Stripping the Border of Agents Is Not the Way to Stop the Drug Trade: A Performance that Threatens the Reality

I was driving home listening to MSNOW. The Attorney General of Arizona, Kris Mayes, was talking with MSNOW newscaster Katy Tur about how DT’s policies were increasing the influx of fentanyl and human trafficking along our southern border. Even though I should be used to such disturbing information, I still get shocked by it.

 

Arizona is at the heart of the drug trade, said Mayes. Yet, DT has moved so many ICE and border patrol agents from the Sothern border to other parts of the nation to carry out cruel and possibly illegal raids and arrests that now border stations lie empty. One of the biggest fentanyl drug corridors into our nation runs on Arizona State Route 82, but it’s now unguarded. Yet, ICE raids in the north and elsewhere net many more carpenters, farm workers, even military veterans than criminals. Mayes said she asked AG Pam Bondi for 50 more agents for the southern border. Instead, Bondi took even more away. Meanwhile, the importation of fentanyl is up 10%. And who knows who’s gaining entry to our country.

 

Unless something is done, this situation will continue to get worse. Mayes commented that DT is apparently more interested in political theatre then in protecting us from fentanyl or other dangerous drugs, or dangerous criminals.

 

And while DT opens the southern border to drug traffickers, he pardons those who have already been tried and convicted in US courts. He gave a full pardon to “Cocaine Juan,”  the convicted former President of Honduras, Juan Orlando Hernandez. Hernandez, known for  bragging about stuffing “the drugs right up the noses of the gringos,” was convicted in 2024 of drug trafficking. He was responsible for helping import more than 400 tons of cocaine into the US, accepting bribes and protecting violent drug cartel leaders from prosecution. DT also commuted the sentence of Larry Hoover, the alleged founder of the Chicago-based Gangster Disciples street gang and Garnett Gibert Smith, a Baltimore drug kingpin. And the list goes on. This is incredible corruption and behavior way beyond irresponsible.

 

The same holds true with DT’s apparent race to war on Venezuela. He has not only destroyed small boats but ordered the blockade of the nation, seizing an oil tanker while claiming their oil is ours. Such a war might somehow serve DT’s personal interests but never serve the stated goal of stopping the drug trade or terrorist operations. Venezuela is only a minor player in the drug trade. According to a 2020 US DEA report, almost three quarters of the cocaine, for example, is trafficked through the Pacific and Mexico. Yet, DT says he’s stopping the drug trade by attacking boats in the Caribbean.

 

Nick Turse in The Intercept published a detailed article on this situation. 20 vessels in the Caribbean Sea were destroyed by Special Operations on DT’s orders. He’s responsible for the summary execution of about 90 people he deemed members of a Venezuelan narco-terrorist organization, yet no evidence has been presented, no legal processes engaged. This operation is a performance, an attempt to appear like he’s competently doing something when he’s actually undermining our nation’s standing and making the drug situation worse.

 

Turse’s article reveals DT has also verbally attacked political organizations and threatened members of Congress and the media with arrest or execution, for the sole crime of speaking out against him. DT called Democratic lawmakers seditious, traitors to be locked up or executed, for the offense of reminding members of the military they’re required by law to not obey illegal orders. DT tweeted, “HANG THEM GEORGE WASHINGTON WOULD!” In the past, he called for executions of the former chair of the joint Chiefs, Gen. Mark Miley, former Rep. Liz Cheney, and demonstrators protesting the killing of George Floyd….

 

*To read the whole article, please click on this link to The Good Men Project.

Money, Hate and Fear: When Too Much Goes to Too Few

Yesterday, 20 people were killed, 26 injured, in El Paso, Texas, previously one of the safest cities in the U. S.. In Dayton, Ohio ⎼ nine dead. The previous Saturday, in Gilroy, California, 3 dead. According to the New York Times, there have been 32 different incidents of mass shootings this year. According to the Gun Violence Archive, in the last 216 days, 251 people were killed in incidents of mass shootings.

 

And who are the people doing this killing? In most cases, at least the ones with hate as a motive, it is white men. According to the Mother Jones archive, of the last 22 mass shootings, 21 were by men, 13 were definably white. According to the New York Times, the El Paso murderer considered Hispanic immigrants a threat to whites. He joins a long line of white nationalist murderers, from El Paso, to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Christchurch, New Zealand, Munich, Germany, and Norway.

 

But who is responsible for fueling this hate? One obvious answer, in the US, is the President who speaks with hate and incites it. He called immigrants and asylum seekers at our border an invasion, of rapists and criminals, and just recently attacked an American city as a “disgusting, rat infested, mess” and attacked the African-American Democratic Congressman from that city.  According to an analysis by the Washington Post, in 2016 the counties in the US that held T rallies experienced a 226% increase in hate crimes compared to counties that held no such rally.

 

According to the manifesto of the shooter in El Paso, Texas, he was not originally inspired by the President’s rhetoric; but since his language mirrors the President’s, he was emboldened by it. According to the Intercept and other sources, so was the MAGABomber, and the Neo Nazis murderer of Heather Heyer in Charlottesville, Virginia, etc. Many Democrats, including Beto O’Rourke and Bernie Sanders, have laid some blame clearly on the President. 2016 was the only year on record before 2019 with more domestic mass shooting deaths than days and 2019 is on track to eclipse 2016 by far.

 

The other fuel for hate is greed and money. The people who have been killed are the victims not only of hate being used to gain political power, but of too much money in politics. The Citizens United Supreme Court decision of 2010 allowed corporations and unions to spend freely on elections, and reinforced the fiction of corporate personhood. It released corporations and the super-rich from most restrictions on the buying of politicians. It said that corporations, like people, have the right of free speech. And making political contributions was a form of protected speech, not to be restricted.

 

Combine this with the increasing concentration of wealth in fewer and fewer hands and you have a Congress incapable of governing and of enacting laws to protect our nation. America’s wealthiest 20 people own more wealth than the bottom half the population, own more than 152,000,000 people combined. This great wealth gives a few people the means to out speak thousands, even millions, of voters.

 

Hate and money are fueling what Presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg called a “national security emergency.” Another Presidential candidate, Elizabeth Warren, spoke about gun manufacturers owning Washington. But it is not just the NRA and gun manufacturers whose unfettered lust for great profits contributes to hundreds of American lives lost each year. The concentration of wealth and the power it bestows on a few people is killing us and undermining any chance of democracy.

 

And then there’s climate change, also exacerbated by the ignorance of consequences caused by the lust for profit and leading not only to the loss of thousands of lives and billions of dollars in economic losses, but an existential threat to human civilization.

 

In order to save our nation (and world), end the violence and the social disintegration it can cause, and create an economy and political system “of the people, by the people, and for the people,” we must begin by demanding that our politicians work to control gun violence and limit the power of money in politics. Then we can begin to work on hate and more systemic changes.

 

When so much goes to so few the rest feel ⎼ and are ⎼ excluded, whether we understand what is happening or not. Democrats will only win when they speak to these realities, and the fears and outrage they cause, in a way most can understand. They must counter the fear with hope grounded in a sincere concern and understanding of others and the threats we face. This is how they, or we, win the next election and expel hate from office.

 

This post has been syndicated by the Good Men Project.