SWEAR WORDS EDITION
Ed. Note: There’s a lot of cussing in this week’s article. That’s because the circumstances of the world require it. So deal. Also, and this is a Permanent Standing Editor’s Note, excuse the typos. I do not (and refuse to) proof-read these things; this is a hobby and you’ll take it gladly, transposed letters and all. Finally, many of these links go to New York Times and Washington Post articles. If you’re hitting your monthly limit, be an adult and buy a subscription. You need these publications, and they need you.
FIRST, A WORD: First, a word (or two): Fuck You. Fuck you to every single person who voted for Trump. Fuck You to every person who didn’t vote because both candidates were “awful.” Fuck You to every person who said there was no difference between Clinton and Trump. And most of all, Fuck You to everyone who scolded liberals for taking Trump “seriously and literally,” admonishing us that his supporters -- those salt of the earth Real Americans -- understood that they should only take him seriously but not literally. I’m looking squarely at you, Real American Peter Thiel, a billionaire immigrant who has made his billions by investing in other immigrants and who had the audacity to tell us that Trump wouldn’t really build a wall or ban Muslims or impose a religious test. Fuck You a thousand times, Peter Thiel. I hope you’re happy now. What we have seen in the first two weeks of this administration is nothing less than a revocation of America’s founding myth, a wholesale rewriting of what this country stands for. And so an extra Fuck You to every “moderate” and “sane” Republican elected official who has stood in SILENCE as Trump -- single-handedly, with the stroke of a pen on typo-ridden and secret executive orders, in the style of true dictators -- has ripped apart families, banned lawful PERMANENT residents from their homes in the US,* rejected people who risked their lives working for the US in Iraq and Afghanistan, and sent children fleeing war-torn nations (wars that we have started and/or perpetuated) back to those countries -- most likely to their deaths. We have told those who have seen America as a beacon of hope and justice in the world that they are, as Trump said, simply not wanted here. This is the sort of thing that a country does not easily recover from. It is the sort of thing that creates fear, anger, and enemies abroad. In short, it makes us dramatically less safe here at home. And it destroys the fundamental character of a country that has held itself as a city upon a hill for three centuries. I am beyond disgusted. I am beyond terrified. I genuinely don’t see how we come back from this.
ONE MORE: Oh, and an extra special FUCK YOU to Paul Ryan, because for some unknown reason he has managed to maintain a reputation as a fair, “normal,” reasonable guy, despite all evidence to the contrary. He is a fraud. And while every other GOPer was too frightened to say anything on Saturday about the ban, Ryan DEFENDED the wisdom of the goddamn executive order (this of course after he criticized Trump’s Muslim ban proposal during the campaign). Remember, he is not spineless; he is driven by purpose. The only people who can stop Trump are Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell. They have just told us that a deeply immoral, imprudent, and illegal act by the President will engender only their further support, all in the name of cutting taxes for rich people.
A FEW MORE ON THE BAN: A few other items to note about the ban. During the weekend and early part of the week, when the ban was still causing massive chaos and confusion, Marco Rubio told reporters that, when he tried to contact the State department to ask questions about the ban, State told him it was not permitted to speak to Congress. Then again, State may have had nothing valuable to add anyway, since apparently incoming Secretary of State Tillerson was not even consulted about the ban before it was issued. Meanwhile, within the State Department, as rumors spread about the ban, employees on Friday frantically rushed to approve visas before the ban went into effect, a sign of the massive discontent the ban has caused within the ranks of those who have spent their careers processing visas for immigrants and refugees. In fact, roughly 1,000 State department employees signed an official dissent cable registering their anger with the ban, the largest group ever to take advantage of the Department’s official internal mechanism for registering objections. Despite the fact that the Dissent Channel was established explicitly for this purpose and to protect the employees who make use of it, the Trump White House (unsurprisingly) declared that those who disagreed with the policy should “get out.”
TRUMP TO IGNORE THE MOST DANGEROUS TERRORISM IN US: “The Trump administration wants to revamp and rename a U.S. government program designed to counter all violent ideologies so that it focuses solely on Islamist extremism,” Reuters reports. This means he will turn a blind eye to the most prevalent form of terrorism in the US, right-wing and racist extremism. This is fitting for a White House that the White House is controlled by a white supremacist, who objected to his daughters going to school with Jews, who views legal immigration as a “problem,” who compared Islam to Naziism, who said the West was in a war with Islam, and who specifically nixed a Holocaust Remembrance statement that actually named the victims of the Holocaust -- and who employs or consults other men who compare Muslims to termites and declare that fear of Muslims is “RATIONAL.” P.S. The White House has now hired the leading “intellectual” of America’s authoritarian movement.
LOOK TO THE WOMEN: Things are bad out there. But One point of hope and comfort and inspiration for me in the last few weeks has been to see the women of this country really rising to the occasion, leading the resistance and the charge against Trump. It started with the millions of women who organized and marched across the country and around the world the day after Trump’s inauguration, a potent statement of of feminist power and rage and sisterhood I have never seen before. And then, in the pictures and accounts of the volunteer lawyers rushing to airports to help those stranded by Trump’s evil executive order, you couldn’t help but notice that women were everywhere, outnumbering men and putting their bodies on the front lines. As one volunteer attorney in Atlanta told New York Magazine about her sister lawyers: “We’re gonna fight like hell. Every lawyer is gonna fight like hell.” Then four of the first five judges to act against Trump and halt his order were women. And then we come to the caped crusader Sally Yates, the Acting Attorney General who declared she would not enforce the illegal, discriminatory, and immoral immigrant and refugee ban, and who was summarily fired for “betraying” the DOJ hours later. That Trump is such a rampant misogynist makes the Women’s Rebellion all the sweeter. As Rebecca Traister writes, “It must be galling for a man who has been so open about his disregard for women to find that the strongest pushback to his administration so far has come from a bunch of women who appear more than a little unimpressed by President Trump, his appointees, and his executive orders.” Finally, I just want to close by pointing out this truly badass volunteer lawyer, whose picture and story brought me a few minutes of true joy and awe this week. Thanks, ladies. I’m doing my best to keep up.
Good News of the Week: God knows we need it. So remember the massive, awe-inspiring, enormous, Inauguration-crowd-shattering Women’s March on DC two weeks ago? A local anti-homelessness organization called Miriam’s Kitchen asked participants to donate the Metro cards they used for the weekend -- and in response, they received nearly 1,000 cards to give to their folks. From the org: “Tesfay Yegzaw is an MK guest who recently lost his job and has limited funds. Your kindness has helped him get to his next doctor’s appointment. Thank you so much.”
Apocalypse Watch: You really must read this entire article about Trump’s Wednesday phone call with the Prime Minister of Australia. I can’t even excerpt a quote because the entire thing is bananas. (It was so bad that John McCain had to personally call the Australian embassy on Thursday to reassure it that the United States was still a strong ally.) Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy tweeted this week: “I made a Top 100 Possible Trump Administration Foreign Crises list & I gotta admit "Rupturing US-Australia Relations" was NOT on there.”
Must Read of the Week: The Left needs to get ready to lose a lot of fights -- without dissolving into intraparty warfare.
PS. Yes, I ignored the Supreme Court. This sums up my views pretty well.
*This part was written on Saturday. A few days after issuing his order -- which did deliberately bar green-card holders, over the objections of DHS -- the White House "clarified" that the ban would not apply to lawful permanent residents (LPRs), or that it would but LPRs would be admitted on a case by case basis, or that it would but LPRs would have an automatic exemption. So it's all totally clear.
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