Coming To Terms with Absurdity

At some point, we have to come to terms with the fact that a whole swath of the American public has literally no consistent set of values or beliefs. The absurdity of it all is that they’re also the same ones who are so desperate to shove their beliefs down the throats of everyone around them.

They’re the crowd that spent much of 2020 shouting “Back The Blue” and “Blue Lives Matter!” That is, until the police stood in the way of them storming the Capitol Building or arrested them when they were acting as agitators at a protest. A Right-Wing Influencer gets arrested, and suddenly, the police are corrupt and acting on behalf of “Radical Marxists.” They’re the people who said–with straight faces–that no one has anything to worry about if they just comply with existing laws and the people charged with enforcing them, but then treated a woman killed while breaking into the Capitol as if she was a martyr. They also conveniently had a litany of excuses for all the times it was clearly evident that someone did comply before they were killed, since it didn’t fit their narrative.

They’re the same people who insisted, “All Lives Matter,” as long as those lives don’t belong to people whose political ideologies diverge from theirs. If you’re Black, Indigenous, Central/South American, LGBTQ+, Liberal, or Leftist, your lives only matter if you keep your thoughts to yourselves and comply with their restrictive and toxic worldview.

These people will share every poorly Photoshopped piece of nonsense they can find, to disparage or discredit a victim–while hauling out the torches and pitchforks every time someone quoted Charlie Kirk with well-documented statements he’d made. They’ll condemn anyone who wasn’t saddened by that death, while reveling in the deaths of anyone killed by ICE or Border Patrol, blaming the victims for what happened.

They’re the evangelical Christian antichrists, distorting the Bible until Jesus is as cruel and mindless as they are…while simultaneously insisting on the utter infallibility of the same book.

The fact is…you can’t trust these people. No one can. They can’t even trust one another, because they’ll turn on each other at a moment’s notice.

They’re just liars.

It’s all they are. It’s all they do. And it’s why what they believe changes as rapidly as they shed skin cells. They have no beliefs. They have no values. They have no standards. All they know how to do is keep shifting goalposts around in a frenzied attempt to get one over on someone else. They have no concept of nuance or context. What they have is a desperate need to feel like they’re winning, even as they shoot themselves in the foot repeatedly.

They will perform whatever feats of mental gymnastics they need to, to uphold that delusional certainty that they are winning.

They’re all losers, though.

A pack of losers and liars; grifters who aren’t even really in on the grift, because they’re being conned and scammed along with the rest of us. The difference is that they’re just too stupid to see it.

That’s what we all need to accept. They’re all either stupid or evil…or both.

Either way, it’s worth it just to see what they have to say and reply with, “You don’t actually believe any of that (or you won’t by next week), so why should anyone else?”

As another deadly shooting at the hands of Department of Homeland Security agents takes place in Minneapolis, it still somehow amazes me that there’s still any debate over the incident on January 7, 2026, when Renee Nicole Good was murdered. It shouldn’t surprise me, but I can’t help but hold on to just a kernel of faith in humanity, despite there being little to no cause for that faith.

People on the Right conveniently disregard 18 U.S. Code 111, which states that anyone using a deadly or dangerous weapon while resisting arrest shall be fined and/or imprisoned not more than 20 years. Unless they’re on the receiving end, of course.

That’s a far stretch from summary execution.

And, of course, the narrative predicated on Good using her vehicle as a deadly weapon (which she was not) was transparently fictional from the jump. Nevermind the mental gymnastics required to pretend the ICE agent was not actively violating the DHS “Use of Force” policy that says agents “…should always avoid intentionally and unreasonably placing themselves in positions in which they have no alternative to using deadly force.”

People can make believe it wasn’t murder all they want–and they will–but it was murder perpetrated by a state actor. Anyone insisting otherwise is grifting…or stupid.

The same people who are so adamant regarding the Right To Bear Arms are the first to state that a man deserved to be shot by Federal Agents simply because he had a firearm on his person. It’s just another example of the complete and total lack of coherent or consistent beliefs among these people.

It’s time to shed the optimistic, rose-colored perception of humanity as being capable of overcoming gullibility. I wish there were evidence supporting the assertion that we could trust the people around us to have any capacity to see through manipulation, gaslighting, and grifting.

Greed, Grief, and Desperation make people altogether too susceptible to manipulation by even transparently ridiculous cons, performed by transparently idiotic conmen and women.

There’s a well-known story about how Sir. Arthur Conan Doyle and Harry Houdini crossed paths in the 1920s. It happened because the previously rational and reasonable Doyle was driven to believe increasingly outlandish spiritual claims following the tragic losses he and his family suffered during the First World War. Houdini hoped to remedy this by performing a magic trick involving automatic writing, but Doyle stubbornly maintained his belief in the paranormal nature of the experience, even after Houdini walked him through how he had performed the trick. No amount of proof or evidence could shake Doyle’s belief that what he’d witnessed was anything but supernatural–even when it was supplied by the man behind the experience itself.

Imagine how much Houdini could have taken the man for, had he just leaned into Doyle’s erroneous, preconceived notions. That is precisely what grifters have been doing for as long as there have been people on the receiving end of their manipulation.

Even without Greed, Grief, and Desperation involved, it’s hard for people to admit they were taken advantage of, even if they’re capable of seeing the truth of it.

No one wants to admit they were fooled. It makes them feel foolish.

Unfortunately, too many people can’t seem to see that it would still be better to admit the truth and correct course than to continue acting like a fool. And so that is what they do. They insist on behaving foolishly.

It’s impossible to turn on the television or open social media timelines without seeing obvious grifters at work, so confident that they’re not even putting in much effort to make their lies plausible or even halfway coherent. There’s a reason they’re so confident, too, and it’s because they believe they are that much smarter than everyone else, or because they’re victims as well–unable to admit they were made a fool.

What the world needs now is a wake-up call and a willingness to admit when we’re wrong. We need fewer fools.

Immigrants Are NOT the Problem, and They Never Were

There is never a bad time to remind people that being Undocumented in the U.S. is a Civil Offense, not a criminal one. Unless someone has been previously Deported and has returned to the U.S. (which is a Felony) or is caught in the process of (or found Guilty of) Illegal Border Crossing (which is a Misdemeanor), they are not criminals. This should make it obvious that the habit of simply accusing anyone who is here without legal documentation of being a criminal is both legally & factually incorrect.

Unless they’ve committed other crimes while on U.S. soil, they are not criminals and should not be treated as such. And Due Process is required to assert Guilt, which requires honoring the writ of Habeas Corpus.

Of course, none of that matters when the DHS and ICE are allowed to just make up whatever criminal activities, questionable tattoo correlations, supposed gang affiliations, and whatever else they want to claim about any individuals they’ve targeted to pick up off the street, from their homes, from churches, from the classrooms, or in front of the courthouses as they wait for their Immigration Hearings. Because, without Due Process, no one has an opportunity to defend themselves or to prove the lie for what it is.

We currently have more than 46 Million Immigrants living in America, with more than half of that number being Naturalized Citizens. Note that I did not say they were Documented Immigrants, these are Citizens who came here as Immigrants. And that is no simple process. As of last year, it took the average Immigrant seven and a half years as a Permanent Resident to become Naturalized. They undergo a lengthy application process and are tested on their knowledge of the English language as well as their knowledge of U.S. History and Government.

In the 27 years leading up to the moment when President Trump first took office in 2017, a grand total of 305 Denaturalization cases were pursued. It was an exceptionally rare legal process, something reserved for people like War Criminals, Child Predators, and those who Sponsored Terrorists. Obviously, it wasn’t common.

However, one of the first things President Trump did upon taking office in 2017 was to explore options to loosen the standards in place regarding what qualified as a cause for Denaturalization. His Administration’s goal was to expand the rationale and justification required to strip an individual of American Citizenship. There were hurdles he needed to overcome, of course, and questions of constitutionality were involved.

Nevertheless, during Trump’s first year in the White House, 20 Denaturalization cases were filed with the Department Of Justice. By the time he’d been in office for three years, that number had reached 94. The number of Denaturalization cases was only 20 for 2020, but this was largely due to the COVID-19 pandemic having a massive impact on our courts. But, during the four-year interval, the first Trump Administration had filed 104 Denaturalization cases, compared to 305 in the 27 years leading up to that point. You’re reading that correctly: 25% of all Denaturalization cases in 31 years happened in just the four years President Trump was in the White House (or 12% of the time frame).

The beginning of President Biden’s Administration was also impacted by pandemic conditions, but during his four-year term, only 24 Denaturalization cases were filed. So, that still leaves the first Trump Administration responsible for 24% of all Denaturalization cases in a 35-year interval. So far, the President is off to a slow start, with only five Denaturalization cases, but it’s just getting started.

Since he returned to the White House, President Trump’s Administration has (in addition to renewing efforts to lower the standards required to justify Denaturalization) also started pushing to strip Citizenship via Civil Litigation.

This may not mean much to most of us, since we aren’t lawyers. But it’s a truly horrific prospect. It’s important to understand that this means a U.S. Citizen could face losing their Citizenship without being entitled to an attorney and with a diminished Burden of Proof involved in the decision. Sure, they can pay for an Attorney (assuming they can afford it) or they can hope for someone to take on their case pro bono, but they’re not afforded legal counsel as they should.

You see, it’s not just the violation of Due Process regarding Undocumented Immigrants that’s an issue (which Obama was guilty of doing as well). Also, why the hell would any Trump supporter point to Obama as a benchmark? That’s just nonsense. The problem now is the clear intent to strip Due Process from U.S. Citizens on top of violating Due Process for Undocumented and Documented Immigrants.

Even if someone wants to argue the 14th Amendment doesn’t apply to Undocumented Immigrants (which it does), it absolutely applies to Citizens. This policy also flies in the face of the Supreme Court Decision that brought an end to McCarthy era bullshit, of using Denaturalization as a political bludgeon, creating “…two levels of citizenship.”

There is a clear and present trend in the objectives put forth by President Trump and his appointees. The Trump Administration has made attempts to rescind Birthright Citizenship, revoke the Legal Status of various groups of Documented Immigrants, increase the number of Undocumented Immigrants removed without Due Process, and strip Citizenship from Naturalized Citizens at an increased rate and without Due Process. All of this is combined with efforts to make it harder to become a Citizen, more difficult to obtain Documented (Legal) Status, and to refuse Asylum Status for more Asylum Seekers.

By April, we had already Deported three children between the ages of two and seven who were U.S. Citizens. This was done even though family members here were prepared to take them in when their Undocumented mothers were being Deported, and made several legal requests to do so. Attorneys were denied access to the women–as were the family members–and they were provided with no alternatives but to take their children with them as they were Deported.

We’re only six months into this Presidency, and he is attempting to reshape the landscape regarding Immigration to make it inhospitable for anyone but those he thinks should be here, and that seems to exclusively consist of White South African “refugees” and people who can pay $5 Million for the privilege.

Of course, to Deport someone is to return them to their Country Of Origin, or to a country with which the individual has strong ties. That is the definition of Deportation. You can imagine this does not mean we get to send them to wherever we see fit. But, less than a month ago, the Supreme Court decided the Trump Administration could continue sending Immigrants to countries that are not their Country Of Origin.

Sending them somewhere they’ve never been, and where they have no social or familial ties, that’s more akin to Human Trafficking. Of course, this is a violation of both International Law and Human Rights, but no one involved with the Trump Administration is concerned with any of that. This should serve as a suitable reminder that what is Legal does not define what is Moral.

It’s wrong to refer to that activity as Deportation. Thankfully, we already have a term that mostly fits with what we’re doing with those Immigrants, it’s called Extraordinary Rendition. Sure, we can’t be certain that there’s a substantial risk of these individuals being tortured when they arrive at this third-party destination, but it doesn’t seem particularly unlikely. Again, no one involved in making these decisions is concerned. They’re similarly unconcerned with the fact that Extraordinary Rendition is illegal in both the U.S. and internationally. The United Nations Convention Against Torture, which was ratified by the U.S. Senate back in 1998, explicitly prohibits Extraordinary Rendition.

Anyone who wants to claim any of this is right or acceptable should take a deep breath and spend some time reflecting on how and why they have so much contempt in their hearts for people who (like their own ancestors) came here for a chance at a better life. I also feel that they should take some time to consider the strong likelihood that these people probably had to go through a hell of a lot more trouble to achieve the American Dream than their families did. I know the various branches of my family tree had it a whole lot easier becoming American citizens.

As an amusing little adendum, I have some useful information to share with the pearl-clutching Anti-Immigration folks who are worried about the criminals and gangs that are coming across our borders. The Mexican Mafia originated in California’s prison system in the 1950s & spread to Mexico via deportation. More recently, MS-13 started on the streets of LA in the 1980s, before members were deported to El Salvador, where they became more powerful & dangerous.

Maybe deportation isn’t the solution people think it is. It might be a good time to stop complaining that these Central and South American nations are sending gangs across the border into the U.S., because it seems to me that we’ve been sending the gangs there more than the other way around. And, of course, that doesn’t even factor in the cartels we supplied, funded, and endorsed as rebels and insurgents.