UNWITTING: "Fearsome New Ways to Attack"

Chapter Three: Unwanted Voices

(The Secret War on William Pierce)

As Bill Pierce's tale unfolded it was harder to distinguish facts from speculation and potential fantasy. For example, he claimed that advanced technology was already being used to control subversive activities in the 1950s. Directional bugging devices “were snooping and spying on undesirables,” he claimed. 
     “Psychological harassment was being widely adopted, and in late 1954 I was subjected to a new electronic voice-thrower. While studying late one evening I heard voices from the sidewalk.”
     “He’s a red if ever we saw one,” said a disembodied voice. When Pierce looked outside for the source he saw no one. When he returned to work, however, he heard the voices again. It would not be the last time he heard such things, or attributed them to repression and the national security state.

     Some of what he recounted was hard to dispute. The development of nuclear weapons by the Soviet Union, plus the memory of Pearl Harbor, had indeed made intelligence activities a high national priority. “You have to remember, people were desperate about the so-called Communist threat,” Pierce said. “Some of them, although sincere and well-meaning, had a paranoid idea about domestic security that was being encouraged by ambitious opportunists. Vigilante extremism, faked investigations and security procedures sprang up across the country.”
     A bit more difficult to verify was his claim that “organized sociology” and “applied psychology” were being mobilized to manipulate reputations, attack the mental reliability of government critics, and conduct systematic psychological harassment. “There were fearsome new ways to attack the mental health, the very sanity, of their victims,” he said ominously.
      Given that context, his theory was that he had attracted the attention of some extreme anti-Communists at Syracuse. But it was “impractical to call me before HUAC or file judicial charges, and so instead, they used underhanded psychological harassment to isolate me from the academic community.”
     The campaign began in earnest in the spring of 1955, he said, while he was boarding at a house on Broad Street. Two new tenants introduced themselves; Lillian Hartwell, a middle-aged woman studying economics in the Syracuse adult division, and Willard Mays, who called himself a “former OSS man with intelligence experience in Algiers.” Hartwell worked for the Clark Music Company but claimed connections in Argentine diplomatic circles. Mays said he was an electronics expert studying air-conditioning at the Carrier Corp. 
     Whenever they shared the kitchen, his new friends would use the opportunity to query his feelings about Communism. One night Mays warned, for no apparent reason, that “nowadays if an American has the slightest tinge of red, Bill, he’s had it, he’s through!” 
     Hartwell was more subtle, casually inquiring about Marxist philosophy, economics, and the Soviet Union. During one such discussion, however, she pointedly informed Pierce that “the FBI has techniques for isolating people who are considered Communistic or otherwise dangerous.” She also pointed out a column in the Syracuse Herald-Journal by Walter Winchell that mentioned the Bureau’s ability to monitor and disrupt a subject’s conversations. 
    Pierce laughed and replied, “I don’t believe it.”

Next: Chung's Way 
Chapter Two

Summing Up: Let's Keep Burlington Livable

Two years ago, this was my core message. No regrets. A great experience, the race ended a day before my 68th birthday. And despite losing, it felt like marching forth. Since then the local issues have not much changed. So where do we go from here? Start by voting in Burlington for Genese Grill and Charles Simpson on March 7 -- and supporting change agents in your own communities. On March 4, I'll celebrate turning 70 with friends. Interested? Go to March Forth on March Fourth and RSVP. 

A friendly debate with Steve Goodkind.

"What Burlington needs, as the city turns 150 years old, is responsible growth that protects us from gentrification, that keeps the city livable."

It was an honor to run for mayor. I hope these comments, and others I made during the race, will persuade you to support other candidates and vote for preservation and change.



Upcoming Events (2015)
Friday, Feb. 27, 5:30 -- Burlington in 2050: A Mayoral Forum, Arts Riot
Saturday, Feb. 28, 11:30 on -- Mardi Gras
Sunday, March 1 -- Campaign Meeting

March 3 - Greg's Election Day Schedule

7 a.m. - Ward 5 - BED, 585 Pine St.

8 - Ward 6 - Vote at Edmunds, 275 Main St.

9 - Ward 1 - Mater Christi School, 100 Mansfield Ave.

10 - Ward 8 - Memorial Auditorium, 145 South Union St.

11 - Ward 4 - St. Mark's Youth Center, 1271 North Ave.
12 - Ward 7 - Robert Miller Recreation Center, 130 Gosse Ct.

4 p.m. - Ward 2 - Arts Academy / HO Wheeler, 6 Archibald Ave.

5 - Ward 3 -Sustainability Academy / Barnes, 123 North St.

6 - Arts Riot Social - Ward 5, at Art's Riot, 400 Pine St.

7 - Ward 6 - return to watch start of count

7:30 - Home at 300 Maple St - watch/hear/get returns

8-9 - to Old North End for party

UNWITTING: "It was a summer of suspicion"

Chapter Two: Naming Names
(The Secret War on William Pierce)

Pierce felt strongly that security clearances were out of place in the academic community and didn’t hesitate to say so publicly. In April 1953, for example, he spoke out about a Presidential Executive Order establishing new security requirements for government employment that included a “loyalty” standard. To him it looked like a form of profiling, another tool of the blacklist.

     Earlier that year William Martin, head of the Syracuse Math department in the 1940s and currently chair at M.I.T., had been called before the House Un-American Activities Committee. Once a member of the Communist Party, he buckled under questioning and named others who, he claimed, had once joined the party. 

     “My Syracuse colleague Professor Abe Gelbart, Dean of Science and Technology at Yeshiva University in New York, was on the list,” Pierce said. “FBI agents moved into Gelbart’s situation and questioned him at length. They even asked him about his associations with me, and said they had observed us drinking in local restaurants.” 

     On May 27, 1953, the night before Gelbart’s HUAC appearance, Pierce visited him at home and noticed suspicious cars driving back and forth in front of the house, as if on patrol. Gelbart claimed that he didn’t blame Martin for naming him. “In fact, he wasn’t sure how he himself would behave,” Pierce recalled. “Men are responsible for their families, he said, and that might mean naming me.”

     The next day, at an executive session of HUAC, Gelbart testified under oath that he wasn’t then a Communist Party member. But he took the Fifth Amendment when asked if he had ever been one. “Abe later told me about a private hearing,” Pierce said, “but he refused to discuss what he might have revealed. He did say that I hadn’t been especially loyal to him, and he was probably right.”

Sen. Joe McCarthy in action, under the eye of Vermont's Ralph Flanders 

     That summer Pierce went to Los Angeles to consult for the National Security Agency at UCLA. “I had a temporary, low-level clearance for work on S.C.A.M.P. and I suppose a security check was initiated.” S.C.A.M.P. was the acronym for the Southern California Applied Mathematics Project, a top secret operation conducted on behalf of the Defense Department. The official purpose was research on numerical analysis, but those involved focused mainly on cryptology. Pierce assumed the objective was cryptanalysis. But he also worked on problems in pure algebra, group theory and number theory.

     It was a summer of suspicion and unsettling Cold War developments. On June 19, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were electrocuted for the alleged theft of atomic bomb secrets. “Your country is sick with fear,” wrote Jean-Paul Sartre in reply. A month later Fidel Castro led an attack on the Moncada barracks in Cuba, an early attempt to overthrow the Batista dictatorship. At his trial the future Cuban leader proclaimed, “History will absolve me.” 

     One day after the Moncada attack, on July 27, an armistice ended the Korean War. More than 50,000 American had been killed in what had been designated a “police action,” at least 100,000 were wounded, and about 8,000 were missing. Less than a month later, Mohammed Mossadegh, the elected Prime Minister of Iran, was overthrown. Few people knew it at the time, but the coup had been orchestrated by the CIA. 

     While Bill Pierce was in Los Angeles. he noticed headlines about Abe Gelbart’s HUAC appearance. On television Senator Joseph McCarthy complained that Gelbart was receiving a Fulbright Fellowship “even after taking the Fifth Amendment 47 times.” Pierce also saw reports that McCarthy was “setting out for California on another Alger Hiss case.”

     Shortly after returning to Syracuse, Pierce’s government-funded research was abruptly cancelled. 

Next: Unwanted Voices 
Chapter One

Finding Annie Besant: London's 1st Wonder Woman

In Dons of Time, Tonio Wolfe travels back in time 

to Bloody Sunday and the Matchgirl Strike

During the Sedona vortex expedition he had seen her a second time. Of the infinite choices available to him in that moment he had found her in the midst of a crisis. Could it be an accident? What did it really mean? At least it was possible to isolate the moment -- November 13, the climax of a series of demonstrations that had been building for months.

THE DISPOSSESSED of London had begun to protest unemployment. The term was new, just coined. The police response was predictably harsh, often resulting in injuries and arrests. Even the press wasn't safe.
     For those in charge the problem was mainly tactical, a question of how to maintain public order. That meant stopping the protests in Trafalgar Square. Demonstrations had become an almost daily occurrence there. It was the most convenient place in the city for an outdoor gathering, and a central refuge for the homeless. Hundreds of men and women slept in its nooks and crannies, joined in daylight by thousands more, the ragged denizens of the city's notorious East End.

    Trafalgar was also near Westminster and Buckingham Palace. As a result Lord Salisbury, who often saw threats to pubic safety where there were none, ordered the chief of the Metro Police to take care of it. Perhaps the Square should be ringed with fences, the security conscious Lord advised. That way, if trouble came at least the trouble-makers could more easily be rounded up.
     Annie Besant was also thinking about tactics. To that end, she had organized a Socialist Defense Association so those in jail could get legal help. Many of the charges were being trumped up. She also assembled a group of well-to-do supporters who would show up night or day in response to a telegram and bail out anyone unjustly arrested.
     The boiling point finally came on November 13. The Radical Federation had called for a major march and rally that Sunday in response to three abuses of power. One was the imprisonment of a Member of Parliament, another was the ongoing repression in Ireland. But the primary focus of the day was the notorious Coercion Act, which had suspended civil rights indefinitely. Annie was invited to speak.
     Four days before the rally Sir Charles Warren, the Home Secretary, issued an order forbidding meetings in the Square. However, he simultaneously offered private assurances that "legitimate political gatherings" would not be disrupted. On Saturday he changed his mind again and issued a final order banning all processions.
     Delegates from the labor and radical clubs, the Fabians, Social Democratic Federation and Socialist League met that Saturday night. There was little time to deliberate, however, so in the end they opted to move ahead. They would gather at various places around the city in hopes of disorienting the authorities by approaching the Square from several directions. What they didn't know was that spies had tipped off the police and the place was surrounded before they arrived. Backing up the coppers were squadrons of "life guards" with bayonets. It looked like what it was -- a massacre in the making.
    He had seen it go down remotely in the desert. Annie wearing her usual outfit, the neckerchief, short skirt and boots that had captured Tonio's attention, leading a procession from Clerkenwell Green along the city's narrow streets. Thousands more marching from Holborn, Bermondsey and Deptford.
     Before the riot was over thousands of citizens were injured, many of them newcomers to protest and police violence. Just south of Trafalgar, a young writer named Alfred Linnell was fatally injured by a horse.The next morning, still dazed and traumatized, dozens of decent people were sentenced to jail in Bow Street Police Court. William Stead quickly launched his own defense fund and raised enough money within days to free everyone on appeal. Annie defiantly led them out of Millbank Prison, bruised and battered but unbowed.
     More cynical than most, G. B. Shaw called it "the most abjectly disgraceful defeat ever suffered by a band of heroes outnumbering their foes a thousand to one." Then again, no one considered it a rousing success. Three people had died. And what was gained? Nothing as far as Tonio could tell.
     Within days it was known as Bloody Sunday.
     The riot became a turning point for Annie. Due to her identification with the march she moved from being well-known to famous and, in some circles, notorious. It also confirmed what her old friend Charles Bradlaugh feared and deepened the break between them. Not only had she joined forces with the Socialists, she hadn't even consulted him before leading the disastrous march. Fighting for freedom was one thing, but to Bradlaugh this looked like an invitation to slaughter.
     Annie agreed in one sense. The situation was dire, possibly deadly, and having faith in the legal system felt increasingly naive. But she had reached the conclusion that more radical action was required. At least Stead and the socialists were prepared to fight back. In private moments, however, she wasn't so certain. Neither socialism nor atheism seemed to offer the real answers the world needed.

London, July 11, 1888

THE HOUSE of Commons was a model of architectural symmetry and political pragmatism. When the chamber was full during parliamentary debates, government supporters took seats to the right of the speaker's chair. Opponents and others sat on the left. Senior members from both camps, the so-called "front benchers," occupied seats closest to the center. Separating the opposing sides was a gangway, known as the Floor, measuring the distance of two swords.
     The original reason for the gangway was to prevent duels from breaking out.
     Located at the north end of Westminster Palace on the banks of the Thames, the ornate chamber was originally called St. Stephen's Chapel, part of the royal residence until the "lower house" moved in from Westminster Abbey. Over the next few centuries the medieval look faded and finally vanished until the entire palace was remodeled in the early nineteenth. Less than a decade later, an accidental fire destroyed both chambers of parliament and most of the residence.
     The next round of renovations took twenty years, this time a controversial mixture of Sir Charles Barry's conservative Gothic style and the neo-classical approach becoming popular in the States. The work wasn't done until 1860, just as young Charles Bradlaugh, then emerging as one of the country's leading freethinkers, launched The National Reformer.
     Almost thirty years later, in the same chamber, he and two other MPs were waiting as Annie Besant arrived with a delegation of matchstick girls. Most were under sixteen years old.
     After years of resisting the oath of office and repeatedly facing jail and disenfranchisement, Bradlaugh had finally succeeded in winning the right to speak and to vote in parliament in 1886. Since then he and Annie had parted ways over Socialism and Bloody Sunday. But they were on the same page about the matchstick strike.
      Tonio had selected the moment carefully. For months, in secret, he'd assembled his profile and concluded that this was the best opportunity to see Annie at the peak of her political career in London. In June, after attending a talk by Clementina Black at the Fabian Society, she had interviewed some women who worked at the Bryant & May match factory and published a searing account in The Link. They called the story "White Slavery in London."
     "Born in slums," Annie wrote, "driven to work while still children, undersized because under-fed, oppressed because helpless, flung aside as soon as worked out. Who cares if they die or go on to the streets, provided that Bryant & May shareholders get their 23 per cent and Mr. Theodore Bryant can erect statues and buy parks?
     "Girls are used to carry boxes on their heads until the hair is rubbed off and the young heads are bald at fifteen years of age. Country clergymen with shares in Bryant & May's, draw down on your knee your fifteen year old daughter; pass your hand tenderly over the silky clustering curls. Rejoice in the dainty beauty of the thick, shiny tresses."
     Using hard facts and compelling imagery she drove home the extreme working conditions and the severe, often deadly effects of the phosphorous used to make matches. Hair loss was just the start. The skin of many girls turned yellow over time, then green and black as they succumbed to a deadly form of bone cancer known as phossy jaw. The use of phosphorous in manufacturing was banned in the US and Sweden, but Britain's government considered such a restriction a dangerous restraint of trade.
     The girls at Bryant & May worked fourteen hours a day for less than five shillings a week. At times they didn't even get that due to a draconian system of fines that covered things like talking or taking a toilet break without permission. The fine for arriving late was half a day's wage.
     Shortly after her article appeared Bryant & May management circulated a statement along with a demand that workers sign. The statement basically said that the undersigned were satisfied with their conditions. Several workers refused, organizers were fired, and before the end of June more than a thousand girls were out on strike. The Salvation Army soon joined in the call for better factory conditions.
     The Times blamed Annie and other agitators for the labor "unrest."
     On July 4 she received an anonymous note. "Dear Lady," it began, "they have been trying to get the poor girls to say that it is all lies that has been printed and trying to make us sign papers that it is all lies; dear Lady nobody knows what it is we have to put up with and we will not sign them. We thank you very much for the kindness you have shown to us. My dear Lady we hope you will not get into any trouble on our behalf as what you have spoken is quite true."
     Annie was moved to tears, and soon action.
     Two days after the letter arrived, all work at the Bryant & May factory ground to a halt and a delegation of one hundred women approached her for help. A strike fund was quickly established, with Shaw, Beatrice Potter and Sidney Webb distributing the funds collected. Stead and others used their newspaper outlets to increase the pressure and launch a boycott.
    But the striking girls also wanted a union and Annie was their first choice to lead it.

BRADLAUGH BROUGHT two allies with him to the meeting. Samuel Montagu, a member representing Whitechapel, was the son of a Liverpool watchmaker who had become a successful banker and philanthropist. He was also an Orthodox Jew and had recently founded a Federation of Synagogues in the East End. The third MP was James Bryce, a liberal jurist and historian who represented the city's Tower Hamlets before moving to South Aberdeen.
     Once the girls sat, Annie reviewed the issues involved in the strike, her role and their demands. "After my story appeared I was threatened with libel," she recalled, "but it was easier to strike at the girls. That's why we are here. Although we appreciate Mr. Bradlaugh's support and the questions he is asking, this won't be settled until we can sit down with management."
     "Mr. Bryant is a reasonable man," offered Bryce. "What's his response?"
     "He don't like publicity," one girl snorted. "But he ain't said a thing."
     "What could he do?"
     "Improve the air is one thing, sir," an older girl replied bluntly. "After they added that upper floor to the place, the ventilation didn't work no more. The fumes is so thick you can barely breathe. That's the real reason we get sick."
     Annie pointed out that since the girls took meals inside the factory, phosphorous was also being ingested with their food. If someone complained about the pain as their teeth rotted from the poison, foremen had them pulled, often by brute force and without permission.
     "We need Mr. Bryant to stop listening to his foremen and meet with us," she said.
     Bradlaugh called the company's actions intolerable, but admitted that, no matter how many speeches he and others made, a legislative solution would take far too long, if it came at all. "Your power is the public's good opinion," he advised, "more effective and timely in this case than any action by this chamber of cowards."
     Some of the girls gasped, shocked by his candor and condemnation of both colleagues and his class. None except Annie had ever been inside the intimidating room before or witnessed a parliamentary debate.
     After listening quietly for twenty minutes Montagu joined the discussion by posing a larger question. "What concerns me, beyond addressing the egregious conditions you have brought to the nation's attention, is the ultimate goal of the movement that appears to be underway. As I see it, there are two schools of thought -- gradualism or revolution.
     "So, is it to be the Fabian's path or Marx and Morris?"
     "If not the one it will be the other," Annie replied. "Are we asking so much? The right to organize collectively, to take meals in a separate room to prevent contamination and illness, the reinstatement of those who have been fired, an end to the arbitrary fines and unfair deductions from wages. All of that, yes! We also want to bypass the foremen and bring the grievances directly to management. If they hadn't prevented complaints from being heard for so long," she scolded, "many girls could have been saved."
     Although Tonio had insisted on this precise time and place, the matchgirls' strike, even the opportunity to witness this unique encounter, wasn't the ultimate reason for his timing. It was a destination of opportunity. Even with a device that could take you to virtually any place or time you still needed to choose exactly when and where. You could visit London through the Jump Room forever and never run into the person you wanted to see. But on this particular day, Tonio knew where Annie would be.
    She strode toward the gangway to address the girls huddled to one side and the old men on the other. "Where is the real cure for our sorrow? How will we rescue the world? Do we seek more? Absolutely! But the road is long and has many turns. Today we fight for health and fairness, tomorrow perhaps for a common room, a refuge for girls who never had a proper home, a welcoming atmosphere and a bit of comradeship. If necessary, Mr. Montagu, yes, we are ready for revolution. The poor, after all, have little to lose. But at this point I still hold onto hope for gradual improvement, a peaceful path to liberate the enslaved and change the world.
     "What we need is a movement of love and self-sacrifice," she said, "inspiring us to give rather than take."

These moments are excerpted from Dons of Time, Chapters 22 (Doubts) and 25 (Struggle). From Fomite Press, also availabe from Amazon 

Border Battles: Scapegoating Immigrants Isn't New

This isn't the first time that the US has been in the grip of an anti-immigrant fever. Twenty year ago, for example, then-California Gov. Pete Wilson announced that undocumented pregnant women should be denied prenatal care. His underlying message was clear, brutal and similar to what we're hearing today: If you’re “illegal,” get out of our country!
     That was also a dangerous time for immigrants, marked by resurgent racism, increased police brutality, vigilante violence, and rationalization of virtually any attack. In other words, we’ve been here before.
  

     Anti-immigrant activists predictably deny charges of racism. But the facts tell a different story. Almost unlimited numbers of immigrants from mostly white, European countries are allowed into the US, while Latin Americans and Africans rarely even get tourist visas. And although sweatshops that employ undocumented workers are condemned, they aren’t often shut down. They're merely raided, resulting in deportations. The owners may be fined but they still come out ahead. After all, deported workers can’t collect back wages.
     In the early 1980s, low intensity conflict (LIC) theorists constructed a Los Angeles insurrection scenario requiring a military response and sealing the nearby border. A decade later, the Border Patrol played a key role in the L.A. riots of 1992, deployed in Latino communities and arresting more than 1,000 people. Afterward, the INS began work with the Pentagon’s Center for Low-Intensity Conflict. The line between civilian and military operations was largely erased.
     Throughout the 1990s, Human Rights Watch accused the US Border Patrol of routinely abusing people, citing a pattern of beatings, shootings, rapes, and deaths. In response, INS detainees in a private jail rioted in June 1995 after being tortured by guards. After 9/11, the federal government considered placing US soldiers along the Mexican border. 
     But efforts to curtail immigration through tighter security did little but redirect the flow into the most desolate areas of the border, increasing the mortality rate of those crossing. Between 1998 and 2004, at least 1,900 people died trying to cross the US-Mexico border. Arizona became the main entry point for undocumented immigrants and an estimated 460,000 lived in the state. Since then, however, that total has dropped by at least 100,000. 
     Since the 2007-2009 Great Recession, more Mexican immigrants have returned to their homeland than have migrated to the US, according to the Pew Research Center. The decline results from factors including weakened job opportunities, tougher border enforcement, a long-term decline in Mexico’s birth rates, and an improving Mexican economy. 
     More than 150 years ago, at the end of a two-year war between Mexico and the US, the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo was signed. Many Latinos still feel that the treaty, accepted under pressure by a corrupt dictator, was an act of theft violating international law. Mexico surrendered half its territory — now the Southwestern US — and most of the Mexicans who stayed in the ceded region ultimately lost their land.
     In a sense, that war never ended. Throughout the remainder of the 19th century, US officials, working closely with white settlers and elites, used often-violent means to subdue Mexicans in the region.
     Once the region was “pacified,” border enforcement became a tool to regulate the flow of labor into the US. With the passage of the Immigration Act of 1924, the Border Patrol emerged as gatekeeper of a “revolving door,” sometimes processing immigrant labor, sometimes cracking down. The Bracero Program, which brought in Mexican agricultural laborers, was followed (and overlapped by) Operation Wetback, an INS-run military offensive against immigrant workers.
     The border is still a battlefield. During recent decades, government strategies for combating undocumented immigration and drug trafficking have re-militarized the region. The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) meshed neatly with more obvious aspects of low-intensity conflict doctrine. The definition of immigration and drug trafficking as “national security” issues brought state-of-the-art military approaches into domestic affairs. 
     But just as the projection of a “communist menace” was a smokescreen for post-war expansionism, a “Brown wave,” the “Drug War,” and "radical Islamic" terrorism have been used as pretexts for military-industrial penetration.
     LIC doctrine uses diverse tactics — from the subtle and psychological (“winning hearts and minds”) to the obvious and brutal. Such flexibility requires the most sophisticated tools available, and the integration of police, paramilitary, and military forces. It also requires a plausible “enemy” — in this case, immigrants who can be accused of almost anything.
     In this kind of war, borders are ultimately unimportant. Battles are waged everywhere, even in communities far from a frontier. This blurs the line between police and the military, and further threatens basic rights.
     Nevertheless, Latinos will soon be the largest minority group in the US, according to Census Bureau predictions: at least 44 million, or 15 percent of the nation’s population. Although the biggest expansion will occur in states that draw the most immigrants — California, Texas, New York, Florida, Illinois, and New Jersey — the spill-over will reach from Atlanta to Minneapolis and Washington state. California is expected to undergo the most dramatic transformation — to at least 50 percent Latino and possibly only 32 percent white by 2040.
     Overall, immigration is fueling US population growth, and the Census Bureau predicts a tripling of the Hispanic and Asian populations in less than 50 years. While the number of whites may increase by seven percent, the three largest minorities — Hispanic, Black, and Asian — are expected to rise by 188, 71, and 213 percent respectively. The bottom line is that these three groups are expected to constitute at least 47 percent of total US population by 2050. While such forecasts certainly have much to do with the current anti-immigrant climate, the trend won’t be reversed by race-motivated legislation or even a wall. 
     Low-intensity war against non-white immigrants is expanding,  especially along the US-Mexico border, and takes many forms: militarization, criminalizing the undocumented, repressive legislation, human rights violations, and cruel, discriminatory attacks on children and the poor. 
     With the rise of Donald Trump and a renewed anti-immigrant movement, the choice facing the nation has become stark, between what Mexican author Jose Vasconcelos once called Universopolis – a place in which all the peoples of the world are melded into a “cosmic race” – and the Blade Runner scenario.
     In Blade Runner, a prescient 1982 film, Los Angeles in the 21st century has become an ominous “world city” marked by cultural fusion and economic stratification, a sunless and polluted place, overcrowded with Asian and Latino drones who barely look up at the metal fortresses of the rich. That option is basically an advanced imperialist state.
     Like Vasconcelos, author Salman Rushdie envisions a more optimistic, multicultural alternative. Immigrants may not so much assimilate as leak into one another, he suggests, “like flavors when you cook.”
     Of course, this is precisely what frightens many Trump supporters. For them the USA is hot dogs and apple pie, and they show little interest in expanding their diets.
  
This essay is also posted by permission at VTDigger.

Presidential Regression