https://archive.md/Bhnj3
"Once upon a time—say, several weeks ago—Americans tended to think of
dissidents as of another place, perhaps, and another time. They were overseas
heroes—names like Alexei Navalny and Jamal Khashoggi, or Nelson Mandela and
Mahatma Gandhi before them—who spoke up against repressive regimes and paid a
steep price for their bravery.
But sometime in the past two months the United States crossed into a new and
unfamiliar realm—one in which the consequences of challenging the state seem to
increasingly carry real danger. The sitting President, elected on an explicit
platform of revenge against his political enemies, entered office by
instituting loyalty tests, banning words, purging civil servants, and
installing an F.B.I. director who made his name promising to punish his boss’s
critics.
Retribution soon followed. For the sin of employing lawyers who have criticized
or helped investigate him, President Donald Trump signed orders effectively
making it impossible for several law firms to represent clients who do business
with the government. For the sin of exercising free speech during campus
protests, the Department of Homeland Security began using plainclothes officers
to snatch foreign students—legal residents of the United States—off the
streets, as the White House threatened major funding cuts to universities where
protests had taken place. And for the sin of trying to correct racial and
gender disparities, the government is investigating dozens of public and
private universities and removing references to Black and Native American
combat veterans from public monuments.
Meanwhile, Elon Musk, Trump’s aide-de-camp, has taken a chainsaw to the federal
workforce, dispatching his deputies to storm agencies and fire workers who
tried to stop his team from illegally downloading government data. Musk, who
regularly takes to his social-media platform to harass government workers, has
also incited an online mob against a blind nonprofit staffer who mildly
criticized his work, and called for prison sentences for journalists at “60
Minutes” who questioned his shuttering of a federal agency.
More people who never aspired to be activists but oppose the new order are
finding that they must traverse a labyrinth of novel choices, calculations, and
personal risks. Ours is a time of lists—of “deep state” figures to be
prosecuted, media outlets to be exiled, and gender identities to be outlawed.
Even the list of professions facing harsh consequences for their day-to-day
work is growing. A New York doctor incurred heavy fines from a Texas court for
providing reproductive health care. (A New York court refused to enforce the
fine.) In Arkansas, a librarian was fired for keeping books covering race and
L.G.B.T.Q. issues on the shelves. A member of Congress who organized a workshop
to inform immigrants in her district of their rights under the United States
Constitution was threatened with federal prosecution.
The climate of retribution has caused many to freeze: Wealthy liberal donors
have paused their political giving, concerned about reprisal from the
President. One Republican senator dropped his objection to Trump’s Pentagon
nominee after reportedly receiving “credible death threats.”
Others who are under pressure from Trump have opted for appeasement:
Universities have cut previously unthinkable “deals” with the Administration
which threaten academic freedom—such as Columbia’s extraordinary promise to
install a monitor to oversee a small university department that studies much of
the non-Western world. A growing list of law firms has agreed to devote
hundreds of millions of dollars in legal services to the President’s personal
priorities, in the hope of avoiding punishment. Some in the opposition Party
have even whispered concerns that if they protest too much, Trump will trigger
martial law.
But fear has not arrested everyone. Hundreds of thousands of people
demonstrated in all fifty states on April 5th, to register their discontent
with the new government. For weeks, protesters have let out their fury at
dealerships for Musk’s Tesla, contributing to a nearly thirty-per-cent drop in
the company’s share price since January. Fired National Park employees scaled
Yosemite’s El Capitan and draped an upside-down American flag—a symbol of
distress—across one of the monolith’s cliff faces. In the well of the U.S.
Senate, Cory Booker, a New Jersey Democrat, delivered a historic
twenty-five-hour speech in defiance of Trump’s agenda, electrifying a party
whose spirit had begun to ebb."
Via Susan ****
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
