Inequality Under the Law

Before falling asleep last night I -surprise- watched a movie.

No, not a Turner Classic, but a Netflix film starring Jeremy Renner called “Wind River.”

In it he plays a Fish and Wildlife services tracker helping an FBI agent ( Elizabeth Olsen) hunt an 18-year-old woman living on a Wyoming reservation and gone missing. He has found her body, and they are searching for her killers.

While chilling, the story told didn’t get to me nearly as much as the statistic cited at the end.

It stated that “While missing person statistics are compiled for every other demographic, none exist for Native American women.”

Think about it. As a country, we are saying that a class of citizen is so lacking in value to us, we do not care what happens to them.

This movie wasn’t made in 1917, but in 2017. Just one year ago.

This morning on my Twitter feed,  I was treated to the photo of a 10-year-old boy, crying and handcuffed in front of a police car unnecessarily.  He was “misidentified” by police.  He was black.

As I write this, Republicans on Capitol Hill have finished a conference on DACA.  They remain as split on what should be done to remedy this issue as ever.  Some cannot abide a pathway to citizenship for young people of brown color who have been raised and educated here, who consider this country their home and who have much to contribute to its future.  All because they are brown and their parents risked everything to give them opportunities they themselves never had by crossing a border.

Yes, yesterday Alice Marie Johnson, a black woman incarcerated for life for a first time drug offense, received a Presidential commutation of sentence that freed her to join her family.

But only because a famous white woman with the cachet to get into the White House pled her case, not because the Trump Administration has come up with a comprehensive plan for a prison  system so broken it perhaps should be razed and rebuilt.

And only because a rich white man – Charles Kushner – committed a crime that cost him a few years in prison and his privileged son, Jared – who happens to be the President’s son-in-law – also pled the case because he feels his father was unjustly found guilty. Ergo Jared has a new- found passion for prison reform that had his own father not been jailed would probably not even register with him.

I have read enough history not to have illusions ours is a perfect country. It never has been.  It never will be.

But I have always believed that we are a country that strives in each generation to be better than we were. To be more democratic in our principles, more inclusive in our lifestyle, more dedicated to the proposition that every person has the right to be treated with dignity, compassion and equality.

I just wish our country were being led by a President who believed in these things too.

 

 

 

Washington’s Week In Review

Never has the news coming out of Washington seemed so confusing and convoluted as it does during the era of Trump.

If there is a way to twist it, spin it or sit on it, the Trump Administration has found a way to make a pretzel of it all.

And there are so many details, so many iterations, that it is becoming mind numbing.

I mean, does Jared Kushner have early onset Alzheimers, is he stupid or is he covering for others? How can one person not remember so many details of what has to have been one of the most consequential years of his life?  And how many times before the Trump campaign did he have so much contact with Russians, their representatives and their U.S. cheer leading team that the meetings he did have just slipped his mind?

As for Jeff Sessions – seriously?  How many times can someone say « I don’t recall » for the record without invoking the Fifth?  And he is the HEAD of our Justice system!

Meanwhile, we have the Governor of Alabama saying she has no reason to disbelieve Roy Moore’s accusers, but she will vote for him anyway because -gee- party before sexual predators  That she believes the fate of justice (Supreme Court seats) rests on a man accused of inappropriate sexual contact with a minor is more than ironic – it is moronic.  At what price is she willing to have her brand of justice?

On the Democratic side, we have Al Franken  throwing himself on the funeral pyre with abject apology, fellow Dems throwing wood on the fire and Trump hypocritically lighting a match while forgetting he has more than a dozen women who have accused him of worse and he has self-admitted his predilections on tape to Access Hollywood.

I used to think Washington was a serious place for serious people.

Instead, it has become the worst reality show on television, and the first year’s episodes haven’t even played out yet!

When the President of France tells the world he will cover our economic promises to the U.N. because our government won’t, what country have we become?

At least the week is ending with somewhat of a reprieve for the poor elephants ( no, I am not referring to the Grand Old Party kind).  Evidently even Donald Trump realizes the poor P.R. look on rolling back ivory trophies while a picture of his namesake holding a tusk is circulating social media.

There was so much more this week -I mean, how do you really cover the impact of the House passage of its Tax Plan.  Or is it a jobs plan?  Or is it a reform plan?  I am confused.  But we know one thing for sure – it is definitely Paul Ryan’s Postcard Plan!

I am holding my breath with anticipation for the release of the picture for its front.  Will it be the chalk drawing of Cindy, who makes $30,000 per year in her restaurant job, and who will get a tax break that equates to $17 a week to support herself and her child? Will it be Don Jr holding up the elephant tusk? A photo of Jeff and Jared scratching their heads with question marks adorning it wth captions over their heads?

Or perhaps it will be that picture of Steve and Louise, fingering the dollars they’ll save on the tax break written in for private jet owners?

Next week can’t get here soon enough.  Set the DVR.