It was the best of times. It was the worst of times. Charles Dickens is on my mind as I’ve moved on to another one of the lesser known novels in my quest to have read all of his fiction prior to shuffling off this mortal coil. I am roughly a third of the way through ‘Dombey and Son’ and I haven’t yet made up my mind as to whether I like it or not. It has all of the hallmarks of Dickens. The little jokes placed in even the most somber settings. The lively supporting cast. Sharp social commentary. But it doesn’t rocket along the way David Copperfield or Nicholas Nickleby does from one adventure to the next. And it’s a bit thematically lugubrious, concerned mainly with misplaced priorities in life and how those damage relationships.
It’s too bad we don’t have an American Dickens at the ready to dissect Trump’s America. If I were to try my hand at fiction that’s the sort of thing I would likely produce. We have had some Dickensian writers – Patrick Dennis, Armistead Maupin, Barbara Kingsolver but no one that has been able to disguise social critique through the adventures of a family as they pass through the follies and foibles of modern American life. If anyone is aware of someone who is writing like this, let me know so I can give them a try. Because if there were ever a society that was due for a whipped cream with knives dissection via comic fiction, it’s this last decade in the USA.
Trump’s America is, of course, on full display in Minneapolis where yet another American citizen was executed by ICE on the street earlier today. The 3,000 ICE agents occupying the city now have two deaths of American citizens on their hands for a rate of 1/1,500. Given that the murder rate in America is approximately 4/100,000 and the murder rate by undocumented immigrants is roughly half that or 2/100,000, statistically ICE is about thirty times more dangerous to public safety than the undocumented community. Add to that the dozens whom have perished in ICE custody and the fact that ICE is not providing any medical care for detainees and I know which side I believe has the moral upper hand. DHS and the Trump administration have begun the character assassination of the deceased, focusing on the fact that he was armed. Interesting how the second amendment is sacrosanct except in this situation. Compare Mr. Petti who had a permit and did not appear in the films I have seen to be threatening anyone, but rather coming to the aid of a woman who had been attacked by ICE, to Kyle Rittenhouse. But then consistency has never been a particularly strong suit amongst the MAGA faithful.
There will be more blood and more death. The butcher’s bill may come due again in Minneapolis or in Maine or in some other American neighborhood yet to be named. It won’t stop until those with a sworn duty to defend the constitution – congress and the court system – shrug off their collective torpor and start demanding that the constitution (and especially the fourt and fourteenth amendments) are sacrosanct and not to be ignored for the sake of a few rapidly thrown together executive orders. And this is where the best of times comes in. Yesterday, a significant fraction of the population of Greater Minneapolis came together with a united message of what is happening here is unacceptable. And that’s all it really takes. Society standing together and demanding the rule of law over the rule of ego and whims.
The other thing that should be kept in mind is that ICE cannot win in the long run. Roughly 1/7-1/8 of the total number of ICE agents are currently on the ground in Minneapolis. And Minneapolis is the 46th largest city in the country. There are 346 municipalities in the US with a population of over 100,000 The number of agents that would be required to cow the population into full compliance is astronomical and unobtainable. Do not comply in advance and remember the Good Trouble of John Lewis.
I have a number of somewhat conservative friends who probably think I am a bleeding heart libtard when it comes to immigration issues. I have no issues with those found guilty of having violated law by a court being deported according to the appropritate civil procedures provided in law. I do have huge issues with racial and ethnic profiling, the death penalty meted out by officers with minimal training, warrantless searches and seizures, grabbing those who have done everything ‘the right way’ at their administrative hearings and tossing them into detention, detaining the spouses of American citizens, attacking random people on the streets for minimal cause, detaining people in inappropriate and unsanitary environments and all of the rest that’s going on.
Turning now to matters of public health. The nasty influenza A strain that was making people deathly ill around the holidays appears to be receding, just in time for influenza B to start making the rounds. Keep those hands washed and get your flu shot. It’s still not too late. Covid has been quiescent most of this winter. DHS and the CDC continue to be a mess under leadership chosen for ideology rather than science. The chair of the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, Kirk Milhoan, came out this past week and stated that he wasn’t sure that we needed polio vaccines and that they should never be required if parents did not wish them given. Maybe I should buy stock in the manufacturer of iron lungs as that’s where this particular bad idea is going to end up.
I am finding it very difficult to write at the moment. I can turn out these essays but most of my other projects are stalled as I cannot turn off my brain, flooded as it is with the angst of the moment, and get those creative juices flowing. I don’t have much theatrical the next few months and it would be a great time to really get some work done on something meaningful but I get home in the evening, open up my laptop, and nothing happens other than scrolling through AI cat videos. I’m giving myself some grace. One thing I have learned about myself over the decades is that when the time is right, the words will flow.
There has been much hysteria the last few days about the weather. Apparently the fact that it gets cold in January and can freeze has never occurred to anyone before. I’ll walk to work if I have to. I’ve done it before. I did not rush out to the grocery store to buy bread and milk as I have no particular need of bread pudding.
Get up. Get dressed. Go out (but be careful if the roads and walks are slick). Do good.
Life, The Universe, and Everything 