Our Long National Nightmare of American Decline
I am a cancer survivor, and, as such, I am familiar with panic attacks. I’m not used to them coming twice a day. However, just like clockwork, since the Supreme Court’s disastrous announcement that they would never enforce the laws on Presidents Past, Present, and Future, I’ve had one in the morning, at 5 am, and one in the evening, at 10 pm.
People do not seem to appreciate how fundamentally this ruling alters the relationship of minorities in this country to this country. I know this first hand; I grew up in the Owens Valley, which continues to bear the scars of this country’s sins. I grew up in a community that’s about 25% Indigenous (Bishop Paiute), and 75% assorted colonizers. The post-genocide crew were all at least 2–3 generations removed from the genocide (my first, terrible, Mr. Burns-esque employer was essentially Boss Hogg with a family real estate portfolio that would make John Dutton revolve in his grave).
We lived 50 miles southwest from the Tonapah Test Range, a nuclear weapons testing range (maybe, the US government isn’t being totally transparent in the matter, and it’s kind of hard to prove). I developed brain tumors, and eventually, brain cancer. I knew another brain cancer survivor in high school; the daughter of a family friend developed cancer. I’m sure they’re developing lollipops in those labs.
Most notably, however, I lived just 60 miles north of Manzanar, home to one of my country’s most-brutal mistakes: race-based concentration camps. Hell, there’s even a soon-to-be-banned children’s book (https://www.amazon.com/Farewell-Manzanar-Jeanne-Wakatsuki-Houston/dp/1328742113)(buy a copy NOW, while the free press is still free). The American government offered a $20 K compensation for incarcerated Japanese Americans… in 1988, when very few were still alive. The most accurate hypothetical equivalent would be the West German government offering $50 K to any death camp survivors in 1988. It’s a laughably paltry sum for the enormity of the crime. Similarly, Americans exposed to radiation through our nuclear weapons testing became known as “Downwinders,” and, in 1994, after decades of petitioning and proving a connection between their cancers and atmospheric testing, were granted a generous compensation of… $50000. In 1994. The very best our democracy offered to its victims was a pittance of redress, long after the fact. The victims of the mistakes remain victimized, in perpetuity — just ask any Black family.
My point is; I grew up in an active genocide, on all sides, mostly via brutal classism through Nixon’s “Benign Neglect” policies catching up to rural America. And these were perpetrated by men who believed themselves to be bound to the law and their morality, and who had robust courts and legislatures to check their power. Imagine how nightmarishly worse it becomes when the last remaining safeguard on the nuclear button is a president’s morality. As nice as it is to hear that Chris Hayes and the battle-hardened crew at MSNBC are prepping the ACLU rapid response team, these are hardly reassuring when I grew up down the street from democracy’s mistakes. Hayes pointed out that the Supreme Court hasn’t invalidated the Posse Commitatus law that prevents presidents from ordering the unilateral deployment of the military on US soil. It’s a pleasant thought, but, how long before someone sues to have that law repealed? Weeks under a Trump presidency? Months? And this kangaroo court will absolutely declare that law unconstitutional, and then the genocide begins. Again; I know it’s possible, because I spent my childhood surviving low-level atrocities, and those were perpetrated
Now that we are no longer a democracy, I desperately fear the nightmarish possibilities in the offing. Remember Churchill’s warning in his famous “Blood, Sweat, and Tears,” speech addressing this?
But if we fail, then the whole world, including the United States, including all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of perverted science.
Yeah, those are the stakes of this election. And I’m not chancing it; I’m looking into exactly it will take to get out of here before Aktion T4 (the “involuntary euthanasia” — which is a helluva euphemism for “murder”). Yeah, my people didn’t even last as long as the Jews, we were the pilot program, and 400,000 disabled, mentally ill, chronically ill, and terminally ill people were killed. We just killed 1.19 million people in COVID. The then-somewhat democratic government’s response was “Most of those deaths were chronic disease patients” — Hey, I’m a chronic disease patient!
So; I’ve decided to look into emigrating (Like and Subscribe to hear me attempt to navigate a foreign nation’s immigration system). Once you start entertaining that idea, as a vulnerable minoriy, you start interrogating your life, and, wow. Was there ever a period as an adult when I felt safe, comfortable, and not utterly terified? Yes, for three-ish years in Miami (which is an outpost of a distant planet, not a part of the United States), in a a well-advised grad school program, and ill-advised stints in Caribbean Medical school in the Bahamas and Dominica. In short, the safest I’ve felt in my life was in those situations in which I was not in the united states. So, watch this space as I write about Canadian Grad School (something like literature that can lead to a writing job), Canadian Immigration, and finding Canadian Craft Breweries (they have Unibroue).
And, even if somehow Joe Biden sweeps into office with a Democratic Senate and Congress, that deadly Presidential Immunity is there for anyone to pick up, and load the gun.
I was inspired to look into this by the must-see Hulu Series, We Were the Lucky Ones, an incredible, mostly-true story of a large family of Polish Jews, all of whom miraculously survive the Holocaust. The commonality in all of the characters is that they don’t wait until it gets bad; they run at the first sign of trouble — although even that isn’t enough, and I certainly don’t want any close scrapes like that. But going beyond my personal dread about my own safety; a single plot twist in the series should make every Millennial take pause: at the end of the series; all of the main characters wind up in stable relationships and/or pregnant. They were too busy fleeing for their lives to actually live their own lives. Every commentator I’ve seen has remarked on how few American Millennials are having children. Like the Kurc family, our entire lives have been put on hold until our lives stabilized. They have yet to do so, and that should give us all pause to consider the awful implication that an entire generation of Americans are currently undergoing a low-level genocide.
In the meantime; I’m looking into returning to the places where I was happiest and safest: in graduate schools overseas. I urge you all to do the same.
