[CHAPEL HILL, NC]
There is a growing measles outbreak here in America. Some parents have responded by poisoning their children inadvertently with large doses of Vitamin A, one of the alleged cures/prophylactics for the disease promoted particularly by people who object to vaccines – and by the man now in charge of the nation’s health care system.
Life carries on here in this country much as it always has, while we watch the cost of food continue to rise and its relative quality continue to worsen. Gas prices seem to stay stable – in a country literally tethered to its cars, this is a glimmer of relief. Meanwhile, increasingly huge storms rage, wildfires burn, floods and landslides wipe out regions, sometimes repeatedly. Many of these regions, like the one just to the west here in NC, largely remain in ruins.
Yet a new menace lurks in the air, everywhere, and very much by design. A new question hovers over us all: who is really safe now?
The list of what one should not be to avoid the new dragnet grows frighteningly longer. Sure, we were told that the “worst criminals” would be aggressively rounded up. But graduate students? Anyone with brown skin and a tattoo? Anti-Tesla protesters? Healthcare researchers? Foreign tourists and nationals with residency visas? All of them and more have been expelled, deported, kidnapped, disappeared – call it what you like – they have been literally snatched off the street, and some sent to places like Guantanamo or El Salvador. No notice, no due process, no habeas corpus; just swept away into a system that has already swallowed thousands of others like them and is eager to get more.
So, you don’t really have to be guilty of a crime for this treatment here now. You need only be the wrong type of person in the wrong place at the wrong time. This sounds a lot like those other bad countries we learned about as kids, being indoctrinated with pride in the freedoms America offered.
The threat doesn’t stop there, though. Maybe you won’t end up like the poor souls just listed because you don’t fit the profile, but you are still quite likely to lose your job and/or your benefits, even if you are not a federal employee. All around the state of NC research institutions and non-profits are laying off thousands of people. The area is home to major universities and corporations that are all facing the loss of massive amounts of money funding health care and technology research and business contracts. If you’re lucky enough not to lose your job, you have just as much reason to fear – as just happened to an acquaintance – losing all of your benefits and a percentage of your salary on top of that, at least for now.
America is certainly being “made” into something new, but what exactly that will end up being is impossible to say. Likewise, even considering saying anything at all about the many new threats to the lives of ordinary citizens looks to be an increasingly dangerous proposition. When did we last hear the words “improper ideology” used in the USA and referring to Americans? I dare say not in my lifetime. One finds oneself wondering if even expressing oneself in writing is really safe.
So, while major academic institutions and media groups (and often law firms themselves too) find themselves subject to investigations, legal and financial threats, perhaps it is not so surprising to see many of them bend or acquiesce to presidential demands. After all, suddenly their – ours too – very survival is at stake, and at times like that principles may only take you so far.
It is, however, a bit surprising and more than a little frustrating that the major icons of the Democratic Party, our former presidents and yes, even and perhaps especially the candidate, Kamala Harris, are on the sidelines, silent. These are the people who exerted considerable energy to warn us about the threats represented by a second Trump term in office. They called him a “fascist” and literally cried alarm from the rooftops exhorting us to “imagine him with no guardrails”.
Well, as my people sometime say, “what, then? Nu?” That’s it? Here it is, the disaster they foretold, unfolding in real time, and in ways that it is certainly not a stretch to say are far worse and more extreme than what most people imagined, as they were asked to. But the most news from Kamala Harris recently is that she is waffling over whether to run for Governor of California. Well, it’s reassuring to see she has her own future under consideration, but what about the rest of us? Where are all the self-appointed “defenders of democracy” now?
Perhaps they, too, feel threatened enough to withhold comment? In my view, this would be a generous reading, albeit a very unnerving one too.
It’s safe to say that it’s a new world here, and just about all bets are off now. We are only a few months into the new administration, and there’s really no need to go into further detail about all that’s emanating from the White House, other than to say that massive pain and destruction seem to be the underlying theme. Dissolving USAID was merely the opening salvo in an all-out assault on any government function that helps people in any way, across the board, and regardless of political affiliation.
But Americans voted for this – Europe and the rest of the increasingly suffering world did not. This is where a certain sense of shame comes into play. Wars, violence and disease are already escalating worldwide, along with the sea levels. When America rolls over, its partners lose the covers and are left lying in the cold.
In a certain sense this fact feels more painful when it comes to Europe, where our national (and my personal) bonds run so deep, than anywhere else. It’s not entirely clear (at least to this writer) where the harsh anti-Europe sentiment that runs so deep in the seats of American power now comes from, unless one tries to balance it with a seemingly equal affinity for Russia. As an American of a “certain age”, this reversal is one of the hardest to swallow, having grown up with Russia portrayed as the “evil empire” of the past.
That said, the notion that the European Union was created to “rip off” the US is one of the most vulgar lies of our time.
We are all on our own now: individuals, institutions, companies, and even nations. All are under a bigger variety of threats than they expected or could have been prepared for. Now, the question here in America, and around the world, has become one of survival.
L’articolo Letter from America proviene da ytali..
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