Why Do I Care?

Having won a genetic lottery, a case could be made that I should check out. I can't.

Jul 06, 2025

Palestinian kids lined up at a food distribution center in Gaza. Photo: Omar Ashtawy/apaimages

Let’s get something out of the way right off the top: I fully realize the level of privilege that I have based solely on winning the genetic lottery. Now, I don’t mean the billion-dollar Powerball, or even a nine figure Mega Millions jackpot. I can’t throw, kick, or hit a ball real well, and while my singing slays on the occasional Karaoke night at the Hard Hat Cafe, I won’t be winning any Grammys. And that’s all good.

My win was more like… ok, exactly like Lucky for Life. If you met me on the street or talked to me in person before we were introduced, you would think that I was a middle-class middle-aged white guy. And that’s pretty accurate. I am doing fine financially, my kids are all through high school and are relatively well adjusted, I am happily married, and I live in a very, very Blue state1. So yeah, I am just fine. Most of the bullshit that’s going on in our country right now is nowhere near my door.

So why, you may wonder, do I spend so much time railing against this asshole and his lackeys?

Don’t worry, I am not going to sit here and try to tell you that I am some high-minded philanthropist, or that I am just that good of a person. It’s nothing like that. What is IS like though is that I do believe in right and wrong, that everyone should get at least a chance to live the life they want to live (and love who they fall in love with) and that those who have the means have a moral mandate to help those less fortunate. I am also a fucking human being and thus have at least a basic level of empathy for (most of 2) my fellow humans.

Gaza

The current atrocity that hits closest to home for me is the continued genocide of the Palestinians in Gaza. As of this writing, the most recent reports from the Palestinian Ministry of Health put the civilian death toll at 59,600. Two separate independent surveys have put the death toll closer to 84,000. Regardless of source, far more than half of these deaths have been women, children, and seniors. These are not enemy combatants, they are people with literally nowhere to go to escape the death rained upon them by the Israeli Defense Force.

There are, or were, approximately 2 million people in Gaza at the start of the war not even 2 years ago. Even using the lower death toll that amounts to about 2.5% of the population having been wiped out. To grasp the level of extermination being carried out by the Israeli army, using mainly American armaments and with the full blessing of the American government, just consider that 2.5% of the American population is 8.675 million people. That is more people than the population of all but 12 US States.

Yeah, I know that it’s technically apples and oranges, but we have become so desensitized to what is happening in Gaza or distracted by the insanity that we are dealing with every day, that the daily reports of deaths in that tiny strip of land so far away just fall by the wayside.

The latest atrocity being undertaken by the IDF is the murder of civilians who are just trying to get to food. The United Nations reported that just in the space of the last month, 613 Palestinians have been killed at food distribution sites. A recent piece in (admittedly left-leaning) Haaretz detailed how the IDF was indiscriminately killing civilians, even to the point of dropping mortars and artillery rounds on the masses lining up for food.

“It’s a killing field,” one soldier told Haaretz. “Where I was stationed, between one and five people were killed every day. They’re treated like a hostile force — no crowd-control measures, no tear gas — just live fire with everything imaginable: heavy machine guns, grenade launchers, mortars. Then, once the center opens, the shooting stops, and they know they can approach. Our form of communication is gunfire.”

I sometimes lay awake and think about what it must be like to try to exist in Gaza. You have nowhere to go. The other Arab nations don’t want you, even if you could find a way to get your family out past the IDF. You have to wake up every day and try to find food while trying not to get killed. There is no end in sight. I often wonder if there will ever be a reckoning for this, although I fear that there will not.

All from the government of a people who for eight decades have correctly implored us to Never Forget.

Their leadership has.3

Ukranian Kids

There is plenty that I could write about the Russian war of aggression in Ukraine. Yes, we could have, and should have, done more over the last three years to push back on Putin’s invasion of a sovereign nation. There is already a wealth of sites, blogs, etc. providing excellent coverage of the conflict, I will leave it to them to keep doing so.

What I would like to discuss is something that far too few Americans are aware of. In the early days of the war, Russia kidnapped nearly 20,000 Ukrainian children. The children were assigned Russian citizenship and forcibly adopted into Russian families. While some have escaped and others have been tracked down and rescued, the vast majority are still separated from their homes and families. National Public Radio interviewed a couple of kids who were rescued, and hearing what they have been put through is harrowing, to say the least.

As a father, I can’t imagine what these kids’ parents are going through, if of course they are still alive. Knowing that your children are out there somewhere, being indoctrinated into Putin’s dystopian view of society… fuck.

The Immigration Situation

First things first: I will freely admit that the United States is facing a fraught situation with regards to undocumented immigrants. I realize that the massive influx of these people is a strain on local resources, and I will even admit that some of them are not good people and have committed crimes against Americans. I also feel that our nation is what it is because of immigration, so we need it. It’s not hard to see that the system is broken and needs to be fixed.

What this administration is doing is not that.

Before going any further, I will also point out that the VAST majority of undocumented folks in the US are doing no harm. They are doing jobs that most Americans don’t want to do. They are paying taxes. They are not, however, draining Medicaid, Social Security, or any other Federal or State “entitlement” program, because they can’t. Anyone who tries to tell you that they are is lying to you. Full stop. That, of course, includes pretty much everyone in the T2.0 administration. Further, I have no problem at all sending actual violent criminals back to their home countries. Only, however, once they have had their Constitutionally mandated day in court and the government has proven beyond a reasonable doubt that they are guilty of that which they are accused. Note that I said back to their home countries. Not to a nation where they have never lived, and in many cases never even been to. And certainly not to a torture prison in a tin pot Central American dictatorship.

One of the first steps in setting up your fledgling autocracy is to clearly identify an “Other” and then do your best to turn the masses against them. By giving people someone to hate, they will not realize what you are doing to them. This administration, led by the ghoulish Stephen Miller, is hell bent on making any immigrant persona non grata here in the United States. Some will say4 that Dear Leader only said he was going to go after the “bad guys”, but those folks simply were not listening. The Orange Asshole made it clear that he viewed pretty much all “illegals” as bad people. In reality he spent his campaign trying to paint literally every undocumented person in this country, all “21 million” of them, as the worst kind of criminals. People simply didn’t listen to him, a common refrain that just keeps repeating itself. He told us what he was going to do, and he is doing it. Anyone who tells you they didn’t expect this, that they are surprised by jackbooted and masked ICE thugs running down women in the streets, is simply admitting that they were not paying attention.

I fear that we are already to a point where far too many Americans have internalized and accepted the lengths to which this administration is going in their quest to deport everyone. The National Guard is still federalized in California. What are they doing? The protests in LA are long over, so why is the Guard still mobilized? These are regular folks, with jobs, kids, and responsibilities, and they are being kept away from all that… for what purpose?

Even more concerning is the fact that in addition to California, US Marines have now been sent to Florida and Texas. Not to help with disaster relief, or to help with some noble purpose, but to assist ICE in rounding up and deporting people whose only crime is the misdemeanor of being in this country illegally.

Added to all of this are recent rulings from the Supreme Court that are giving the administration unprecedented leeway towards carrying out these heinous removals. Not that it mattered, because when the Supreme Court actually did instruct the government to correct several erroneous deportations, this administration ignored them.

Perhaps the most famous of the deportees is Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the Maryland man who was included on the infamous flight of men to CECOT in El Salvador, despite having an order prohibiting him from being sent back there. Yes, he is now back in the United States, and yes, he is getting his day in court. Which is how it should be. But even there we see just how fucked this all is, as the judge in his case denied Garcia’s request to be released on bail while his case proceeds. The judge did not thing that Garcia was a flight risk, the man obviously wants to remain in the country with his American wife and children. No, the judge denied bail because he was concerned that ICE would grab up Garcia and deport him again. That’s right, he is being held to protect him from the US Government.

It would be bad enough if that was the extent of things, but unfortunately, that’s simply not the case. We already know that at least 75% of the men sent to a torture prison in another country, without due process of any kind and in direct violation of a court order, have no criminal record in the United States. And yet they languish in this prison, and we have no idea if they are even still alive. We do know, however, that they have been tortured. We know this because Kilmar Abrego Garcia has amended his complaint to include descriptions of the torture that he was subjected to while at CECOT.

Perhaps at some point Trump realized that sending people all the way to El Salvador meant that he couldn’t reap the benefits of their incarceration. After all, out of sight out of mind, and he wants to make sure his base remains sated3. So Trump had his LadyBoot Lackey Ron DeSantis whip up a quick concentration camp in the Everglades.

Like any rational human, the idea of a tent city being built in the middle of a fucking swamp horrified me. The fact that the GOP not only did this travesty, but they gave it a “cute” name (which I will never use) and they are all ghoulishly celebrating its opening. From the top down, MAGA loves this. It’s not a surprise, because with these assholes the cruelty has always, always, been the point. And this is about as cruel as they have managed. Just look at these people.

Again, this isn’t a facility to house the worst of the worst. This isn’t for gangbangers, murderers, and rapists. This is just the first of, apparently, many places for the government to stash human beings while they wait to send them somewhere, anywhere else. It’s disgusting in every way imaginable. Or so I thought. Until a friend sent me a screenshot of a tweet where WinRed, the fundraising arm of the RNC, is selling fucking merchandise. For a concentration camp. In America.

The real kick of it all is that immigrants don't matter to Trump. Sure there are plenty in his admin who hate them, but I honestly believe he doesn't give a shit one way or the other, and I would bet my next paycheck that hundreds of undocumented immigrants work at various Trump properties. It's all about the show with Trump. That's why he encourages ICE Barbie to do her cosplay bullshit. That's why there was a highly produced sizzle reel of the Venezuelans being frog marched into CECOT. That's why they are treating a concentration camp as if it was Florida's latest amusement park. It’s all about the show, and his base has some pretty damned depraved tastes.

State-Sponsored Racism

I’m not gonna lie; after writing the last couple of paragraphs, I was about to just end the piece. This writing usually helps me, as it allows me to get some of these thoughts out of my head and, by extension, helps me get to sleep at night. Sometimes it does the opposite though and gets me worked up. That just happened. I was going to skip the last two bullet points on my list for this essay. Instead, I am going to combine them and try to land this plane.

Have you ever talked to a MAGA who told you that they like Trump because “he tells it like it is”? I am sure you have, if you have ever had the misfortune of talking to a MAGA. Let me translate that for you: they are saying that Trump is a racist and an unfeeling asshole, and they are happy because they now feel emboldened to be the same.

Thing is that the racism is the whole ball of wax. It’s the common thread that runs through all of the things discussed here today. This administration does not look at Palestinians, immigrants, African Americans, even Ukrainians as humans. And their cult has always felt the same way. Thats why they love him so much. He gives the, the permission structure to be the racist assholes they've always been but had to hide. He's allowed them to be loud and proud.

Unfortunately, the racism is not solely a trait of the far right. You need look no further than the reaction amongst some on the Left to Zohran Mamdani’s shocking drubbing of Andrew Cuomo in the Democratic primary for Mayor of New York City. Sure, the bile that is being spewed on the right is disgusting. Starting with Dear Leader, the same folks who have appropriated the word antisemitism and are using it as a cudgel to go after anyone and any institution they don’t like have fully dropped the masks in their comments about Mamdani. Apparently even right here at home it’s just fine to blast someone with heinous invective if they are Muslim. I mean, Muslims aren’t human anyway, right?

Coda

One more thing… 3 weeks ago we had a political assassination in this country, with another attempted the same night by the same man. When is the last time you heard anything about it? Hell, when's the last time you thought about it? I will admit that it got lost for me as well. It’s hard not to lose sight of the truly important stories while navigating the river of shit that has become our daily lives.

Ok, So Now What?

What can you do? This5 is what I do. I harbor no fantasy that I am some freedom fighter and will stand up to the tyranny of our government by taking up arms.6 By reading these missives, you are also doing something. You are paying attention. If you ever share my thoughts with like-minded friends, you are spreading that attention. Movements are built one person, one relationship at a time.

Just this weekend I took a chance and talked to a friend who I suspected may share my views. She absolutely did, and we had a great conversation about where we are as a nation, how we are frightened, and how we need to stick together and refuse to let this all become normal. It is hard, and it will likely get harder. But the alternative is simply not acceptable. So hang in there. Talk to your people. Make sure they are clear as to what is happening to our country. And most importantly, don’t give up hope. Remember, we are right, and there are more of us than there are of them.

One last thing… if you have actually made it this far, I thank you. You got through over 3,300 words, and a lot of it wasn’t very positive. So here is a doggo treat:

Zoe, Schnoop, and Augustus - The Sentinels

Take Care and Stay Strong, Together.

Analysis Paralysis

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