Tuesday, April 1, 2025 at 4:27 PM
ProPublica, a nonprofit investigative journalism organization, highly reputable, recently published an article titled, “Flight attendants on deportation planes say disaster is ‘only a matter of time’.” There was the one flight attendant nicknamed Lala, who described the inhumane and very risky business of transporting migrants picked up by ICE, to places like El Salvador. She worked for a company called Global Crossing Airlines, which is described in the article as a dominant player in the loose network of deportation contractors known as ICE Air. GlobalX— that’s what the company is called. Lala and other flight attendants described how all the passengers were chained and bound to their seats, and how a little girl almost died because she was suffering from asthma and was only given Tylenol by the nurse who was there on contract. She described that they were instructed not to look the migrants in the eye or have any type of conversation or contact with them. Remember, folks, these are human beings.
A week ago, a Muslin woman, with a valid student visa, was accosted on the streets by men and women wearing masks in a Massachusetts town. This woman was working on her doctorate, and apparently had written an opinion piece sympathetic to the Palestinians suffering in Gaza, in the university paper. She didn’t know who the people were who took her into custody. They weren’t wearing uniforms, did not identify themselves, and whisked her off in a waiting van and “disappeared” her. This is happening all over the United States; not only to undocumented migrants, but to people who are there legally. Wat a ting!
If this all seems to you like Gestapo tactics, or authoritarian measures, you are not alone. I remember a time when western cultures would be horrified by the excesses and brutality of incidents like these. This particular incident really hit home for a lot of people, this Turkish woman being arrested and hustled away in an unmarked van. Little Marco’s response to the outrage was that it was only the beginning. Good for you, Marco; you of immigrant parents!
My one prediction that is actually coming true, and very rapidly so, is the chaos that a second Trump presidency would bring, not only to America, but to the world. He is doing everything to test the limits of his unchecked power. He is creating economic hardships in America, and for poor countries who depend on foreign aid to survive. He is trying to bend those who oppose him, to his unhinged will. He’s a danger to justice, to freedom of speech, to education, to the struggle against global warming, to human rights—do I need to continue? Ok! He is endangering Ukraine and Taiwan and Gaza and the West Bank. He has taken away environmental and medical protection from the most vulnerable among us. He is thin-skinned and mean and retributive. Ok, that’s enough for this week.
He has given the criminal Netanyahu permission to do the same in Israel. Trying to follow the Trump authoritarian playbook to the end. Firing those who oppose him; trying to wiggle his way out of the justice that awaits him for alleged corruption. I hope he gets the same treatment Duterte of the Philippines received—a warm padded cell in The Hague, awaiting trial for crimes against humanity.
As I’m writing this, a news flash from NYT just came across my screen, reporting that 60 million women across the world will be denied contraception (assistance) because of the ending of funding for these programs by the Trump administration. Chaos reigns as we all stand by, apparently helpless to stop the madness, while those without souls applaud the darkness that is rapidly descending upon us. Wat a ting!
Maybe we do still have that Abrahamic god, who is full of hate and destruction and vengeance. Maybe the kinder, gentler Lord that Jesus promised us was just fiction. Or maybe the real god is Satan himself? How else can you explain the Trump reign? And before you say I’m blaspheming, please don’t; to me this is all allegorical.
“And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him. And power was given to them over the fourth part of the earth, to kill with sword, and with hunger, and with death, and with the beasts of the earth.” — Revelation 6:8, King James Version.
Glen