“Letters from an American” by historian Heather Cox Richardson is a daily missive that Richardson publishes here on Substack. I have been reading her letters every day since January of 2020 – and reading those letters is as close as I get to a having a religion. The depth of my dorkness? From the first one I read, I’ve kept every letter she published in a folder on my hard drive.
Richardson is a historian in the here and now, in the sense that she ties the news of the day to times past, in the (probably futile) hope that we can make sense of the future and avoid some of its pitfalls by learning from prior events. Richardson’s curse is that those who do learn from the past are condemned to watch others repeat it.
Anyway, read “Letters from an American.” You’ll be the better for it.
The March 13, 2024, letter is in her usual style, and in it, she makes passing reference to would-be dictator Trump’s plans to round up immigrants and put them in camps, pending – what? Deportation, we hope. That’s the best possible outcome, but not the most likely.
Think about it.
Democracies have prisons, totalitarian regimes have camps. Hitler’s camps were the most famous, of course, because they were exposed to the world at the end of the war. Stalin had his Gulags, or forced labor camps, from the 1930s right through to the 50s. Many of the Gulag occupants were political prisoners who were interred there by “extrajudicial” authority – secret police, mostly. Clearly, Russia still incarcerates and murders dissidents. China has the Xinjiang Internment Camps, euphemistically called “vocational education and training centers.” Seriously. That’s where China keeps their problematic ethnic and religious minorities, primarily Uyghurs. The USA, not to be left out, has “extraordinary rendition,” involving kidnapping people from outside the U.S. and delivering them to so-called “black sites” for interrogation (torture), imprisonment, and various other abuses.[1]
The difference between a prison and a camp? Mainly, a person in prison is accused of violating a codified crime, is represented by an attorney in court, and is ordered incarcerated for a specific length of time. (Let’s save the failures of American justice for another day. One thing most American prisoners in common – they have some idea of how long they must be a prisoner.)
People in camps are often delivered there without the niceties of legal representation or judicial review, or – if provided – by the vagaries of a kangaroo court, with interment a forgone conclusion, and no release date in sight. If a sentence is imposed, it is often wildly disproportionate to the “crime.”
Trump’s advisors say that he intends to include “birthright citizens” in his Immigrant Camps. Birthright citizens are people whose parents were not citizens when the children were born. Not to get too far into the legal weeds, but Trump claims he can do this by fiat, aka Executive Order. He can’t, but that won’t matter. What does matter is that pesky 14th Amendment, which says that people born in this country are citizens at birth.
The fly in the ointment is that there has never been a definitive ruling from the Supreme Court as to whether the 14th Amendment applies when the parents giving birth are ILLEGALLY on U.S. soil.[2] As you can imagine, litigating this question before the current Supreme Court can only lead to bad law and bigger camps.
So?
So, imagine for the moment that you are a person of color (AKA extremist),
just walking down the street, minding your own, when a person with a badge approaches and demands to see your proof of citizenship.
You do have your proof of citizenship on you right now, right? Your passport? Your State-approved Identification, showing your place of birth?
And so, what if you do? Can you prove your parents were legally in the country when you were born?
Good luck, friend.
My old man, who likely caused the death of many Nazi infantry troops (a fact I never fail to mention), used to say that one of the good things about this country is that you don’t need to carry papers, which implies a certain freedom and autonomy. Sorry, old man.
Trump’s proposal is a license to incarcerate and hold incommunicado anyone his henchmen deem to be suspect. I was overstating “person of color.” Eventually, it won’t matter. Thousands upon thousands of people will be rounded up and hauled off to camps. Those lucky enough to have a lawyer in their pocket might get some relief, but I wouldn’t count on it. Assuming the courts are involved, they will shortly be overwhelmed. There will be no speedy trial — never has been, for that matter. The Best Possible Outcome is confession and expedient deportation.
It is a modern version of eugenics. Instead of having to prove you are Aryan, you will need to prove that you are a United States American.
And how long will that last? What other kinds of miscreants will be identified as suitable for rendition? Drug users? Protesters? LGBTQ+? Intellectuals? People who piss off their landlords? The mass deportation business, given a shot in the arm as Trump appoints local police as de facto Border Agents, will become a self-sustaining enterprise. The media will be on board, broadcasting exhortations to the public to support their local sheriff by dropping dime on the neighbor with a suspicious accent.
And all y’all who had your DNA tested by Ancestors, or 23andMe, or whomever, may or may not be quite dismayed when your results are (probably voluntarily) shared with the Government. Who are we kidding? That already happens.
And how long will it be, really – how long? – before some latter-day Goebbels – one of the Steves, I imagine (Bannon or Miller) – figures out that people being deported simply implies that they go away and never come back, by whatever means?
I know it sounds like some crazy-ass conspiracy theory, but if I told you ten years ago that in 2024 some second-rate lunatic TV show host was going to be the Republican candidate for Dictator on a platform of overthrowing American democracy in favor of a fascist plutocracy, well, you would have said I was nuts. Yet here we are.
Here we are.
In related news, I have nothing to add to the following link but screams, swearing, and possibly a few death threats of my own: https://www.cnn.com/2024/03/14/politics/kfile-gop-nominee-north-carolina-public-schools-michele-morrow-executing-democrats
[1] https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2007/08/13/the-black-sites
[2] See United States v. Wong Kim Ark, 169 U.S. 649 (1898).
I’ve been an HCR subscriber ever since I found out about her and like you, I have saved all of her posts in a folder on my computer. I also share her Letters on my FaceBook page where she has a presence anyway. Same with Joyce Vance, Greg Olear and several others. Joyce is great for the legal breakdowns that are so vital these days and Greg is a font of good information on many topics. He’s a bit of a brainiac but a good guy. Bob Reich is always good and Jeff Tiedrich just keeps me sane in this less than sane lane we are finding ourselves in now. I guess you can tell how I spend my time these days.
Have a good trip or are you home now?