Tag Archives: Trump

The Insurrection…

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It isn’t over yet. The insurrection will not be over until we’ve address the source of the wound and eliminated it. This was a violent planned assault against our democracy. One that attempted to destroyed the results of 50 legally certified elections. They planned to hang Mike Pence they were hunting Nancy Pelosi and we were lucky this didn’t turn into a mass casualty event.

So, let’s take a step back. How is this different than the Black Lives Matter protests. Those had violence too. There was a police precinct burned down. In Portland, they were assaulting the Federal Building! These are all true. However, the goal of the protest was mostly to work within the system to change the system. If you look at Portland, the courts deemed that the city was being overly violent and starting much of the violence rather than the protesters. They were ruled to avoid using tear gas, then it was turned into law. The protest were actually dying down until Trump inflamed them by sending in unmarked vehicles into the city.

Sure, you might be saying, but that doesn’t excuse the violence. You’re right, Straw person. Violence isn’t excusable and the city of Portland is experiencing some serious tension between the people of the city, the businesses in downtown, and the city officials. One thing we need to look at, is that many of these larger businesses are part of the larger system that drives the prison pipeline.

In Minneapolis, the Target that was burned down, was trialing a specific AI based tool to determine if someone was shop lifting. It was often wrong. So Target itself was a source of an increase in false arrests and increase of interaction with police.

Furthermore, the BLM protest was a protest against state violence against a specific set of people. Which didn’t stop during the Pandemic. The data indicates there is a racial bias against people of color, specifically black men, in police stops. See the YouTube video below.

So, in the case of BLM protests, it is the protest of the oppressed against the oppressors. The state has a bias against a group of people and those people are trying to make it clear to everyone involved they are being oppressed. The violence against them is an effort to keep that power over them. That’s why the state rejects these efforts so violently.

What we saw at the Capitol is something different. It is the dominant group, losing their position of dominance or at least perceiving the loss of Donald Trump as the loss of that dominance. The system was working as intended. Republicans, in general, turned out in massive numbers. The Democrats, just came out in larger numbers in many areas. Trump lost by a landslide, but has been lying about his loss. He’s made a decision that he wants to stay in power and a group of white supremacists have decided they want to keep him in power.

Furthermore, many elected leaders, like Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz (among 120+ members of the house) have decided to keep Trump in office or use this as a chance to win election in 2024. These leaders primed the mob to actually do something about the election results. If you have any doubt about that, please read this twitter thread, digging into the propaganda of Trump’s speach.

So, now that we know this was a planned event to illegally overturn the election results through an insurrection, what do we do next? We need to learn from our failure during the Civil War reconstruction (see my blog on White Rage) where we, as a country, completely failed to prevent a long slow cold Civil War. The other places we should look are at other countries that had mixed success dealing with their coups, like Japan.

Given that we’ve already had reports of additional events, supposedly today (1/10/21) in NYC, events on 1/19/21, and likely 1/20/21 to disrupt the inauguration, this insurrection isn’t over until it’s either successful or we put it down for good. That may require structural change to how we think about the United States including meeting some of the demands of BLM protesters.

I oppose any war with Iran

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It seems that Trump is hurdling us towards a war with Iran. While it’s likely that the right will blame Trumps actions on the protests in Baghdad, those protests are ultimately our own fault. I remember the start of the war in Iraq. We were pushed there by a combination of the press supporting another war and lies directly from the Bush and his government. I remember the initial campaign, the Shock and Awe. I was awed, then disgusted. It was horrific. I remember how it was televised. How quickly we blasted through the Iraqi defenses. I suspect, we would similarly be able to move through the Iranian military. No doubt we will have significantly greater losses, which will be cause to do more damage to Iran.

We cannot afford this war for a number of reasons. The most obvious is the loss of life. This war would be an immoral war. We are not fighting to defend ourselves. This is a war of hubris and aggression. We cannot accept this as a culture. We must reject it as a war fought for the wrong reasons. Trump was angry about the protests, which looked so similar to Benghazi, that he got in a twitter fight with the Iranian leader. Because of that exchange, Trump killed people, literally. That’s unacceptable.

The next obvious reason is that we’d be starting a war that our allies should never support. NATO, the EU, Canada, and the rest should not support the US in this war. This is a war of our choosing and antagonizing. They should condemn Trump in the UN and push for a peaceful resolution. We cannot afford to be isolated by our allies.

We cannot afford this war because we are already in multiple wars. We’ve never left Iraq or Afghanistan. We’re in Yemen. We’re in Africa (doing what, I’m not sure), we’re in Syria. We’re all over the place. We cannot afford another war. If we have money to spend on this war, we have money to spend on Healthcare, Education, infrastructure, everything else the Republicans claim we have no money to fund.

Any war with Iran is wrong. We must not enter a war with them. Their people are going to pay for the hubris of the United States. I’m sorry for that.

What can we do? Call your Senators. Call your representatives. Support political candidates that oppose war. I already have and I will continue to do so.

I was an immigrant, let’s have some empathy

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You probably don’t even think of it that way, but I was an immigrant to a foreign country under a student visa/residence permit with the expectation that I would stay in that foreign country for at least 3 years. Things didn’t go as planned, but I was an immigrant. I’ve written some here in the past about those experiences, since I started blogging on this site over 5 years ago when I was still living in the Netherlands.

While I was in Europe I grew up a lot and I experienced things that I would have never experienced in the US. However, before I get into any of this I must preface this post. My experience abroad was easier than most study abroad programs. My courses were in English. I’m an American Citizen. Nearly all government documents along with University documents had English translations. Nearly all Dutch are fluent in English and all my friends spoke English. This made these extremely easy. So easy at times it was easy to forget I was an immigrant.

While living abroad I lived with a group of people I jokingly referred to as a model UN. There were two Colombians, two Pakistanis, a Turk, an Iranian, and a Chinese woman. Everyone had a story to tell me about my homeland that cause them direct personal pain. My Colombian friends told me what it was like growing up in the 80’s and 90’s with the FARC threatening things while the US was running missions in their country. My Pakistani roommates told me about what my country was doing to their country at that time. My Iranian roommate was initially terrified to meet me because I was an American. He assumed that I would hate him because of where he was from.

Learning about the impact of the US political system on every person that I met while living abroad was truly sobering. As an American living in the US we simply do not understand the impact and the weight of the US to the rest of the world. Furthermore, we simply take it as a given fact that this is how the world is and always will be. However, that’s not true. When I first arrived in the Netherlands it was clear there was still ill will towards America for George W. Bush, that was tempered a great deal by Obama, but not all of his policies pleased Europeans, specifically many of the bombings we were doing. I believe that we’re losing even more respect with trump as our President now.

I got the idea for this post because a friend of mine shared a link about a Syrian student at CMU was thinking of transferring outside of the US for his PhD. This hit really close to home because, while I was studying in the Netherlands, my wife was finishing up her PhD and my Grandfather passed away. If I had been unable to go home and return for my studies in the Netherlands because of a ban of travel between the US and the Netherlands I would have seriously reconsidered my decision to even study there. Being away from my wife for the first year and a half of my marriage was incredibly difficult, losing my Grandfather was heart wrenching, the mere thought of not being able to go home for his funeral is completely unimaginable. As it was, my family pulled together and got me back to the States for his funeral, which was extremely touching.

Beyond just the though of never seeing my wife or missing my Grandfather’s funeral, it brings up the moral question of “do I want to live in a society that bans people from my country?” For me, as an immigrant to that country, it’s a clear no. I do not want to live in a society that bans people from my country or any other country for the reasons that trump has outlined. These policies affect people, people that don’t have a true say in that country’s government. If there is a problem with the government it should be treated in an international body rather than attacking the people of the nation. Here’s one example of a person negatively impacted by the ban. He is completely devastated.

As I said in my post yesterday we, America, need to be the shining light on the hill. It is the reason why immigrants chose to come here. I would not come here as an immigrant from any country right now because I would never know when that ban would arbitrarily descend on my country, so that I could never go home to see my loved ones or could never have my loved ones join me.

I’ve been an immigrant, I was lucky that I was able to control when and why I became an immigrant. Not everyone is lucky like me.

What is even happening?

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I, like many of you out there, are really wondering what the hell is going on right now. Has our country gone crazy? Have we elected a man that is going to bring ruin down on us all? Should we protest? Should we resist?

To put it bluntly, this is something our country hasn’t seen before. We’ve had issues before where there were disagreements over how to run the country, but there really weren’t blatant attempts to completely destroy the current political infrastructure in place. There was an implicit acceptance that while you may be a Democrat and the President a Republican, you’d still do your job and be trusted to do so. That trust has been breached. Furthermore, there were norms to ensure that the experts at least had a crack at what was going to be turned into an Executive Order, but that’s gone now too.

Our Executive Branch has gone crazy, the rest of the country hasn’t, well maybe the silent majority of the Republicans in office have, but everyone else is still doing the right thing.

You see, I think that America should be a shining light on the hill. Our ideals and values, in many ways contentious, really have the opportunity to lift people out of a rough life and into something that is greater. Right now, we aren’t even a flash light shining on a puddle of mud as a government. As a people, we’re doing right by our ideals. Protesting, one of the most American things you can do; welcoming refugees, originally, the US was founded by refugees or asylum seekers – it is only right we continue in this vein. Fighting injustice and oppression – we’ve gotten this wrong, a lot, but we also have had a history of continually moving in the right direction, despite our fits and starts. We Americans are doing this now in the face of what is only the beginning of push back from Trump.

We have a pretty clear idea of what will happen to anyone that is a government official and they refuse to obey trump. They will be fired and if possible I’m sure trump will figure out a way to prosecute that individual. Today, trump fired Sally Yates for up holding her oath as a public servant. His response is absurdly juvenile and was clearly penned by the president himself.

Trump's note for firing Sally Yates

Trump’s note for firing Sally Yates

This is an embarrassment, but this is the type of person that we are dealing with here. I don’t think that this is even a partisan issue at this point either. When the president of the US decides that he can ignore the rule of law we’re at the point where the government itself is at risk of no longer being a democracy. I believe that we can put aside our differences here and protest together. Pushing for Mike Pence or other subordinates to impeach trump. If he is unable or unwilling, I believe that an organization like the ACLU will ultimately sue to impeach trump regardless. However, this is a time when the leaders on the right need to stand up and say, “No, country before party, we will not be pulled into a dictatorship, we are a democracy. In a democracy you must obey the rule of law.”

Should you protest, though? I think this is a really personal question, but I think that you must protest in some form or another if you want to see this stop. There are many ways to protest that don’t include holding a sign, but you must at least commit time, energy, and possibly money instead. I have already donated $20/month to the ACLU and another $10/month to an anti-corruption organization (which is non-partisan looking to elect both D and R). You can write, you can tweet, you can also run for office. There are a lot of ways to stop this, but you need to decide what you can or cannot do. For me with my travel, it’s difficult to get my bearings in whatever city I’m in to effectively protest. Instead I will write, donate, and support anyone willing to make a difference. I am also working on a podcast with a few friends. The goal, like my goal on this blog, isn’t to preach or really push my ideals, but to try to educate so you can make your own informed decisions.

So, let’s make America the shining light on the hill. Let’s fight against corruption, fight to level the playing field so that everyone has an equal chance, fight so that women feel like they have control over their own body, and to fight to make sure that we can take in those huddled masses.

“Infighting” in the Democratic Party or Who represents the future of the Dems?

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Today, I’ve been seeing a lot of people saying that Bernie supports need to just give up the “Bernie would have won” attitude. I find this exceedingly problematic. First, it’s an opinion and like assholes everyone has one. Second, there is some evidence, based on the polling that Bernie would have crushed Trump. Third, there’s anecdotal evidence of people switching from Bernie to Trump or just stayed home from voting. Finally, this implicitly means that these folks need to just shut up and get back in line with everyone else.

This last point simply pisses me off. I’ve always had something of a chip on my shoulder when it comes to authority or the status quo. I get really pissed off when people talk about how these giant cities are god’s gift to man, when the smaller cities i’ve lived in are amazing places in their own right. Places that have a lot of character and the difference of perspective is important. I wrote about this irritation in my article right after the election.

The Democratic party needs this discussion, this in fighting. There can and should be general alignment over general resistance to Trump. The policies that are proposed to counter their proposals can and should have serious discussion about what the future should be. The reason why people bring up the primary and that Bernie would have won, is that they support his policy positions and believes that these positions should be the dominant theme when challenging the Republican run Government. The idea being that Clinton’s ideas are a continuation of the status quo, the status quo that lost and lost badly in the electoral college – which is the only vote that matters right now.

Bernie and Clinton represent two different potential futures for the Democratic party, we need to look at it that way. I believe under the Bush years, the Democratic party essentially was the Party of Clinton, which really was a centrist party that was easily pulled to the right. During the Obama administration this held true as well, where the Democrats tried to pull the country a little left, but stayed towards the center in hopes of getting something through. Which resulted in a great deal of center right policies simply through obstructionism.

Now, if the Democratic party wants to learn from the Republican party, rather than working to meet with them half way, which will ultimately pull them to the right, again. They need to start with a stated position which is significantly farther left than what they might be when they are in power. This would mean that when the policy finally gets approved, that it’ll be much more centrist. Furthermore, most of those policies would help the people that need it the most, that ended up voting for Trump, because they believed he would help him.

The fight over Bernie v. Clinton is a battle over the heart and soul of the Democratic party. If you aren’t willing to talk with the people that are saying that Bernie and thus his ideals could have beaten Trump, then you aren’t willing to listen at all and should not be in a position of power in the Democratic party. The party needs to be inclusive of radically different views, take advantage of that diversity and use it as a way to drive change in Washington to help everyone.