They said he was briefly popular: Roman Emperor Caligula assassinated by his own bodyguards, 41 AD. A 19th century Dutch engraving to illustrate what can happen when the all-powerful go too far.
US cruelty flights to kick off the Fourth Reich
Don’t overestimate humanity. Read about horrific brutality in boastful ancient Assyrian inscriptions or the Book of Joshua. Know that for the Romans, feeding the Christians to the lions was popular entertainment.
But also notice that, in the broad sweep of history, this stuff doesn’t last. The Assyrian community in the Detroit area may have good people and bad people, but it’s a small ethnic group with an ornate Orthodox Christian church in Southfield where an Aramaic liturgy holds out. The church’s mission statement says that it intends to “encourage all parishioners to have a loving and daily relationship with God, His Son Jesus Christ and be inspired by the Holy Spirit.” There might be some neo-Caligula in the Detroit area who projects them as some sort of threat, but nobody else does. Yes, the Italians have voted for a neofascist prime minister, but that’s an outlier and she has yet to announce a date for a public lion feeding. Yes the State of Israel is an international pariah with a war crimes warrant out for its prime minister’s arrest, but do not pin that sad situation on “The Jews.”
Donald Trump’s first week back in office was a frenetic exercise in multifaceted cruelty, particularly but not only as to immigrants. He has gone out of his way to offend Panama, Mexico, Colombia and Brazil for starters.
The new white supremacist regime has sent agents to US elementary schools looking for immigrant kids. It operates on a racial profile devoid of any sense – ICE has detained members of the Navajo Nation because they didn’t look right. For decades Republicans in Congress blocked proposals for a national identity card, but now Trump’s goons are wont to demand identification of any brown-skinned individual they encounter and they will arrest anyone who doesn’t ‘prove that they are American’ to their satisfaction.
Mexico and Colombia have refused to let US military deportation flights land in those countries, sparking US retaliation, Latin American counter-retaliation, and Trump annoucements about agreements being reached. (The Panama News will wait to see the versions from Latin American countries – anything that Donald Trump says is likely to be a lie. It would be irresponsible to take the word of such an unreliable source at face value.)
How obnoxious can it get? Brazil has protested against a four-hour flight on a defective chartered aircraft, on which 88 people were held in shackles and handcuffs and guarded by US military personnel. The flight was supposed to end in the southern Brazilian city of Belo Horizonte, but was cut short and ended in the Amazon port city of Manaus due to mechanical problems. The plane’s air conditioning wasn’t working and some of the chained-up passengers fainted. Under their commander in chief’s orders, the soldiers denied the passengers water.
On the ground in Manaus, US troops were obliged to take orders from Brasilia, not Washington. They were told to take the handcuff and shackles off of the prisoners, which they did.
Were the papers in order? Brazilian authorities report that the prisoners bore documents that said that they agreed to deportation. But some of them were minors. Can an underage person legally give consent to such treatment? Can anybody bound in chains and subjected to cruel and humiliating treatment freely give informed consent to such stuff?
The Brazilian government fired off a stern protest to Washington. We shall see what comes of it. But all across Latin America, people and most of their governments are offended. Rest assured that across the region the sales of US products will be affected. However the back-and-forth about tariffs and counter-tariffs turns out, many a Latin American consumer will buy the local, Asian or European product before putting their money down on something with a made in the USA label.
So, faced with a starting debacle and a goal of quickly rounding up and deporting 11 million people, Trump ordered arrest quotas for ICE agents. Like ticket quotas in a backwoods US jurisdiction that depends on speed trap revenues to keep its public officials in style. Maybe in the Fourth Reich that sort of thing will stand up in the courts but probably not.
Add to the aroma of Trump’s deportation round-ups his territorial demands for Panama, Greenland and Canada, and the distaste for the United States and what it has to offer becomes pretty much global. What will THAT do for the eight or nine million Americans living abroad?
It’s not as if Donald Trump cares. Didn’t North Carolina Republicans move to void the votes of North Carolinians living abroad? But guess what? That stunt was rejected by Republican judges.
Would history be a guide? Despite all efforts to enforce loyalty, Trump’s abuses may well be cut short by Republican voters and the various government officials and agents whom he expects to carry out his orders.
At the Lincoln Memorial. US National Parks photo.
Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man’s character, give him power.
Abraham Lincoln
Bear in mind…
The dead cannot cry out for justice; it is a duty of the living to do so for them.
Lois McMaster Bujold
The problem of power is how to achieve its responsible use rather than its irresponsible and indulgent use — of how to get men of power to live for the public rather than off the public.
Robert F. Kennedy
A leader takes people where they want to go. A great leader takes people where they don’t necessarily want to go but where they ought to be.
Rosalynn Carter
Contact us by email at thepanamanews@gmail.com
To fend off hackers, organized trolls and other online vandalism, our website comments feature is switched off. Instead, come to our Facebook page to join in the discussion.
These links are interactive — click on the boxes
