In the future, when I remember this moment, this is what will remain: The family sleeping outside the empty station and the soldiers inside, searching with guns drawn for enemies who don't exist.
I've lived in DC since 2000, and there are far more armed personnel on the streets now than there were in September 2001. The boiled frog analogy-slash-normalization of this situation is terrifying. I bear no ill will toward the personnel, who seem largely bored and must know that they are being used for a made-for-TV spectacle, but the orders they have been forced to act upon are unnecessary, novel, and pernicious.
My mother's parents were immigrants from Poland. My grandfather changed his last name for fear of anti semitism. He had a tailor shop on Hollywood and was Spike Jones personal tailor. Their next door neighbors were survivors I saw the tattoos on their arms. My partners Father fought on D-Day he was a British paratrooper on a mission to save the Pegasus Bridge. They were successful but his father was wounded by Nazis and never spoke about it. So yeah yay us ..if we could afford to leave the country we would. Now I've got a panic disorder and can't sleep anymore. We're in deep shit Amerikkka.
Ugh. I hate reading this Lori. You are most definitely not alone. Sadly, in the anxiety, but also happily: There are so many of us who care about our neighbors and want to change this.
I have cousins who are still Trumpers completely brainwashed in the cult. I am 61 and it's exhausting too but also where I live used to be nice but it's ghetto. The bulk of American cities have been neglected. I just hope things remain calm in Portland. I'm in a suburb but they've been going into the suburbs too. They broke a window of a man’s car as hr was picking up his baby from daycare. The head of the snake needs to die then hopefully the rest of them will disperse and we can get them all arrested. Yea the anxiety etc isn't good esp since i’ve got serious respiratory issues. I'm working with specialists and once im fit enough I have to get active in my community and do something to help. Thank you for sharing this post.
Thank you for writing this, Seth. It is really important to bear witness to these horrors, even if they seem — as your father put it — "somehow unthreatening" on the surface.
Appreciate that deeply, Dan. The toggle between disbelief and hopelessness is so disorienting. Glad I captured at least an iota of how strange this is.
Christ, this was jarring. Thank you Seth, it's incredibly well-written and, with it, frightening. I have been unable to pen anything so spot-on of my own, only what I have been stating on my own account about understandable conflicting responses to ICE on my own small city's streets and the brave people standing up to them: Fight and Flight. One can absolutely experience both emotions simultaneously. I do appreciate you talking to the National Guard, it humanizes them to you but also you the citizens to them. ICE is a different matter and as I wrote on my FB today, in sharing the photos someone took at NYC Immigration COurt yesterday when an Ecuadorian man was taken away with force in front of wife and children IMMEDIATELY after a judge granted the family another's year stay, they seem like the truly extrajudicial force that dictators/authoritarians/totalitarians and fascists of all stripes have commonly employed to carry out their cruel desires. Thank you again.
Ah, thank YOU Tony, truly! Funny (not) I was trying to combine this with a new concept for me: That along with Fight and Flight, there's Fawn: Appropriating the uniform and the manners of the Other. A post for another day?
Oh, Seth. When I met you, I was simply a fan of your band, Circus Lupus. Now Ifind myself in constant admiration of your searing insights and really relatable-observations. Either way, what you describe here terrifies me, terrifies my parents, raises questions about how long we can live in USA.
Thanks for writing and sharing this Seth. I am curious about the checkpoints. Do they stop every car? Pedestrians and bikers? Does it cause traffic jams? Are people pissed? If you get stopped do you have to show ID?
I share your discomfort with our collective lack of resistance. And the growing, undeniable sense that we are watching terrible things happen and doing…. Not enough.
Thank you Dear! I haven't been to a checkpoint yet (UGH), but so far it seems they either post at major intersections (like 18th & Columbia in the heart of the Latin American district) or descend on schools when they let out. It's so predictable, vile, sad.
The troops aren't here in Boston yet, but ICE sure is. Every day, I wonder, "Could I get caught up in a swoop?" because my skin is a certain hue. I know what having soldiers in the streets and armed checkpoints feels like from my time living in London during the 80s when the IRA was in full swing. My husband was from Ulster. I recall how those in the Irish Republic compartmentalized what was happening, as if it had little to do with them, and I thought to myself, this could never happen in America. And now it has.
I've lived in DC since 2000, and there are far more armed personnel on the streets now than there were in September 2001. The boiled frog analogy-slash-normalization of this situation is terrifying. I bear no ill will toward the personnel, who seem largely bored and must know that they are being used for a made-for-TV spectacle, but the orders they have been forced to act upon are unnecessary, novel, and pernicious.
Appreciate this deeply J.D. The sense of theater--of the players and props changing but the script not so much--is so thick.
They're here in Portland now...
My mother's parents were immigrants from Poland. My grandfather changed his last name for fear of anti semitism. He had a tailor shop on Hollywood and was Spike Jones personal tailor. Their next door neighbors were survivors I saw the tattoos on their arms. My partners Father fought on D-Day he was a British paratrooper on a mission to save the Pegasus Bridge. They were successful but his father was wounded by Nazis and never spoke about it. So yeah yay us ..if we could afford to leave the country we would. Now I've got a panic disorder and can't sleep anymore. We're in deep shit Amerikkka.
Ugh. I hate reading this Lori. You are most definitely not alone. Sadly, in the anxiety, but also happily: There are so many of us who care about our neighbors and want to change this.
I have cousins who are still Trumpers completely brainwashed in the cult. I am 61 and it's exhausting too but also where I live used to be nice but it's ghetto. The bulk of American cities have been neglected. I just hope things remain calm in Portland. I'm in a suburb but they've been going into the suburbs too. They broke a window of a man’s car as hr was picking up his baby from daycare. The head of the snake needs to die then hopefully the rest of them will disperse and we can get them all arrested. Yea the anxiety etc isn't good esp since i’ve got serious respiratory issues. I'm working with specialists and once im fit enough I have to get active in my community and do something to help. Thank you for sharing this post.
Yay us.
Thank you for writing this, Seth. It is really important to bear witness to these horrors, even if they seem — as your father put it — "somehow unthreatening" on the surface.
Appreciate that deeply, Dan. The toggle between disbelief and hopelessness is so disorienting. Glad I captured at least an iota of how strange this is.
Christ, this was jarring. Thank you Seth, it's incredibly well-written and, with it, frightening. I have been unable to pen anything so spot-on of my own, only what I have been stating on my own account about understandable conflicting responses to ICE on my own small city's streets and the brave people standing up to them: Fight and Flight. One can absolutely experience both emotions simultaneously. I do appreciate you talking to the National Guard, it humanizes them to you but also you the citizens to them. ICE is a different matter and as I wrote on my FB today, in sharing the photos someone took at NYC Immigration COurt yesterday when an Ecuadorian man was taken away with force in front of wife and children IMMEDIATELY after a judge granted the family another's year stay, they seem like the truly extrajudicial force that dictators/authoritarians/totalitarians and fascists of all stripes have commonly employed to carry out their cruel desires. Thank you again.
Ah, thank YOU Tony, truly! Funny (not) I was trying to combine this with a new concept for me: That along with Fight and Flight, there's Fawn: Appropriating the uniform and the manners of the Other. A post for another day?
Oh, Seth. When I met you, I was simply a fan of your band, Circus Lupus. Now Ifind myself in constant admiration of your searing insights and really relatable-observations. Either way, what you describe here terrifies me, terrifies my parents, raises questions about how long we can live in USA.
Appreciate this deeply, Peter.
Thanks for writing and sharing this Seth. I am curious about the checkpoints. Do they stop every car? Pedestrians and bikers? Does it cause traffic jams? Are people pissed? If you get stopped do you have to show ID?
I share your discomfort with our collective lack of resistance. And the growing, undeniable sense that we are watching terrible things happen and doing…. Not enough.
Thank you Dear! I haven't been to a checkpoint yet (UGH), but so far it seems they either post at major intersections (like 18th & Columbia in the heart of the Latin American district) or descend on schools when they let out. It's so predictable, vile, sad.
The troops aren't here in Boston yet, but ICE sure is. Every day, I wonder, "Could I get caught up in a swoop?" because my skin is a certain hue. I know what having soldiers in the streets and armed checkpoints feels like from my time living in London during the 80s when the IRA was in full swing. My husband was from Ulster. I recall how those in the Irish Republic compartmentalized what was happening, as if it had little to do with them, and I thought to myself, this could never happen in America. And now it has.
Oof. Feel that. I spend a little time in Ireland and N. Ireland in the early ‘90s, and I was struck by how familiar it felt. The past is the future?