The wrong awaited announcement of Donald J. Trump’s reelection campaign kicked off in Orlando, Florida last night. As wrong as he was for announcing “the Wall” promised to be paid for by the Mexican government in 2015 and leading the crowd in chants of “lock her up,” the Trump reruns have begun in earnest. Unlike the lies told by Sarah Sanders about the countless numbers of FBI agents she has spoken to, the countless articles written about the lack of veracity about the current President of the United States have proven to be true. Among his déjà vu of lies and renewing his attack on the press, as fake news, yadda—yadda—yadda, Mr. Trump introduced a new tactic declaring that an attack on him was really an attack on the people. [Democrats] "want to destroy you and they want to destroy our country as we know it."
As per usual, the ‘media-nation turns its lonely eyes’ to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (R-NY) and her overnight statement comparing the cruelties at the border to concentration camps,"The United States is running concentration camps on our southern border and that is exactly what they are," said the Representative. Far be it for me, the descendant of slaves, to qualify a perception, real or not to Jews around the world who took exception to her comments. An understandable uproar from some members of the Jewish community was the immediate response. I can understand the sentiment because as an African American had she called them slave camps my hackles would have been raised as well. I am reminded though, that despite the unavoidable comparisons, the definition of a concentration camp is-a camp in which people are detained or confined, usually under harsh conditions and without regard to legal norms of arrest and imprisonment that are acceptable in a constitutional democracy.
Never a truer definition has existed for what is currently happening to Latin immigrants at our southern border. To underscore this, the President pledged, once again, to arrest and deport millions who entered the U.S. through the southern border but no mention of arresting or deporting those who have entered from our northern border; maybe they are Norwegians.
The Republicans will go into accusatory socialism mode on conservative radio and tv for the next 48 hours until the next perceived slight from Congresswoman Ocasio-Cortez. The hypocritical nature of conservative politics never ceases to amaze me. Kentucky Senator Mitch McConnell said that reparations for slavery were partially satisfied because the country elected a black president. “We tried to deal with our original sin of slavery by fighting a civil war, by passing landmark civil rights legislation, elected an African American president,” Barack Obama, in 2008, McConnell said. I am not sure which is more insulting, that McConnell’s short-sightedness makes him feel that Mr. Obama was compensation to be bartered away like a slave on a block or that he was unqualified in his eyes.
I grew up at the tail end of the civil rights spear, I have seen a lot, the assassination of a President black Americans saw as an ally; A civil rights leader [Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.] who was a martyr for the cause, and finally a President who looked like me and my children. Now is not the time for a rerun. Slavery, the Trail of Tears, the Holocaust and Internment camps; none of these atrocities ever made us great, then or again.
Vote in 2020 for Change.