Thoughts on Traveling - by Hénock Gugsa

Thoughts on Traveling
[and My Status as a U.S. Citizen]
by Hénock Gugsa
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In less than a month, I'll be traveling to Ethiopia for the second time in the last 37 years.  And if you should know, I've been a U.S. citizen for a quarter century.  However, that has not exempted me from receiving the special "treatment" coming-and-going ...  and you can safely infer that there's absolutely no way I'll turn into a Patrick Henry in front of ICE.  I have to grin and bear it all ... and say to myself, "The terrorists have indeed won!"

Indeed!  The last time when I arrived at MSP's International gate, a surly-looking ICE man (?!) made a bee-line toward me and another brown-skinned person while we were still standing in line to go to the Arrivals' processing window.  This agent asked to see our passports and inquired where we were coming from.  Meanwhile, he never even glanced at the young couple behind me who were white.  The questions this man asked were asked of me two more times on the way to retrieving my luggage.  I have to take these indignities in stride as I would many things.  What was that thing I read somewhere that said: If you shout at the devil, do you think he will shout back at you!

Happy trails! 

America, "the Perilous Fight" - by Hénock Gugsa

America, "the Perilous Fight"
by Hénock Gugsa
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      A Facebook friend who lives in a tiny border community in Arizona recently sent me the following message ... with an accompanying video which I have included here ...

           <<  We see the deaths every week here, finding old remains and average about one new death per week, not to mention finding immigrants continually begging for succor sometimes a week or more without food, days without water .... [Unfortunately, they're considered] just mojados, wets.  They aren't going to elicit sympathy or interest.  Trump's outrages and that sensationalism captures the attention ....>>

      I have no words to descibe the disgust, the pain, and the total frustration I feel about America's current condition and its bleak future if things continue the way they are or grow worse.
      This beloved country has had its ups and downs, and its resiliency has of-course been exceptional.  Adversities and challenges have been met with courage, grit, and optimism.  Enemies from within and from without have continually failed to bring America to its knees.  This nation has been down as often as it's been up ... and always, there have been real heroes that have arrived just in time before the fall into a dark abyss.  To name the the three greatest ones, America was blessed with Washington, Lincoln, and FDR.  Often, America's heroes were just the people needed to mop up the disasters of previous, incompetent and unfit leaders and the parties they headed.  Recently, we had Obama pulling us out of the calamitous eight years of George W Bush's presidency.
      But alas, now, we are in the clutches of what Philip Roth describes as "[an] ominously ridiculous commedia dell’arte figure of the boastful buffoon ... a massive fraud, the evil sum of his deficiencies, devoid of everything but the hollow ideology of a megalomaniac."

     True, in the Fifties, reference and blame for the world's problems was cast on "The Ugly American" as described in the excellent 1958 political novel of the same name by Eugene Burdick and William Lederer.  America got tangled up in the Korean War in the Early Fifties.  Then in the Sixties thru the mid-Seventies, Vietnam was the quagmire of choice.  Fast-forward to 2003 and up-to the current day, the "war against terrorism" is being waged full blast in the Middle East. 
     These wars and foreign adventures naturally affected the domestic political policies and direction of where the nation has been headed.
     Presently, or more specifically since late January of 2017, our country has been steered wrong on all aspects of Government.  The three-headed monster of Greed-Fear-Hate is in charge.  A con-man extraordinaire with no plans but those of lining his pockets as well as those of his family, and his wealthy friends is shamelessly gutting our lives, our sense of security, and our hopes.
      We are in a period not too unlike that of Germany under Hitler.  Corporate plutocrats were buttressing the regime then, and they are doing the same thing now in Trump's America.  Truth is being dismantled, and everywhere corruption and injustice grow roots and thrive.  America needs to shirk off the current inertia and stand up to tyranny and evil everywhere.  In this respect, the Women's Resistance Movement has been a godsend and it should be replicated in every walk of life.  We should all rise up as one and cast off this yoke of misery and doom, and we can do it because we are optimists!