I’ve been off from work all this past week due to the rehearsal schedule for South Pacific with the Alabama Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Chris Confessore which had its first performance last night and its last performance tonight at 7 PM (if you’re local to Birmingham, you still have time to make plans to be there – tickets at the door). I hadn’t had a decompress week for quite some time and it’s been good for me, giving me time to savor the compact rehearsal process for the show (five total rehearsal days – I was called for three of them) and two performance days. It’s also given me entirely too much time to catch up on the rather insane political machinations of the moment. I can’t say that’s been the best for my constitution and there’s something to be said about being kept busy by ordinary life so that all of the unmanageable events rocketing through the national character aren’t occupying too large a space in the psyche.
South Pacific has been a lovely experience. The majority of the cast are locals whom I have known and worked with for decades and we’re having fun together. I must admit to a heavy case of impostor syndrome. I know their credits and achievements on both a local and national level and then I look at myself as a performer and think what the hell am I doing up here with you? But I guess I know a little bit about what I’m doing as i was able to get the laughs and other audience reaction I wanted last night. The audience was well primed. That overture played by a full symphony practically brought the house to their feet and it was pretty clear they were going to follow wherever we led. And the antiracisim themes, even if they’re a bit creaky having been written in the late 1940s, make a significant impact given the current state of affairs in this country. I get to do it one more time in a few hours and then this, like the other eighty something shows I’ve been involved in since I began performing routinely some 23 years ago, will be packed away in the box labeled ‘happy memories’, to be replaced by another project. At this point, that looks to be a double bill of Cavalleria Rusticana and I Pagliacci in mid-April. I could squeeze something into a February/March slot but I have no plans to do so. I have a number of home projects that require attention.
At the moment, all eyes are on Minneapolis where the federal government has found it wise to send some 3,000 agents to conduct enforcement actions against undocumented immigrants. That’s roughly five times the size of the Minneapolis police department so there’s no wonder the city feels like it’s paying host to an unwelcome occupying force. Why Minneapolis? There are far greater numbers of immigrants in most Texas cities. I assume this is a need for the Trump administration to showcase their power for the cameras as a warning or deterrent to other American cities to roll over and let ICE do what they feel like doing. And so the news footage keeps appearing of operatives dressed like characters out of Fortnite (camouflage being so useful on American streetscapes), threatening anyone they please and skipping ahead to the whole ‘Papieren bitte… schnell schnell’ phase of authority/citizen relations. Minneapolis also gives Trump the chance to practice vindictive retribution against Tim Walz for being Kamala’s running mate and to use the Somali community, as exemplified by Ihlan Omar, as a convenient scapegoat. Haitians eating neighborhood pets is so last year. Somalis are apparently stealing suitcases full of taxpayer cash through fraudulent day cares and flying it out of the country. (I have yet to see any corroborative evidence behind most of the wild allegations permeating the right wing news sphere).
The process of acculturation by immigrants in the US has a long history and follows reconizable patterns. The initial immigrants arrive, often band together in communities with other immigrants for mutual support based around ties of language, religion and culture. Their children are often divided between heritage and the new opportunities America brings. Their grandchildren are generally thoroughly American. The process takes somewhere between forty and seventy years for each new group to assimilate. It happened with the Irish, the Scandinavians, the Italians, the Poles, Eastern European Jews etc. The Somalis arrived in the 1990s with the disintegration of their home country into civil war so they’re only about half way through the process. Of course they’re not going to be totally assimilated. Give them another twenty-five years. Nearly 90% of the Somali community in Minneapolis are US Citizens (either naturalized or native born). It’s not some invading army.
Why didn’t they pick some other city to unleash their onslaught? They weren’t about to choose one in a ‘loyal’ red state. In regards to blue state cities, they likely didn’t want one with difficult topography so Seattle and San Francisco were out, one that’s too large geographically (there go Los Angeles and Chicago), and one where they thought they could probably cow the locals (good bye New York and Philadelphia). I did not have on my bingo card that the wine moms of Minnesota were going to be the shock troops to first start offering some significant resistance to what ICE does but here we are. As much as the right would like to believe in some sort of devious Soros funded cabal of paid agitation, my read is different. I think the people of Minneapolis looked around at their city and at what was happening and more or less decided to publicly state that this is not who we are as Americans. This is not how we do things. We believe in the rule of law. We believe in our neighbors whom we have gotten do know over decades as being decent people and they are using their constitutionally protected rights of assembly and protest to let ICE know exactly how they are viewed. And the polling on the administration’s handling of immigration issues, once their strongest suit, is absolutely cratering. They’re likely to double down. After all, the Big Beautiful Bill, has given more money to ICE than most countries defense budgets. But they’re eventually going to run out of applicants willing to continually harrass fellow Americans. Especially when prospective agents start reading the fine print and figure out that vaunted $50,000 signing bonus is only payable after five years of continued service and, if they do not complete that five years, they must pay back any additional bonus monies proffered.
As for dear leader, who seems to have spent a lot of this past week falling asleep on camera, he managed to pull a true Rhoda Penmark moment with Nobel Laureate Machado in the Oval Office, only with fewer shoes involved. He can put his new shiny gold toy with all of his other shiny gold toys but it must gall him that it can’t truly be his. And I have to wonder about the circle of sycophants who arrange all of this, and the members of other branches of government whose inaction continues to enable the executive’s overreach. I assume at least some of their children are reading Harry Potter and recognizing their parents as so many Cornelius Fudges and Dolores Umbridges. There must be some uncomfortable conversations at home. Unless, of course, their children have been carefully taught.
Saber rattling regarding Greenland continues. Now it’s been awhile since I have sat down and read the entire constitution but I do seem to remember that it states that any treaty signed and ratified by the US shall be deemed ‘the supreme law of the land’. This, of course, would include NATO. Any military strike on Greenland, as a violation of NATO would therefore be prima facie illegal and unconstitutional and it would be interesting to see if the US military would be willing to follow such orders. I assume the more intelligent in the administration who understand that such a move would tank the US economy, if not lead to World War III, will keep all of this at a strictly rhetorical phase.
DHS remains relatively quiet. DOJ continues with its two current functions – retribution against Trump’s political enemies and protection for Trump and his circle against inconveniences such as laws. The VA, my deparment, hasn’t asked me to do anything immoral, unethical, or illegal as of yet. I’m going to continue getting up, getting dressed, going out, and doing good.
Life, The Universe, and Everything 