Goodbye, Lady Liberty

“For the monster on the move, or on the watch, lurking in his lair, there is no mercy.” Samuel Beckett

The Statue of Liberty, a gift from France to the people of the United States, has now outlived its usefulness as a symbol of our country. Since we are no longer about welcoming the world’s huddled and tired masses yearning to be free, and our liberties have suffered sharp curtailment in the age of mass surveillance, Lady Liberty should be dynamited and replaced with a massive tower at the top of which will sit a colossal bust of Donald J. Trump’s head, in full Trumpian snarl. An inscription below shall read: Turn back, murderers and rapists, unless you be white and Christian.

The literal rape of our country by Trump and his associates continues, gathers speed, like an enormous ball-bearing rolling down Lombard Street in San Francisco, unstoppable, whether by tradition, norms, the legislative branch, the Constitution, or an instinct for self-preservation. We are rat-fucked.

It’s likely that very soon John Bolton will achieve his long cherished wet dream of attacking Iran. That the US can apply economic sanctions against Iran, and financially punish sovereign nations that want to continue their business relations with Iran, and at the same time threaten Iran with militarily force, is the height of imperialism. The US is, hands down, the world’s paramount thug. It lashes out with all its might at any country that refuses to bow to it, like Venezuela, Cuba, or Iran.

The notion that Iran would invite an American military response by attacking American allies or “interests” is ridiculous. Iran is suffering from crippling economic sanctions, a form of collective punishment. I have no doubt that Iran will fight back if attacked, but I do not believe Iran seeks a military conflict with the US. Only the leaders of the US think the Iranians are stupid.

Oh, Dr. King, so long ago you warned against the dangers of militarism, how militarism abroad sooner or later manifested at home. Well, here we stand, a country that has become cruel, uncaring, mean-spirited, exclusionary, crass, and corrupt, one that sees brute force as the solution to every problem. We lead the world in incarceration. Police routinely murder unarmed citizens of color and rarely pay a price. Our economy punishes working-class and poor people and then on top of that we criminalize them. White-collar criminals run the house. We accept homelessness as normal rather than an aberration. We don’t care if people die because they cannot afford medical care or prescription medications. We gleefully saddle young people with staggering student loan debt.

Every day that our political leaders -- and the corporate and wealthy interests that own them -- ignore climate change in favor of business as usual, we tempt fate.

Fate will win, humanity will lose.

The will of the governed no longer matters, if it ever did. We have normalized a tyranny of the minority, led by human toads like Mitch McConnell, who will without doubt burn in the furnaces of hell. Do you have any doubt that Roe v. Wade is on death row, soon to be executed by our radical Supreme Court?

Tyrannical monarchs and dictators of the past were toppled when the people had had enough, when too many starved to death or were fed like fodder to foreign wars or were imprisoned on false charges or had their land confiscated. Things are different now. Humanity faces two grave threats, catastrophic climate change and nuclear annihilation.

Time isn’t on our side. As Tom Waits once sang, “the Earth died screaming.”