereby quieting the segment of the population that wants those who are here to be deported, but who would welcome their labor under government control.

In 2023, 18 percent of the economy was built by the labor of an estimated 31 million immigrants. There is no way this country is going to stop using their labor; they will, or perhaps have already figured out how to continue to use their labor. (https://www.cfr.org/in-brief/how-does-immigration-affect-us-economy#:~:text=A%20total%20of%20thirty%2Done,percent%20of%20the%20civilian%20workforce.)

Some, perhaps most Americans are not aware of Convict Leasing (which is what was being practiced after the Emancipation Proclamation), a system that resulted in freed Blacks working for a corporation or business for the rest of their lives with no pay or benefits, and dying before their “sentences” were completed. That’s because the justice system found ways to raise their fines and therefore extend their sentences for doing the work that nobody else wanted to do, and not get paid. Many died while in the jaws of a racist but greedy government that needed free Black labor to grow the American economy. Some former slave owners were paid up to $300 for every Black person they freed. The re-enslavement of black people was a money-making operation for everyone except Black people.

It was called, according to the book by Douglas Blackmon, Slavery by Another Name, and it lasted for eight decades.

Immigrants do much of the work that makes life comfortable for Americans, including picking strawberries and lettuce and other fruits and vegetables we never doubt we will see in grocery stores. They paint houses and repair roofs for companies and receive a pittance of what those jobs are worth. They do much and have done much to build this economy, and there is no way the companies, families, and businesses that use them are going to let them go.

Those who are not deported but are relegated to detention camps will be the new captives, perhaps not giving as much a boost to the Prison Industrial Complex as did the criminalization of Blacks, but certainly contributing to a new system of oppression that will allow the development of a new economic project that will keep this economy alive at the expense of hard-working people, who have never been appreciated.

Some think that talking about the effects of mass deportation is hyperbole, and do not believe that America would resort to such callous treatment of human beings, but they reveal a lack of knowledge of American history. This political system built camps and detained over 100,000 Japanese following World War II. Jesuits were permitted by the Roman Catholic Church and this country to build boarding schools for Native American children, separating them from their families because, they said, they wanted to “civilize” the children – i.e., make them more like their oppressors. They were treated horribly at these schools as they were prohibited from learning about their culture and being beaten for many things, including speaking in their native tongue.

Right now, the American government is considering the purchase of 4100 acres in Texas to build a detention center for immigrants.( https://www.texastribune.org/2024/11/19/texas-border-starr-county-ranch-trump-deportation/)

Who will pick the strawberries? We need not worry. This government has a track record of figuring out how to get what it wants from the labor of people it does not consider or want to be considered to be Americans.

It is part of the American political tradition, a step back to “make America great again.”

What Hurts Most

Though I am disappointed with the outcome of the election, what is bothering me most is that such a large swath of people voted for a man who is a convicted felon, guilty of sexually abusing a woman, and said to have stoked the January 6, 2021 insurrection.

That he is respected despite all of this is beyond me.

He calls himself a patriot, again despite his support of the desecration of the Capitol and his intent to overthrow the results of the election. Patriots don’t do that, do they? He says he is for law and order, though he apparently approved of his supporters striking law enforcement officers who were trying to maintain law and order on that fateful day.

He called COVID-19 a hoax, causing too many people to refuse treatment because they believed him. He stole classified documents and apparently hid them in plain sight all over his house. He had private meetings with Vladimir Putin in the Oval Office, not allowing anyone, including the press, to be present. Do patriots do that?

Colin Kaepernick was lambasted for kneeling in protest against police brutality against Black people and was not only blasted for being unpatriotic but was effectively thrown out of the National Football League.

But a convicted felon who stoked an insurrection is worthy of serving a second term as president of the United States?

I don’t understand how people cannot care about what his administration wants to do – and has outlined what they plan on doing in Project 2025 – to change this government and this country. The very things that made America the most respected democracy are being thrown out, including some of our basic freedoms. There is awareness of how dangerous it is for women of childbearing age as the government seeks to have total control over our bodies. Although he is not the only one, last week I read where Nicholas Fuentes chanted, “Your body, my choice!” to women who were standing nearby. (https://www.cnn.com/2024/11/12/business/video/hateful-rhetoric-women-your-body-my-choice-brown-intv-digvid)

How can anybody be all right with that? And how come the incoming president won’t decry it and say it isn’t an acceptable thing to day?

Empires fail. I get that. And it feels like the American Empire has been on life support for a long time. One of the dangers of being this sick is that the masses do not know what’s ahead. The people leading the movement to take the government away from the “Libs” know that people do not read or listen or analyze and compare what people in public say. They know that far too many people rely on social media and any message – true or not – that they hear they take as the truth.

That alone is troubling, but when we add that people know what this man has done and is pledging to do once he is in office but are not bothered, I shudder. We, this country, are following a path that other failing democracies took; when they realized that their beloved leader did not have their best interests at heart and in fact killed many of those who supported him, it was too late. https://medium.com/bouncin-and-behavin-blogs/people-never-thought-hitler-would-go-that-far-until-he-did-496b2db613dd)

We are in for a difficult stretch. I don’t know if he will pardon the criminals (he calls them patriots) who violently stormed the US Capitol on January 6, 2021. I have read that he wants to put the Biden family in jail, along with Christopher Wray and others (https://www.newsweek.com/trump-picked-fbi-director-will-prosecuted-imprisoned-steve-bannon-1702432) I don’t know what the incoming president has on Wray, but what I do know is that the president-elect has been convicted of serious crimes and will likely never have to pay for it.

Half the country is all right with that, and that hurts.

The America that we have known is about to become a memory.

A candid observation…