Descent

The above image is:

Hellmouth 2 ©Roxanna Bikadoroff www.roxannamundi.ca

The last article I read last night before I turned the computer off was from splinternews.com:

The Trump Administration Is Going After Naturalized Citizens Now

“Donald Trump’s administration is not only busy tearing children away from their parents at the border—they’re also going to start focusing on fresh new ways to oppress naturalized citizens in America. On Tuesday, the Associated Press reported that U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, the government agency that oversees immigration applications, is now creating a new office staffed by several dozen employees. It will be dedicated to looking for people who may have cheated to obtain their citizenship and stripping them of it. Think of it as terrorization by paperwork.”

I turned the computer off and went through the house checking to see that all the lights had been turned off and the bird’s cage had been covered. Then I went into our bedroom. My wife had not yet gone to sleep. I told her the only person in her family that was a “Native Born” American citizen was her youngest brother. Everyone else – her parents, the rest of her siblings and herself – were “naturalized” citizens. I told her what I had just read, and her response was that they probably weren’t looking for Filipinos who had come into the country over 45 years ago. They’re looking at people who came from Mexico, Central and South America, and the Middle East. Because I look at things through a slightly different lens, I said yeah … for now. She turned off the light and I turned on my Kindle. It’s a back-lit model so I can read without disturbing her.

About a half hour later I decided that was enough reading for the night and turned the Kindle off. A few minutes later I turned it back on and in its faint light wrote one word on the notepad I keep on my nightstand: Descent.

Now it’s morning. My wife and son are off to work and school and I can follow where that one word leads. Descent.

The short conversation my wife and I had the previous night must have taken place countless times throughout Nazi-controlled Europe.

They are looking for someone else. They will come for someone else.

And at that exact moment it was absolutely true. On the continuum of Fascism … at that moment … they were looking for someone else. They will be coming for someone else. But the simple fact is that eventually they will be looking at everyone. They will be coming for anyone. That’s how totalitarianism works. Eventually anyone can be a suspect.

To paraphrase Arlo Guthrie, I can tell Nazi Ghost stories all day long. I’m not proud … or tired. But I’m beginning to realize these aren’t Nazi Ghost Stories anymore. One by one these haunted Halloween tales turn up in the New York Times or on the Nightly News.

There are monsters in America. They are tearing families apart. Regardless of how much terror and anguish they cause by ripping children away from their parents, the monsters continue to follow their fucking orders and do their fucking jobs. They are building a fucking concentration camp in Texas for children. And now the monsters are turning their baleful gaze toward “naturalized” American citizens.

Eighty years ago, the questions monsters asked were to determine how much Jewish blood flowed in the veins of the people they ruled. One drop made someone suspect. And a suspect could be a threat. And threats to the Homeland had to be controlled or eliminated. The safety and security of the Homeland depended on it.

Sooner than later, our monsters will broaden their focus and begin to question how American some people are regardless of their “native born” status. Fucko the Clown said of football players who kneel on the field in protest, “You have to stand proudly for the national anthem or you shouldn’t be playing, you shouldn’t be there. Maybe you shouldn’t be in the country.”

In the movies, Kevin McCarthy’s character, Dr. Miles Bennell from Invasion of the Body Snatchers, ran from one car to the next on the highway screaming to the drivers,”They’re here already! You’re next! You’re next!“

On television is was the mob of neighbors turning on one another in The Twilight Zone episode, The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street.

But we’ve passed through Rod Serling’s middle ground between light and shadow into The Real World. There are monsters in the streets of America. They are not like Nazis … they are Nazis. Sinclair Lewis wrote It Can’t Happen Here, but it not only can … it is happening … right now. We can stop using analogies.

Torture is not used to get information from the poor wretch being waterboarded. The knowledge that the monsters use torture is used to terrorize the rest of the subjugated population into compliance. The people know that it is possible they could be next, so they do whatever they can to live under the radar of the monsters.

Every mother and father can imagine the inconceivable pain and anguish of having their child taken from them. The reality of this suffering and misery has already been visited on thousands of parents whose children have been taken by thuggish ICE-Nazi-agents. They don’t have to imagine hell because they’re in it.

From thewrap.com:

Conservative commentator Ann Coulter proposed a novel solution for illegal immigration, suggesting that U.S. border guards might solve the problem and send a message to others by shooting a migrant trying to cross into the United States.

“I mean, unless they’re going to shoot one and send a message to the rest. If you shoot one to encourage the others, maybe they’ll learn, but otherwise, we’ll see, we’ll see.”

Coulter analogized her position to the Voltaire line from Candide — “We hang one to encourage the others.”

Ann Coulter’s DNA test may or may not prove she’s human … but she does brilliantly illustrate this point in the continuum of Fascism. The current government of the United States, run by The Donor Class behind the mask of Fucko the Clown, has taken the penultimate step toward complete barbarity. The only thing left for them to do is commence with the killing.

We’ve been living in Canada for almost seven years. Down the rabbit hole, in the eyes of The Donor Class running the U.S. government, Canada has been redefined as a National Security Threat to the United States. In the pit of the night when I’m awake and everything is true in the dark … I wonder if the relief we felt when we moved across the border was similar to what a Jewish family might have felt fleeing Germany to the safety of Austria in 1935.

And in the pit of the night where everything is true in the dark, I think about monsters, and the question I would ask them … if I had the courage.

From the short story Fantasy Room by Adam-Troy Castro:

“I would ask you what is it like to stand in absolute darkness, with no stars above you and no cold capable of bothering you, and not suffer the uncertainty that comes from feeling the presence of monsters: to know, instead, that you are the greatest of monsters, and that the shadows hide nothing more dangerous than yourself?”

But that’s like asking a psychopath what it is like to be a psychopath. The answer wouldn’t explain anything to a non-monster. To understand it I’d have to be in telepathic contact with a lunatic. Then I would see that ripping families apart and putting kids in concentration camps is no different from anything else monsters do every day of their lives.

Rod Serling cautioned all non-monsters about how easy it can be to allow and accept any evil or atrocity when we lose our humanity:

“The tools of conquest do not necessarily come with bombs and explosions and fallout. There are weapons that are simply thoughts, attitudes, prejudices – to be found only in the minds of men. For the record, prejudices can kill – and suspicion can destroy – and a thoughtless frightened search for a scapegoat has a fallout all of its own – for the children – and the children yet unborn. And the pity of it is – that these things cannot be confined – to the Twilight Zone.”

Descent June 18, 2018

Listen to this segment read by Mike Malloy here.