Trump actions mirroring Sinclair Lewis novel
$5.2 million `Miracle on Ice' monument proposed for Lake Placid Arena
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Sinclair Lewis' 1936 novel It Can't Happen Here remains embedded in my psyche like no other previous piece of literature.
I've been called paranoid, and that was from my son.
But with each day, each attack on our Constitution, I fear my worries are justified.
It Can't Happen Here was written before World War II, before the Holocaust, before we knew the full powers of the SS in Germany and the camps they were building.
In Lewis' novel, President Berzelius "Buzz" Windrip is elected president with fascist-leaning philosophies. During his campaign, a volunteer security force called the Minute Men provides him with security.
But soon after Windrip is elected president, the Minute Men are given full authority to enforce the regime's policies, suppressing dissent, ignoring due process and terrorizing citizens, including a heroic small-town editor.
Maybe, that's why I relate.
Each use of the military, of ICE, of the National Guard by the Trump administration sends renewed fears we are eventually going to be a police state.
Ridiculous, you say, consider some of the recent events.
The New Orleans Times-Picayune provided an extraordinary bit of reporting last week that prosecutors in Texas, Louisiana, Alabama and Washington, D.C, are charging immigrants under an 85-year-old misdemeanor infraction that requires them to register with the U.S. government.
The oddity is the law is so old and so obscure, there is no system in place for someone to register even if they wanted.
"I didn’t even know that was an offense until a couple of months ago when (the Department of Homeland Security) started talking about it,” said Carey Holliday, a Baton Rouge-based immigration attorney in an interview with the Times-Picayune.
Earlier this year, five immigrants were charged under the law in Louisiana.
The judge, Michael C. North, threw out the charges, writing, "There is no evidence that any of these defendants knew they were required to register under (the law), and even if they had, until very recently there was no mechanism for these defendants to do so."
It is not hard to connect the dots further.
The Big Ugly Bill provides billions of dollars toward a militarize future. There is $170 billion appropriate toward immigration enforcement, $45 billion to build detention centers and #30 billion for ICE enforcement.
Heather Cox Richardson pointed out those appropriations to stop illegal immigration are more than the national defense for all but 15 countries.
ICE now has more funding that the FBI, the DEA, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, U.S. Marshals and the Bureau of Prisons combined.
Combined!
Ice could be the modern day Minute Men.
It is already largest law enforcement agency in the history of the nation.
That's a lot of money to capture workers at Home Depot.
Harvard sociologist Theda Skocpoil wrote in Talking Points Memo that offials in the Trump administration are using immigration as a way to establish a police state.
In its 2024 decision, the Supreme Court ruled that the president has "absolute immunity" for actions involving foreign affairs.
Essentially, Trump can deport, arrest or detain anyone at anytime for anyting he wants and never be in violation of the law.
Thank you Mr. Roberts and the other five justices who voted for that atrocity.
Heather Cox Richardson, Substack columnist and historian, made this chilling observation:
Once a new system of detention facilities and ICE agents is established and the idea that a Republican president can legitimately attack his political opponents is accepted, a police state will be in place.
Is this really happening in America or has my Sinclair Lewis-induced paranoia gotten the better of me?
I hope the latter, but fear the former.
Newspaper issue
Miriam Weisfeld, Adirondack Theater Festival's leader, was interviewed by Joe Donahue on WAMC Monday.
A good portion of the 10-minute interview was spent talking about my play The Last American Newspaper and its "unprecedented" sellout of all four shows (July 25-27) for a dramatic reading.
It's worth a listen.
Saratoga opens
There are several "best days of the years" I cite annually, and the opening of Saratoga is one of them.
Saratoga Race Course, which has morphed from "The August place to be" to the "summer place to be" opens on Thursday and runs Wednesday through Sunday through Labor Day.
I haven't been to opening day in a few years - although I did make it to the Belmont Stakes the past two years - so I'm hoping to take in the scene Thursday.
`Miracle' monument
A monument to the 1980 "Miracle on Ice"Olympic hockey victory has been commissioned to stand outside the Lake Placid arena where the game was played.
Upsets in sports happen regularly, but the United States team's victory over the USSR was voted the greatest sports moment of the 20th Century by Sports Illustrated.
The life-sized monument will be created by sculptor Rob Eccleston of New York City, Lake Placid and Colorado. It will depict all 20 players from the iconic photo captured on the Olympic podium taken moments after the gold medal was secured on Feb. 24, 1980.
The 1980 Miracle on Ice Hockey Team Corp., a volunteer 501(c)(3) non-profit, is now soliciting donations and urging sports fans to contribute. All donations are tax deductible. The estimated cost is expected to be $5.2 million.
The goal is to placed the statue in time for the 50th anniversary in 2030.
Chapman walking tour
The Chapman Museum will hold its next walking tour - Behind the Business Tour - on Friday at 11 a.m.
The tour highlights some of the lesser-known Glens Falls businesses on the west side of the downtown business district from the 1860s to the 1950s.
Tours are $15 per person ($10 for members). To register, call 518 793-2826. Tours are limited to 15.
TLAN Wait list
While tickets for all four performances of The Last American Newspaper are sold out, you can get on the wait list if any tickets are returned.
A reader with tickets contacted me Monday because they are unable to attend Saturday's matinee. I urged them to contact the theater since there is a demand.
To get on the wait list, call the Wood Theater box office at 518 480-4878.
Deaths to come
Following up on Monday's column about the cuts to USAID overseas, Heather Cox Richardson reported this week that the medical journal The Lancet published an analysis of USAID overseas that concluded programs funded by USAID prevented nearly 92 million deaths in 133 countries from 2001 to 2021.
It estimated the cuts the Trump administration made to USAID will result in more than 14 million deaths in the next five years. About 4.5 million will be children under 5.
Ken Tingley spent more than four decades working in small community newspapers in upstate New York. Since retirement in 2020 he has written three books and is currently adapting his second book "The Last American Newspaper" into a play. He currently lives in Queensbury, N.Y.
The front page of the Times Union this morning: “Interim US Attorney, John A. Sarcone III has directed his staff to remove the Times Union and its staff members from his office media distribution list after the newspaper published a story last month about him listing a boarded-up residence in Albany as his address.”
By using the budget numbers provided here and divide that by the estimated number of undocumented folks (3.5 million or about 1% of our population), it comes to $70,000 per person to remove them. What we Americans truly lack is the ability to put our selves into the shoes of theses folks and imagine what it must be like to be swept off of the street and disappear from sight with no recourse or information to family or contact with the outside world. The evil Hollman said if Mamdami is elected he will flood NYC with ICE agents. Political Army indeed, I can't fathom the evil that these people opperate from. On Facebook the Trump supporters I follow are clueless as to the actual hell they are putting good hard working people through, but still we sit on our hands, go to the track, have our parades and enjoy life. I was in NYC yesterday and the look on the faces of the migrants is heartbreaking. I went to dinner with a woman who is a child of parents who came without documentation and made a good life for themselves here, and followed the path to citizenship in the 1960s. So she is a birthright citizen. Terrified for others, she also keeps her head down and hopes that we make it.