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When Fear and Cruelty Are Built On a Foundation of Lies [1]

['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']

Date: 2025-03-03

The thing about a lie is sometimes it doesn’t stop with simply not telling the truth. Sometimes that’s just the start.

You tell some lie that you really want people to believe, so you figure you have to keep going. You have to spread the lie, embellish the lie, and add on some more lies to bolster the first lie.

It becomes like a snowball rolling down a hill. It’s gets bigger and bigger and travels faster and faster. It becomes more dangerous. More destructive. And the more dependent you become on that lie holding up the more you’ll do to make it fester and grow. Because the bigger the lie and the more people who are telling it, the more people will believe it just has to be true because so many people are saying it.

And then you reach a point where everything you do has to justify the lie. You can’t turn back because you’ve told the lie to so many people that to now say it isn’t true, or even to try to temper all the problems it’s caused, makes you look like a liar. Which, of course, you are.

And that’s what happened with the Republican Party and the issue of illegal immigration in this country. Republicans have spent so much time and energy attacking immigrants that they can’t possibly show any humanity toward them or come up with a humane solution to the problem.

It’s easy to call for mass deportation of people once you’ve worked so hard to label them as murders and rapists, as animals, as sub-human, as vermin, as poisoning the blood of our country. It’s easy to get a bunch of folks behind you when you’ve filled their heads with such garbage and have instilled so much unjustified fear in them.

So, there’s no surprise by a Washington Post story detailing the alleged inhumane treatment received by migrants being held at Guantanamo Bay recently. And probably very little to no outrage by the people who’ve bought the lies, embraced the hate, and succumbed to the fear.

That’s because we’ve demonized these people so much that mistreating them just seems like the natural thing to do, because they’re not like us. They’ve dangerous. They’ve invading us. They’re going to kill us in our sleep for God’s sake. Or so they want you to believe.

The Post’s story is titled, “Invasive frisks, suicide attempts: Three migrants describe Guantanamo detention.” The subhead reads, “The men said they were denied calls to loved ones, subjected to humiliating searches and left in isolation for prolonged periods.”

One of the migrants said he was kept in a windowless cell, where he kept track of the days by putting a small tear in the last blank page of a Bible he was given on his arrival, along with a blanket and a 3/4-inch foam pad to sleep on. He went to the bathroom in a bucket connected to a tap in his cell.

(There’s something ironic about giving an immigrant a Bible and then treating him like a dog. I guess it’s a Christian thing.)

The 27-year-old was at Guantanamo for two weeks. He was one of about 180 migrants that the Trump administration flew there before transporting them to their native Venezuela, the Post said.

“They didn’t treat me like a human being,” he told the newspaper.

All three men said they were denied calls to lawyers or loved ones. They were subjected to humiliating and invasive strip searches. They said they had prolonged periods in isolation with only two one-hour opportunities to go outside over two weeks. When they were outside, they were shackled and put in what they described as individual open-air cages placed next to each other.

The migrants’ conditions in Guantanamo “were horrific, and are far more restrictive, more severe and more abusive than what we would see in a typical immigration detention facility in the United States,” said Eunice Cho, a senior staff attorney at the ACLU National Prison Project. The ACLU is one of the organizations that has sued the administration to allow legal access to migrants.

What does the Donald Trump administration have to say about this? Well, White House press secretary/lying bimbo Karoline Leavitt, when asked about conditions for migrants in Guantanamo, instead decided to spout this hysterical nonsense:

“If you invade our nation’s borders … and if then you further commit heinous, brutal crimes in the interior of our country, like raping and murdering innocent, law-abiding women and girls … then you are going to be deported from this country, and you may be held at Guantanamo Bay.”

Little over the top there Karen. Sorry, I mean Karoline.

We should add here that the Post could find no criminal records for the three men it interviewed other than crossing the border illegally. And that immigrants commit crimes at a lower rate than Americans, while illegal immigrants commit crimes at an even lower rate.

And that we actually have a system for dealing with people who commit crimes in this country – it’s called the justice system – and migrant or no migrant that’s where the folks Karen, sorry I mean Karoline, was ranting about are supposed to go, where they have actual rights afforded them by our constitution.

But hey, other than that it was a hell of a quote.

You can read the Post’s story here.

Here’s a ProPublica story about an interview with a mother whose son was held at Guantanamo.

***

Speaking of over the top, the right’s doomsday scenario about immigrants might make the Pentagon’s decision to send 3,000 additional troops to the southern border, to join the 6,000 already there, like the sensible thing to do, not the dog-and-pony show overreach it really is.

Accused drunk/sex offender/incompetent boob Pete Hegseth, who I’m sad to say is our unqualified defense secretary, explained that this is about maintaining “the sovereignty, territorial integrity, and security” of the country, the New York Times reported.

I think our sovereignty, territorial integrity, and security are pretty safe, and if we need 9,000 armed troops to handle a bunch of unarmed migrants, which include plenty of women and children, what will happen when Trump gets us in a real war?

As the Times explained: “The deployments come even as the state of the border is fairly calm, with crossings having fallen sharply in recent months after the Biden administration took steps to limit migration.”

So far, the troops have been helping to build barriers and support law-enforcement agencies, but Hegseth has said “whatever is needed at the border will be provided.” He didn’t rule out Trump invoking the Insurrection Act to allow the use of armed forces for law enforcement duty.

Trump is overcompensating, which is what small, weak men tend to do, and he’s showing off what he can do now that he’s corrupted the leadership of our military. And he wants us all to remember that he has no qualms about siccing the military on protesters, in case we get any ideas.

How can he get away with such a thing? Simple, he’ll just lie. We’re all seeing how that works with immigrants.

Do you think it can’t happen to you or me?

***

Thank you for reading my post. You can see my other writings on my blog: Musings of a Nobody. Please share and subscribe for free via email on its home page.

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