That Dog Whistle You Hear is Trump's Immigration Policy

When your president is a pathological liar and a racist, there is no shortage of things to write about.  Where to begin when talking about our nation's separation and incarceration of immigrant children?

First, let's talk about what dog-whistle politics are, to wit:

Dog-whistle politics is political messaging employing coded language that appears to mean one thing to the general population but has an additional, different, or more specific resonance for a targeted subgroup. The phrase is often used as a pejorative due to a perception of deceptive intent in the speaker thought to be making use of such messaging. The analogy is to a dog whistle, whose ultrasonic whistling sound is heard by dogs but inaudible to humans.


I disagree with the phrase "perception of deceptive intent."  There IS deceptive intent in dog whistle politics.

Second, let me get some things off my chest.

Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen -- ye of the name that isn't even really "American" in the Trumpian sense of the word -- before you make the specious claim that forcibly separating children from their parents isn't child abuse, let's separate children from YOUR family from their parents, put them in a room with videos, meals, etc., and see how well they do.  You can watch on closed circuit TV, which is more than what you've offered the parents of these immigrant children.

President Trump, you wouldn't know the truth if it took the form of a porn star's silicone tit and happily slapped you in the face.  You blaming the Democrats for your child separation kidnapping policy is a lie.  And don't think we don't hear the dog whistle in your immigration policy when you say "the United States will not be a migrant camp and will not be a refugee holding facility."  Dude, the United States started out as a migrant camp.  The migrants were called pilgrims.   They founded this country on the principles of white supremacy, rape and genocide of indigenous people, enslavement of black people, and theft of land.  The difference now is that the migrants coming in are not the color you prefer, since you clearly prefer Scandinavian (read: white) immigrants.  That dog whistle in your immigration policy is getting louder and louder.

Chief of Staff John Kelly, you're just Beelzebub, plain and simple.  You were the architect of the Muslim ban, you supported child separation as an immigration deterrent.  I rebuke you in the name of Jesus.

RepubliKlans, your party will be held responsible by the majority of voters, who did not vote for Trump, for this and all his other egregious, racist, sexist, xenophobic, homophobic acts.  Unless your last name was Bush, McCain, Corker, Kasich, Flake, or Collins, you pretty much co-signed the President's entire agenda or stood silently and watched evil rule.  You will pay, and history will mark where you stood.  That means YOU, Chris "Sell Out and Suck It" Christie, Rudy "Emily Latella" Giuliani, and Mitt "I Can Be Bought With A Cabinet Post" Romney.  Don't act like you didn't hear Trump's dog whistles early in his campaign.

Now for some immigration truths AND some American truths.

President Trump has been gunning for brown people from south of the border since Day 1 of his campaign, calling them rapists and murderers, maligning Judge Curiale for being of Mexican descent, saying we were going to make our sovereign neighbors to the south pay for a border wall like some white bully nation, and now telling Japan's President Abe he'd ship 25 million Mexicans to Japan and he [Abe] would be out of office really soon.  I hear that dog whistle . . . .

America's immigration problem isn't a border problem -- it's a policy problem.  If we were really serious about our immigration laws and policies, we'd track people who come in legally and make sure they leave when their visas expire.  We don't.  Forty percent of illegal immigrants came here legally and illegally overstayed their visas.  We don't know where the fuck they are.  But if they had the money and resources to get a visa, they're probably the kind of illegal immigrants Trump wants (read: white or Asian), not poor brown people trying to get to a land that was once inhabited by their indigenous ancestors before whites first arrived on these shores with their slave cargo.  I hear that dog whistle . . .

And, as a Californian, I call out the height of hypocritical racist dog whistle politics in the Golden State that is our Central Valley -- which is disproportionately agricultural and dependent on the labor of undocumented brown workers from south of the border -- whose residents voted overwhelming for Trump.  WTF?  I guess they will need to have crops rot in the field until they realize how stupid their vote was.  I hear their dog whistle, too . . . .

If you think President Trump's immigration policies toward brown people from south of the border is solely about immigration, you are politically deaf to the RepublKlans' dog whistle immigration politics.  When they talk about merit-based immigration, that's a dog whistle.  When they talk about ending so-called "chain migration," that's a dog whistle.  When they talk about ending the visa lottery system because it lets in people from so-called "shithole countries," that's a dog whistle.  We've been here before, America, with the Chinese Exclusion Act, which unabashedly excluded Chinese from immigrating to American from 1882 to 1943, one of the only immigration laws with the express purpose of excluding an entire race of people.  They didn't even have to do a dog whistle back then.  They used a bull horn.  Now they can't.

Oh, and don't forget the dog whistle of all Trump immigration dog whistles -- the Muslim bans, also aimed at brown and black people who aren't Christian or primarily white.

America, if we are silent, we are complicit.  Is this who we really are -- a nation that separates children from their parents because their point of entry was on our southern border instead of our northern border?

History will mark where we stood, America.  Those dog whistles will reverberate long into the future.

(Self-) Maintenance Is An Expression of Gratitude -- Keep MENS In Your Life

My 2007 Honda Accord's leather driver's seat is cracking. I can count on one hand how many times I've had the leather treated and the car detailed since I bought it new in 2007.

The used yellow Huffy girl's bike I got when I was six, with too-high handlebars and a too-wide banana seat with ripped pleather?  I adored it.  I cared for it.  I cherished it.  I even made sure that the banana seat's condition didn't deteriorate further.

The difference?  Gratitude.

When I got that Huffy bike, it didn't matter to me that it was used.  It was new to me.  And it represented freedom.  It meant that I could travel as far as my legs could pump those pedals.  It meant that I didn't have to ride on the handlebars or the back of other people's bikes (and risk getting injured) to know the joys of riding a bike and feeling the wind in my face.  It meant that I didn't have to outrun anyone who meant me harm -- I could get on my bike and ride off.  I was grateful for that bike.

The 2007 Honda Accord?  Not so much.  I never intended to buy it.  I only bought it because I promised my paid off 1998 Honda Accord to a family member who was in need  of a car at the time that I made the promise.  I hated getting a new car payment when I already had a car that was paid off.  Although I liked the look of my 2007 Accord better than that of my 1998 Accord, I wasn't grateful for my 2007 Accord when I bought it.  I was paying off a karmic debt, a promise unwisely made.  Although I get it serviced regularly,  I haven't regularly done the things for it that would express gratitude -- car washes, detailing, etc.  That's why the leather driver's seat is cracking.  The leather seats in my 1998 Accord never did.  The difference?  Again, gratitude.  I maintained that car better, inside and out, because I was more grateful for it.

I have come to realize that maintenance, including self-maintenance, is an expression of gratitude for whatever it is you are maintaining.  I know this because of the bald spot on the back of my head.

When I last made one of my very infrequent appointments to get a relaxer on my hair (I hate getting relaxers because they irritate my eczema -- that's another blog entry for another day), my stylist told me, "You have a bald spot on the back of your head."  Lo and behold, she held up a mirror, and there was a silver-dollar sized bald spot -- I'm not talking little hair, I'm talking bald as a baby's butt -- on the back of my head.  "You need to see a dermatologist," she said.

I snapped a picture of the bald spot, sent it to my doctor, and she came back with a diagnosis: Alopecia Areata. Not traction alopecia from pulling your hair back too tight.  An autoimmune hair loss treatable with topical steroids and time, not unlike the autoimmune disease that is eczema.  Autoimmune diseases can be triggered by stress.  I hadn't been maintaining myself, wasn't taking care to have MENS in my life -- Meditation, Exericse, Nutrition, and Sleep -- and the lack of self-care, coupled with stress, was expressing itself in my skin and hair.

My hair has long been a walking embodiment of a lack of gratitude.  All of my life I've had long, and usually thick, hair.  It grows easily and quickly.  Men dig it when it's styled.  I think my husband married me in part because of it.  But I've never been particularly grateful for my long hair.  I've viewed it as just another obstacle to getting to work on time.  Sadly enough, it looks that way, forever sanctioned to a pony tail or bun and rough around the non-relaxed edges. I've had people tell me that I look like a totally different person with my hair down and styled.  I have to admit that my neglect of my hair is an extension of my neglect for my body.  I wash it, dry it, pull it back, and get on with it.

Sadly enough, since I didn't get a body like Halle Berry, I also long demonstrated the same lack of gratitude for my body, viewing it as nothing more than a house for what I considered my most important asset -- my brain.  As long as my mind was working, I didn't care what I put in or did for my body.  My mind, not my body, was THE asset.

I felt that way until my mother-in-law succumbed to cancer.  She was 89 years old and in complete control of her mental faculties, but her body failed her.  I realized that if your body fails you, it doesn't matter how well your mind is working.  Then I started coming across research showing that exercise is THE most important factor in maintaining cognitive ability into old age.  My body wasn't just a house for my brain.  They were interdependent.  To be grateful for my mind, I had to be grateful for my body and care for them both equally.

Additionally, in another show of lack of gratitude, I've let house maintenance slip, too.  My garage is filled to the rafters with dozens of plastic containers filled with stuff I've been dragging from place to place over my adult life without purging.  My wood floors haven't been polished in a minute.  I've got weeds on the side of my house (although the gardener was supposed to take care of that).  As grateful as I am for my humble abode, it doesn't show through maintenance.

Long story short, instead of looking at caring for ourselves, others, and the things given to us or earned as chores, to-do list items, or, even worse, tasks that can be overlooked,  what if we viewed caring for ourselves, others, and the things we have as an expression of gratitude?  Because, really, that's what maintenance really is -- an expression of gratitude for what we are maintaining.

Realizing this has changed my perspective.  I thought of those things I need for basic self-maintenance, and I came up with the acronym MENS -- Meditation, Exercise, Nutrition, and Sleep -- to remind me to keep MENS in my life. For some, it might be PENS -- Prayer, Exercise, Nutrition, and Sleep.  I've also come to the conclusion that the things that I used to do or had done for myself on the regular that I later came to see as frivolous -- massages, mani-pedis, standing hair appointments, solo travel/writing retreats, entire days spent reading on the sofa, and mid-afternoon naps -- are, in fact, a form of self-maintenance for me and gratitude for this one body, one mind, one spirit, and one life I have in this physical realm.  Self-maintenance isn't just maintaining your physical self; it's maintaining your mental and spiritual self and expressing gratitude for them all in the process.  I realized that, for me, it starts with trying to keep MENS in my life.   They are the foundation, the beginning, for my self-maintenance.

You'll be surprised at how good expressing gratitude through maintenance, including self-maintenance, will make you feel. Maintenance, including self-maintenance, is not an undeserved luxury.  It is a necessity for wellness and the full enjoyment of this one life you have.  I hope you, too, will keep MENS (or PENS) in your life as the foundation of your self-maintenance.

Now, excuse me while I work on my garage, my hair, and my car's driver's seat, for which I'm grateful.

Changing Police Policy on Discharging Firearms/Use of Lethal Force (So Stephon Clark's Death Won't Be In Vain)

We need legislation -- state and national -- to change police policy on discharging firearms/use of lethal force.  Unless we change the laws,  police will continue to fatally shoot suspects whom they "believe" to have a gun.  Here are two principles and six changes proposed by Terrie L. Robinson (Twitter @IAspire) to the Sacramento City Council:

Two Principles

1. “Reasonable belief” shall no longer be enough for a police officer to shoot an unarmed person when the only people who are potentially in danger of harm are police officers. Police officers should not be allowed to shoot anyone without actually seeing a gun or a knife in the suspect’s hand, instead of “reasonably believing” that the suspect has a gun or a knife, because “reasonable belief” can be colored by unconscious racial bias.

2. If there is a risk of imminent danger of death or serious bodily harm to a police officer, the risk of error should fall to the officer who assumed the risk of putting his or her life on the line, not citizens. Officers' lives are not more important than citizens' lives.

Six Changes

1. Justification for the use of deadly force when only an officer or officers are at risk of death or serious bodily injury shall be limited to facts known by the officer or officers at the time, not facts reasonably perceived by the officer. In such situations, officers shall only discharge their firearm if they can visibly see that a suspect has a firearm.

2. Turning off or muting a police body camera before, during, or after a pursuit of a suspect is evidence tampering. It shall be a fireable offense and considered prima facie evidence of guilt in civil proceedings, i.e., wrongful death and civil rights cases involving officer-involved shootings of citizens.

3. Every police officer shall be required to take an “Implicit Associations Test” (IAT), available for free on the Project Implicit website, to test for unconscious racial and other biases that may affect their judgment in a deadly force situation. The results of those tests shall be revealed to the officers and placed in the personnel files.

4. Pending conclusion of any investigation of an officer shooting of a suspect, the suspect’s arrest and conviction record shall not be made public so as not to bias the investigation or a jury pool in a civil proceeding against a police department.

5. There shall be no confidential settlements of wrongful death or civil rights cases involving officer-involved fatal shootings of suspects. The facts from any wrongful death or civil rights case should be laid bare to the public hold the police department accountable.

6. Police shootings of suspects shall be investigated by an independent body whose composition shall be a majority of non-law enforcement citizens.