Our anger is necessary

Anger is an emotion that we need right now. So let it come. Feel it in your body. Feel the energy and resolve that it carries. It is carrying information. It is trying to tell you something. You need to listen.

Mahmoud Khalil, a green card holder, sits in a detention center in Louisiana. His arrest and detention means that the Constitution is being ignored and undermined. Khalil used his constitutionally protected rights (yes, they apply to green card holders) of freedom of speech and assembly to protest a genocide, a genocide being carried out with weaponry that the United States has gifted to Israel. Khalil’s case is not complicated. The Trump regime is not claiming that Khalil committed a crime or collaborated with Hamas or any other terrorist group. He exercised constitutionally protected rights, and has become a political prisoner for doing so.

On Tuesday, Israel carried out attacks in Gaza, killing 436 people, 183 of whom were children. Israel, with the support of the United States, has broken the ceasefire, and done so savagely. And this comes after Israel began blocking all aid (food, medicine, and more) into Gaza on March 2. On March 10, Israel cut off electricity to Gaza. Collective punishment is a war crime. The United States has shown approval for all of this.

This past Saturday, the Trump regime deported 261 men that it claimed were members of a Venezuelan gang (238) or a Salvadoran gang (23). Using the Alien Enemies act of 1798, these men were sent to a prison in El Salvador. They were afforded no due process. Individuals currently residing (illegally, I assume?) in the United States were sent to a prison in El Salvador without the Trump regime showing a shred of evidence to anyone. As far as I know, not even the media knows their names at this point. Furthermore, a judge ordered these deportations to stop, but the Trump regime defied that order. These men were shackled and had their heads and facial hair shaved upon arrival at the prison in El Salvador, a prison known to be an abuser of human rights. The prisoners are never allowed outdoors, for example.

These people, it pains me to say, are easy targets. I have heard multiple journalists casually say that they despise Khalil, or find his views abhorrent. Most then say, thankfully, that his speech is protected under the First Amendment. No one has offered any evidence of Khalil’s objectionable views, beyond his support for Palestinians. They don’t have to. The Trump regime knows that its supporters don’t care what happens to any of these people. Trump has referred to some immigrants as “animals.” He uses Palestinian as a slur. He called Chuck Schumer, who is Jewish, a Palestinian, because Trump considers that to be an obvious insult.

No one knows where we are in the story of the United States of America. But there are a lot of smart and trustworthy historians, journalists, political scientists, and sociologists who are trying to tell us that we are in the midst of an authoritarian takeover of the United States. I’m trying to listen.

Here is an example, from Johns Hopkins historian Taylor Stoermer. If you have the capacity to take this in, it is worthy of consideration. But it is also dark. I wish it were not so.