Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D., NY), in the words of a friend, gave new meaning to the word moron. She attacked Saint Damien of Molokai as an example of “what patriarchy and white supremacist culture looks [sic] like.” What provoked her was that a statue of the saint, who gave his life attending to lepers, was in the Capital. 

Lordy, Lord, Lord. Damien is revered in Hawaii and in Belgium from where he went to Hawaii as a missionary priest. Here’s a defense of this Godly man:

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In the 1960s I was taught that the US Constitution dictates the Federal Government count every person living within the USA every 10 years. It’s on the Trump Administration’s website: “The Founders of our fledgling nation had a bold and ambitious plan to empower the people over their new government. The plan was to count every person living in the newly created United States of America, and to use that count to determine representation in the Congress.”

Count every person living in the USA. Not just the blue-eyed, or the Trumpers, not just the citizens, but every human being. Foreigners are human beings too.   

Mexico counted foreigners like my husband and I and our live-in maid in their 2000 census, given we lived there. I would have thought the Trump Administration could do the job at least as well as Mexico. I would be wrong.  

After five years living in Mexico, in the run up to the 2000 census a credentialed census official rang our street bell. My wonderful helper and maid, Maria, answered to identify who was there, and after vetting that he was who he said he was called me. “Señor, there’s a man from the census to see you.”

It was a lovely interaction as I answered the questions. He even graciously complimented me on my Spanish.

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In 1950s Puebla, Mexico, the Mexican children attending the American School had to Pledge Allegiance to the American flag every day. No one questioned it at the time. By the time our son was at the American School in Mexico City in the 1990s, the Pledge of Allegiance was a thing of the past, possibly because of the international mixture of students. 

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When we lived in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, we were told we could vote at St. Mary’s Catholic Church down the block. Only the local elections as I remember and I suspect because of being property taxpayers, but vote we did. It gives people skin in the game of living in an economy to vote.  

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Life in Ecuador during the late 1980s had many oddities, including the requirement of foreign men to pay an annual fine because they had not served in the Ecuadorian military. 

Each and every time these men left Ecuador, they had to show the proof of payment of the annual fine. Employed foreigners also had to show proof that their tax payments were up to date, after all, you might skip the country without paying. This always was entertaining to the military officials at the airport who couldn’t believe how much tax foreigners paid.  

Silly foreigners.

One time when my husband and his Puerto Rican comptroller had to fly to NYC for annual budget meetings, the comptroller was stopped at security by one of the four uniformed military officers lined up in a row. Where was the comptroller’s proof of payment of his military fine? He’d forgotten it. As the military officer interrogated the comptroller, my husband watched him remove a single American twenty dollar bill from his pocket and carefully roll it into a tight roll. 

I did say this was Ecuador. 

Diplomatically the comptroller passed the bill to the military official, asking if this might settle the missing proof of payment?

With a flourish the military official unrolled the bill, held it up to the light for all to see with his two meaty hands and said, no. Not enough. One hundred American dollars would settle the issue. 

After all, there were four military officials on duty. 

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When I argue that the United States of America is a Banana Republic, I point to the crumbling infrastructure, inequality in sharing the economic riches, healthcare for all which would stop our declining life expectancy and educational morass. Now you can add that this country cannot even keep enough coins in circulation, due to some incompetence by the Secretary of the Treasury Mnuchin.

America is just like Mexico. When we landed there in 1995 the ubiquitous, but not always functioning, bank ATMs spat out 200 pesos bills, the equivalent of about US $20. The only problem was that on the street and in the stores, no one had smaller bills or coins to give you in change back from your purchase. “No hay cambio.” 

Banks, to paraphrase Willie Sutton, being where the money is, I went inside to get change for the 200 peso bill. Sometimes they would, more times they wouldn’t (or couldn’t). Now who does that remind me of?

The Banana USA Republic since Trump and Covid-19.

Even the most cynical among us and this certainly includes most Chicago area residents who through the years have become somewhat immune to the daily violence totals, had to do a double-take at the headlines below.

I don’t write the headlines but actually to use the word “UPTICK” is being a tad misleading. The UPTICK has lasted since the very beginning of the year. We are at a point where we are talking about a month having the largest mass shooting spree in recent Chicago history. Each month the word UPTICK has been used to describe the violence from the month before and last year. The UPTICK has turned into a steady ongoing rolling blood bath on Chicago’s streets with no sign of letting up.  In just one month (JULY) 58 minors were shot. The headlines tell the gruesome details on a daily basis. Infants, toddlers, 7-8-9-year-olds, and hundreds of teens murdered or wounded.  So far in 2020 451 souls have been murdered and 2,326 have been shot in Chicago. 7 mass shootings in a one month period, including 15 people attacked and shot at just one incident, leaving even the most jaded shaking their heads.

This is no UPTICK.   Something is terribly wrong when more children are killed and wounded than are victims of the Coronavirus. I often get the question of what has gone wrong? The photo below probably needs no explaining. The photo on the right is in my opinion the direct cause of the photo on the left. Those figures would most likely be mistaken for a battle zone, not for a great American city. However, the reality is inescapable.

If you want to call an increase of 133% in murders and an 81% increase in shootings an UPTICK the City will pay your Kool-Aid tab. Those 498 folks who were wounded were targeted for death and no doubt will be listed in the statistics for another day. Today’s killers most often will be tomorrows or even the same day’s victims.  Chicago has over 117,000 gang members with 55 major gangs, with 747 factions or affiliates and over 2,500 subsets of those factions. We often hear that the police cannot solve the problem on their own. But yet it’s the police who are charged with the responsibility when the violence erupts. The failures of past politicians and their party minions, failed programs, failed schools, failed parenting and during these times, failed judicial systems, prosecutions, and scores of other failures that have spawned what we are dealing with today, are simply not held accountable. We are living in a time in Cook County where killers and gun offenders are afforded little or no bond and are constantly let lose to prey on entire neighborhoods. All in the name of so-called Restorative Justice. When they kill and maim, again and again, nobody is held accountable and the VICTIM list keeps escalating as one can see by those horrendous figures.

The ACLU threatened to sue the City back in August of 2015 because the police supposedly were guilty of profiling. Stop and Frisk became a thing of the past when the City buckled and ( it should be noted that every person involved in that agreement for the City is long gone) entered into an agreement with the ACLU, that for every street stop made by the police, it required a detailed report called an INVESTIGATORY STOP of approximately 40 minutes just to stop a person who was acting suspiciously in an alley, say at 2 am, or the occupants of a vehicle in an area of driveby shooting activity. By contrast Stop and Frisk which was granted to all law enforcement officers by the U.S.Supreme Court in Terry vs Ohio in 1968, took at the very least a few minutes to accomplish. Street stops are the number one weapon used by cops to combat violence.   Immediately after the City entered into that agreement those stops plummeted by 81%. Crime has in my opinion been out of control ever since. The photo below says it all.

During the Coronavirus Pandemic, every single day the mayor and the governor held press conferences and laid out detailed plans to keep people safe and secure from getting sick or dying. Some of the most restrictive enforcement was put in place. Social distancing, stay at home orders and closures were instituted to save lives. The Mayor of Chicago closed beaches, jogging trails, parks, and placed many more impositions, all in the name of safety. Yet we see the horrible results of out of control violence that’s killing and maiming Chicagoans by the hundreds and there seem to be no plans whatsoever that are not an old trot out to appease the press and the great clueless. The Governor of Illinois as far as I know has not even mentioned Chicago’s other epidemic, which is proving just as lethal for some as the Virus.  Looking at the indifference that Chicago leaders have towards solving this ongoing slaughter I cannot help to think of this quote, ” THE WORLD WILL NOT BE DESTROYED BY THOSE WHO DO EVIL BUT BY THOSE WHO WATCH THEM AND DO NOTHING.”  Why are Chicago’s leaders watching evil attack and doing nothing?