Regrets

Dolores and I are still on speaking terms, but there are questions I don’t ask her. I would like to know if she has any regrets about the election. I can’t ask her. The question would suggest to her that I think she should have regrets. I do. By now, she should have a lot of them.

But what would be the point of asking her? It isn’t a contest. I don’t score points by making her admit, even if only to herself, that she has regrets. And if she does not regret her vote, she would take my question as an insult. Naturally, she would feel compelled to ask whether I’m the one who should have regrets. I don’t.

I think about Ukraine a lot. There was a time when Dolores expressed sympathy for that country’s struggle to defend itself. But now, I don’t know how she feels about Ukraine. Maybe she somehow buys the argument that Ukraine started the war by being invaded.

Lately, it seems the U.S. wants to weaken Ukraine by cutting off intelligence-sharing, military equipment, and ammunition. Our new foreign policy is to do Putin’s bidding and to force Ukraine to give up 20 percent of its territory in exchange for a false peace that would invite a future invasion.

We gain nothing by dismantling Ukraine. We gain nothing by dismantling NATO. Well, except for getting some choice real estate in Moscow where someone could build a beautiful tower.

I think a lot about the Gaza Strip as well. Dolores agrees that the Hamas raid in October 2023 that killed 1,200 people in Israel and took 250 hostages was an atrocity designed to blow up peace talks in the Middle East. I believe she also agrees that the U.S.-backed Israeli response, which has bombed Gaza to rubble and killed more than 46,000 Palestinians, is horrible and appears to put peace in the region beyond reach in my lifetime and hers.

Before January 20, the U.S. pursued an honorable objective for peace: a two-state solution. We now have a one-resort solution. Our government proposes U.S. ownership of the Gaza Strip and the relocation of the entire Palestinian population of Gaza to parts unknown so that someone can build a magnificent seaside resort there.

Dolores thinks he doesn’t really mean it. I think it’s an insane idea that goes in the same bucket as the State of Canada and the War Against Panama.

Meanwhile, on the domestic front, the dismantling of the federal government continues apace. I wonder what Dolores thinks about the plot to destroy the Social Security Administration. Maybe she was comforted by the promise that Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid would “not be touched.” That promise is an unpeeled lie. Seniors and disabled SSA clients will no longer be allowed to verify their identity over the phone, and many will be forced to appear in person at an SSA office. At the same time, SSA staff are being cut by 12 percent, 47 SSA offices are being closed, and there are wait times of a month or more for in-person appointments. Benefits will be denied in cases of fraud—but the Commerce Secretary’s bold idea for detecting fraud is to deny benefits for everyone and see who complains. “Whoever screams is the one stealing,” he reasons.

This who-screams construct reveals the theory of government that is now in place in our country. It’s not just at the Social Security Administration. The “DOGE” cuts are part of the same game plan. For presidential deniability purposes, an illicit “Department” has been empowered to fire government workers capriciously and in cripplingly large percentages of any agency’s entire workforce. Whoever screams the loudest about the DOGE firings and policy changes will be accused of fraud—and possibly deported.

With immigration, the leverage is not arbitrary reductions in the workforce or denial of the benefits approved by Congress. The new approach to immigration is the use of force to round up people, deny them any shred of due process, and secretly deport them, ideally in the dark of night.

The government will not need concentration camps for this project so long as countries, such as El Salvador, will incarcerate deportees in their notorious prisons for a price to be paid by U.S. taxpayers. Some of the people subject to this roundup tactic will have no criminal record. Some may be U.S. citizens. In the absence of due process, no one will ever know. Is this the kind of country Dolores wants us to be?

While the Republican majority in Congress slumbers, one-by-one agencies of the federal government will be destroyed and cease to function. Maybe their operations will be privatized. Maybe not, if there is no profit to be made.

Dolores will have to take notice then, but it will be too late.

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Some other stuff for later,