In the USA, we live in a culture of abuse.
From the beginning, our culture abused the native peoples of this continent, colonizing, enslaving and pursuing genocidal elimination. From the beginning, we abused and enslaved Africans, subjecting them to hideous torture and dehumanization. We’ve indulged in cycles of abuse, intimidation and even the murder of the miners, workers and laborers of the nation. We abuse those who feed us, forcing their bankruptcy and corporate theft of their land. We abuse the military in forcing them to fight not for freedom but the interests of the monied and corporate classes – home and abroad.
Today, we have as president a senile, serial abuser of women and young girls. The vice president abuses his family in a mendacious memoir, blaming them for all their difficulties, and throws his wife under the Christian Nationalist bus. The MAGA bench warmers of SCOTUS abuse justice, the people and the Constitution in their graft and decisions favorable to wealthy patrons. The speaker of the House abuses and disenfranchises “we the people” in daily denying us representation and a functional government. We have MAGA senators and representatives shielding their pedophilic, child-abusing friends and pit “we the people” against one another as they laugh their way to the bank.
Small wonder that the criminal syndicate called ICE has recruited neo-Nazis willing to abuse and terrorize immigrants and those standing against assault, kidnapping and disappearance, even as local police are abused, cowed and compromised.
Cycles of abuse can be ended. Will we?
M. Paul Garrett
Bayfield
