It’s been an exhausting week, and my heart is heavy. Haven’t been able to write for days. Today I remind myself that these words from Stephen Miller come from a position of weakness, not strength:

The events of the past week, and year, are connected. They feel chaotic but are connected because they offer examples of supremacy – whether that be white supremacy, White Christian Nationalism which I’ve written about before, or American supremacy. Supremacy movements are doomed to fail, as history has taught us. The question is how much damage they will inflict before they fail.

The threat of violence and brute force betrays an inherent weakness because violence is the ultimate failure, an inability to think. It should always be a last resort, after every other method has been tried. It is indefensible in this case.

Cruelty, violence, disrespect: These are all signs of “supremacy thinking.”

There are certainly those in the U.S. who approve of such comments and other actions of the administration. They see them as strength. Perhaps the flex feels good to them. Others will sadly choose to look away or dismiss the threats.

We cannot afford to look away.

Such threats by Miller and others against our allies, including Denmark and Canada – along with the ongoing brutality of ICE – are what I thought of in my youth as unimaginable in this country.

I can’t believe I have to say this – yet here we are.

Denmark has been our faithful ally. We’ve been trading partners since the late 18th century and shared uninterrupted diplomatic ties since 1801. Their troops answered the call and died alongside ours in Afghanistan after 9/11. There is no excuse for threatening military action or invasion, nor for exerting pressure or insinuating that we can purchase Greenland. Greenland belongs to Greenland.

Canada has been a faithful ally and trading partner. We share culture, food, and interests and the world’s longest undefended border. I will never forget that private citizens of Gander (pop. 10,000) took 7,000 stranded Americans into their homes when planes were grounded on 9/11. There is no excuse for threatening to annex Canada or make it our 51^st state.

There are, of course, myriad other reasons to love these countries, but one thing should be clear: There is no excuse for threatening sovereign nations.

I’m glad for those in the government who have spoken up, who reject an administration that would slap cherished allies across the face by threatening them, alliances that were solidified after WWII (which took 85 million lives) to support democracy and help ensure peace and stability.

I don’t believe the threats will stop. They will accelerate. I didn’t vote for him – but that doesn’t matter because everyone in the U.S. will bear the shame of what we allow to happen now. The world will respond as it must, and at the least, likely walk away from us, as they rightly should.

DELIBERATE BRUTALITY

There is no excuse for the brutality that ICE is perpetrating on citizens, or anyone for that matter, on American soil.

Miller’s quote is not about this, but he’s made his disdain for immigrants clear in interviews. “This is the great lie of mass migration. You are not just importing individuals. You are importing societies. At scale, migrants and their descendants recreate the conditions, and terrors, of their broken homelands.”

The fact that he is a descendant of immigrants – as are we all, unless we’re Native American – should be obvious to everyone. Too often, we’re grateful for our citizenship but want to shut the door on others. We’re quick to label other groups as criminals and invaders, even when our ancestors were labeled as such.

Whether a person is documented or not, there is no excuse for making human beings lick water from the ground, for letting poorly-trained troops terrorize citizens, for zip-tying children, for invading schools and daycare centers, and for denying due process and rendering human beings to foreign prisons without trial, where they are left to die. ICE has lost track of hundreds of detainees in Florida. And no matter what the outcome of the investigation, Renee Good’s murder and the deaths of others might have been avoided if ICE hired the right people and trained them properly.

The incompetence and cruelty are indefensible. Worse, cruelty in some cases isn’t considered cruelty. Cruelty is seen as necessary – a means to an end – and when that happens, people begin to lose their humanity.

Other administrations have managed without this degree of cruelty. Improvement is possible. The quotas, the obviously racist targets, the lack of deescalation training, which has been documented – it’s a recipe for disaster. The response is predictable. When people are afraid, they will react.

I panic at the sight of ICE officers with white supremacist and Nazi symbols tattooed on their necks, and I hope you would, too. Now there are reports from VPOTUS claiming ICE will go door to door, asking for proof of citizenship. These are not the actions of a civilized democracy.

When people see behaviors that echo the most violent eras in human history, they will react. They will try to protect the most vulnerable. They will do this because people didn’t do enough during those violent eras in history.

MY TAKE

I write this as the author of The Sunflower House – if you’ve read my book, nothing I’ve said here should be a surprise – and as a first generation American, with parents who lived in Italy before, during, and after World War II.

My father witnessed killings and beatings under Mussolini – a white supremacist who promoted the superiority of the Italian people and implemented racial laws targeting Jews and other groups. As a boy, my father would run and hide when Mussolini’s Blackshirt thugs (Camicie Nere) came into town. “We shook in our boots, Ana,” he said. “Hitler and Mussolini…they were in cahoots.”

My mother, who naturalized in 1963 and spoke English with what many people said was a charming accent, was never asked, “Are you LEGAL?” before 2016. She sure was afterwards, sometimes without respect, in the years before her death.

Dad has been gone for almost 30 years, Mom for 3. I’m grateful they don’t have to see what our country has revealed about itself. It would have broken their hearts. They were both anti-racist, and they raised me to be so, something I am profoundly grateful for.

I’m not surprised at what is happening in this country, although I am grieving. It’s been in the works for years, as we tend to sweep our issues under the rug, which doesn’t solve them.

The United States was founded on the backs of the enslaved and after murdering millions of Native Americans. We have never achieved the “freedom and justice for all” we’ve boasted about. It’s something we should be working toward, not against, but in the past year, we’ve made lives harder for people of color, members of the LGBTQ+ community, those who practice non-Christian religions, the working poor, women, and children. The human race never learns and this time the bill will be ours to pay.

White Christian Nationalism is nothing new to this country, but any supremacist movement will fail because it is inherently flawed. In any movement when one group feels it is superior to others,  the best those in the “supreme” group can offer is pity, perhaps some sympathy. There’s no true empathy. Sooner or later, they use their feelings of superiority as justification to deny rights, deny dignity, dehumanize, and all too often perpetrate violence and even kill others.

This is why I have little patience for “American supremacy” – nor for white supremacy or White Christian Nationalism.

THE WAY FORWARD

In the end, the only answer I can see is to find joy and act with empathy, energy, and purpose. Educating ourselves about U.S. and world history and the Constitution might be a good thing to do. We take democracy for granted and think voting is the only thing necessary, but participation in other ways is, too, at the local and state levels. Nonviolent protests of all kinds as guaranteed under the U.S. Constitution, along with economic sanctions, will be needed for all who are able and willing. We also must continue to find communities of like-minded individuals, contribute to the causes we believe in, contact our elected officials, and help people who are most vulnerable.

We turn the tide that way, by continuing the dialogue and remaining open to a conscious and civil exchange. People are divided and angry – I have my beliefs and are obviously passionate about them – but answering hate with hate never works. Everyone’s algorithm and media choices often put them in a bubble, and as much as 60% of the opinions you read online while doom scrolling are from foreign bot farms, trying to sow division. We must be mindful of this as well.

I’m a pacifist, something I tell book clubs, and then I tell them this usually renders me useless to a lot of people. But the human race has tried hatred and violence for how many years? 5,000? 20,000? Yet we expect a different outcome when we choose the same actions.

Hate, which leads to violence, is an inability to think. It’s failure. We must find another way. We need to return to empathy and kindness as a country, as a people. It’s the only way.