The news cycles these days are overwhelming with distressing stories, but two developments this week — a random show of force by ICE in MacArthur Park in LA, and the opening of a concentration camp in the Florida Everglades — bring any person of good conscience to a new level of outrage and alarm. Random displays of state-sponsored intimidation are designed to intimidate not just those directly targeted, but also to sow anxiety and fear among those of us who have not been targeted and are most likely to protest.
In LA, the non-white population are being harassed and worse, for no more reason than blatant racism and xenophobia. Worn out Republican talking points about legal status need to be shot down as the fake excuses they have always been for simple bigotry. In Florida, the more appropriately named Alligator Auschwitz is a new low for the supposed land of the free. It is not only designed to make a spectacle of cruelty, not only to again sow fear among minorities and everyday citizens who would speak out. It is also designed to condition the extremists among us toward a willingness to dehumanize others.
Over the years that Donald Trump has come to dominate public consciousness, I have often been disgusted and horrified. But the ramping up of intimidation and human rights abuses under the current regime of ghoulish racists invites comparisons to Nazism as never before. Please speak out on behalf of those who cannot or are too afraid to.
Benjamin Miner
Greenfield