"Then they came for--"
Such is the refrain of Pastor Martin Niemoller's icon Holocaust poem, "First They Came".
Its theme, of course, is that eventually everyone becomes a target of a despotic regime intent on eliminating its perceived enemies. It starts with one marginalized group, but most assume they're safe and ignore it. Then another group is targeted, and, again, most are relieved it isn't them and they just carry on with their lives. Another group is singled out. Another. And another. Until finally the regime comes for the rest, and no one is left to defend them.
History tells us it's never just this or that group; once fascists identify a defenseless minority to persecute, more follow. There are always more defenseless minorities the strongman decides he must do without.
Remember those signs "MASS DEPORTATIONS NOW" signs people so proudly brandished at the Republican National Convention this summer?
They're happening -- but it isn't just "illegals" being deported as it was initially sold to the xenophobes and bigots.Tuesday evening, the first military flight carrying migrants from the United States landed in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to begin re-purposing the facility that was used to imprison suspected terrorists (often unjustly) after the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks.
It's the optics that matter to MAGA, naturally. Probably not many are going to balk at the $4,675 per person flight on a C-17 military plane when a one-way first-class ticket on American Airlines from El Paso would cost around $853 when ridding the country of those pesky brown people makes them feel so tough, like they're "owning the libs".
After they're gone, who is going to be next on the former host of Celebrity Apprentice's enemies list to fill the 30,000 prisoner slots? Political enemies? transgender Americans? Members of the media? Educators? Democrats?
Secretary of State Marco Rubio last week met with Salvadorian president Nayib Bukele, who "has agreed to the most unprecedented, extraordinary, extraordinary migratory agreement anywhere in the world".
The agreement?
Some may not see a problem farming out our prison population to another country even if those prisoners happen to be American citizens. After all, they're prisoners, right?
Or are they "prisoners"?
The administration and its minions have been talking about "denaturalization"; i.e., stripping people's citizenship, which would make them the "illegals", the "criminals", they purport to go after.
As was reported in The Hill recently:
The process for invalidating naturalization was created by statute in 1906, providing that citizenship may be canceled if it was obtained through false statements or fraudulent omissions. It was used inconsistently in the 20th century, with periods of intense activity during the World Wars and the Cold War, and much less often in less parlous times.
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