Searching for God # 150

 From the diary of Anne Frank, January 13, 1943: 

Terrible things are happening outside. Poor helpless people are being dragged out of their homes. Families are torn apart. Men, women and children are separated. Children come home from school to find that their parents have disappeared. 

Today’s facts on the ground in the United States may not precisely mirror those mourned in Ms Frank’s diary; and yet, are they really very far removed?  

The American Civil Liberties Union (aclu.org) in a piece entitled, ‘Deaths in Detention: Mortality Rate for People Detained by ICE More Than Doubles Under Trump Administration,’ by Sofia Gonzalez, reported as part of the National Prison Report, September 22, 2026, reads as follows: 

The Mortality rate for people in ICE custody has more than doubled from the first Trump administration and is at its highest point in more than a decade. At least 57 people have died in immigration detention since the start of the second term, more than double the number of deaths recorded from the previous four years combined.....Beyond recorded in-custody deaths ICE has hidden a growing number of fatalities due to recent shifts in reporting mandates. In 2021, the Department of Homeland Security implemented a federal policy requiring ICE to report and investigate any deaths occurring within 30 days of release from ICE custody. This measure ensured that ICE could be held accountable and prevented it from releasing severely ill individuals to dodge accountability and reporting requirements. The Trump administration rescinded that policy in June in yet another move to evade oversight and transparency.....ICE is then incentivized to discharge critically ill individuals just before they die, artificially skewing official mortality statistics......On any given day, ICE holds approximately 70.000 people across a sprawling network of over 200 immigration detention centers. As rates of detention rise, the rate of deaths in detention has also surged to unprecedented levels. With the rapid proliferation of new detention centers in the form of warehouses and shuttered prisons and expansion of detention beds in existing facilities, this rising death toll raises urgent questions about proper access to healthcare, hygiene and nutrition, and conditions of confinement more broadly. 

And also on aclu.org, in a piece entitled ‘Deaths in Detention: ICE Is Rapidly Expanding Detention Camps into Warehouses Despite Record Deaths,’ by Haddy Gassama, April 28, 2026, we read: 

From the internment of Japanese Americans to the mass detention of Jewish people across Europe, to the confines of kidnapped Africans aboard ships during the transatlantic slave trade, history offers stark warnings on targeting entire populations for confinement. Under the guise of policy and profit, large-scale detention to control or exclude certain groups has consistently resulted in widespread human rights abuses and loss of life.....Recent contracts highlight a troubling pattern. This includes a $113 million contract to retrofit warehouse facilities for mass detention which was awarded to a little-known defense contractor with no prior experience in immigration enforcement. 

Dodging any obligations for transparency, reporting, and provision of basic needs, including health care, hygiene, and nutrition, the Trump administration is both fully committed to and fully engaged in a deliberate process of ‘extermination’ of those it considers unwelcome. Let’s not overlook, either, the deliberate and nefarious and malicious evisceration of all media outlets it considers hostile because they refuse to bow the knee to whatever narcissistic definition of news is considered appropriate by the administration. 

If there were a small band of rebels taking over a banana republic’s government, we would label that take-over a ‘coup.’ As this band of rebels are filthy rich altarboys to the ‘great leader’ and inversing (no overt guns, no open and visible killings and except for January 6, no military take-over of government property) the normal development patterns of such government take-overs, including the language we use to report them, a stealth-coup is happening right in front of the eyes of the world, and the world, basically, is wringing its hands. 

And the damage being wrought within the United States, by an acknowledged authoritarian, is also compounded by the danger trump himself poses for the world. Although he has not as yet, so far as we know, pushed any of the buttons on the nuclear arsenal, he is acknowledged as a far greater threat than Iran, where he has embroiled the U.S. (and indirectly both Middle East countries and American allies). And as David Smith in The Guardian writes in a piece headlined: ‘The weaker he gets, the more dangerous he gets; Trump lashes out as his power wanes,  September 26, 2026: 

Donald Trump  stood before the United Nations on Tuesday and threatened to ‘annihilate’ Iran. Yet, even as the most powerful man on the planet flexed his military muscle, he was powerless to keep the gravitational pull of domestic politics at bay...Federal courts are reining him in. Congressional Republicans are straying from the script. Poll numbers are tumbling to historic depths, driven by persistent inflation rising fuel costs and an increasingly unpopular war in Iran....Faced with shrinking authority and a hostile economic landscape, Trump has reverted to his trusted playbook: manufacturing spectacle, picking cultural fights and raging against the press. His recent decision to ban the news outlets CNN, MS Now and Politico from the White house campus following critical coverage was viewed by critics not as a display of strength, but a symptom of deep frustration.... (Allan) Lightman, a history professor at American University in Washington believes Trump is driven by two things: money and power. ‘He cannot stand not being the center of attention and that’s dangerous,’ he said. ‘I don’t care much about his verbal lashing-out; I don’t think that helps him at all. But who knows what crazy things he might do to reassert attention on him? And that’s frightening......He doesn’t care about the courts and doesn’t care about the Congress. From this perspective, Trump’s last refuge will be the unchecked use of executive authority, a politicised justice department and a sweeping pardon power. With nothing to lose in his final two years, he could go out all guns blazing. Charles Sykes, a conservative author and broadcaster said: ‘Donald Trump fears irrelevance more than anything and he’ll rage against it as long as he can. The notion that he will go quietly would be incredibly naive. ‘We’re headed for a collision between a lame duck who has no respect for the constitutional norms and an opposition that may have some power to hold him accountable. The paradox is the weaker he gets the more dangerous he gets.’ 

In another piece from The Guardian, entitled Page one of repressive playbook’: critics warn of Trump’s conspiratorial attacks, by Peter Stone, October 1, 2026, we read: 

Trump mentored by Roy Cohn, learned that baseless allegations about shady forces working together against him could serve to mobilize and lead the public to see him as a victim rather than as a wrongdoer, said the Princeton historian Julian Zelizer. ‘Whenever faced with criticism, such as from the media or about AI policies, his instinct it to throw out charges of a vast conspiracy that is out to get him.’ Zeliezer stressed: ‘Trump’s frequent use of conspiracies to attack critics has a damaging impact on all levels of society and democracy, from weakening confidence in elections to hurting our ability to deal with serious problems involving the AI industry. 

One of the serious problems of this ‘pervasive, personal analysis of the president’ is that while attempting to discern how to respond and to protect one’s interests, including self-interest, it narrows and reduces the depth, complexity and gravity of the situation. Clearly, he has no qualms or conscience about hurting anyone, is loyal to no one even including Putin, Xi, ‘Kim’ and ‘Bibi,’ seeks to wreak havoc when and wherever he can and continues to occupy the office with the greatest number of hard power levers in the world. None of the ‘constitutional, legal, political, economic, military or environmental norm, nor any of the expected norms of human decency, respect, human rights and due process concern him a whit. These words, and the millions of other words that have been committed in opposition have only emboldened him into more intense conspiracies and revenge.  

The world, including the U.S.A. cannot wait for what some are proposing as a Truth and Reconciliation Commission to help clean up the mess he will leave behind. The degree of righteousness of those whose absolute confidence in their perspectives, opinions, lies, and justifications for their malicious deeds is engraved in the granite of their own fossilized mind all defy penetration, not only into their psyche, but also into their inner circle. The staff, advisors, Supreme Court (it continues to appear), 26 of 50 governors, many trump-appointed judges, many state legislators, the Republican members of the Senate, the majority of the House of Representatives, some large legal firms, universities and colleges, many media outlets have all caved in to this despot and his captivating malevolent mind and rhetoric....many, doubtless for the satisfaction of their own narcissism, obsessive need, like millions of moths, to be near the light (however fake the light).  

The Democratic Party, itself, seems, sadly, to continue to be publicly divided as to which primary message and theme will carry they to victory in the November midterms next month. Some prefer a far-left approach, considered radical by many, to include health care for all, free college and university tuition for all, revitalization of foreign aid and the many social programs the Trump administration has gutted. Others, with their eyes fixed on those independent and potential disaffected Republican voters, prefer and advocate for a much more modest, moderate, balanced and what the left considers ‘too pallid and too timid’ an approach. Of course, ending the war in Iran tops the list of both factions, as well as an increasing number of Republicans. Gas prices, food and borrowing costs and the growing disparity between the have’s and the have-not's within the United States will inevitably garner considerable attention in the campaign. 

Again, as in the late 1960’s when the Americans were enmeshed in the war in Vietnam with no apparent path to peace, with then a Democratic president intent on sustaining his reputation as a ‘fighter’ (masculine Alpha male), those advocating for peace were divided over their respective choice for president, as the preferred ‘peace/dove’ candidate, Eugene McCarthy or Bobby Kennedy. The Nixon election of 1968 might serve as a foreshadowing in 2028 for some discerning, reflective Democrats; nothing can even be taken for granted in politics. Ths history of a highly disciplined, almost predictably autonomic loyalty and discipline to the power and authority of the party leader of the Republican Party differs significantly from the more discursive, openly debating, publicly transparent, Democratic Party. 

And in this next presidential election, and even in the 2026 midterms, that organizational, party-contextual culture and historic difference might well turn out to be the American Achilles Heel, in terms of attempting on behalf of the world, to depose this monster. And that, just to compound the depth and range of this historic moment, would be another American tragedy.