Global

One’s morning ritual has become something unpleasant over the past year. Opening up the computer homepage after breakfast invariably brings up the image of the Orangeman who unfortunately is otherwise known as the president of the United States of America. The person in question, who goes by the name Donald J Trump, is invariably scowling, radiating hatred, and raising his tiny fist to express his willingness to pummel anyone who has offended him in thought, word or deed. The accompanying article usually describes how he is ready to fire someone in the government or punish a journalist for failure to bow and scrape when they are dealing with the imperial presence of the self-described “Man of Peace.” Occasionally, when on a roll, Trump threatens to kill either an “enemy” or even an entire group or nation full of people if they offend him. He justifies his savagery by his assertion that he possesses some kind of high level but indiscernible personal “morality” which permits him to claim that “I can do whatever I want!”

A group of House Republicans has formed the Sharia Free America Caucus to address the influence of Islamic Sharia law in the United States. They argue that Sharia is not simply a religious code; they see it as a political and legal system that conflicts with the U.S. Constitution. The caucus intends to advance legislation. One key proposal is the No Sharia Legislation.

Those who are advocating that 3.5 million Muslims in America want to impose Sharia law on the rest of America are either ignorant, liars, or both. Most polls show that American people are not truly concerned by the potential spread of Islamic Sharia.

Sharia is to Islam what Halachah is to Judaism and Canon law is to the Catholic church. So why single out Muslims? The Republican Party preys on people's fears and depicts Muslim Americans as if they are evil or snakes hiding in the grass waiting for the next move and as such constitute a threat to our homeland security.

Analyses of Iran’s political system often emphasize overt coercion: imprisonment, torture, executions, and episodic violence against widespread protests. These instruments are real and consequential. Yet an exclusive focus on repression obscures a more pervasive and durable mechanism of rule: the sanctification of political authority. The Iranian regime does not govern by force alone. It has cultivated a political environment in which obedience is experienced as moral intuition rather than contingent political choice. Through a dense network of religious institutions, ritual practices, and managed historical memory, political power is rendered sacred, dissent morally suspect, and compliance endowed with spiritual significance. 

After sweeping the Golden Globes and other awards, One Battle After Another has 13 Oscar nominations. Given the film’s clear relevance, if it does end up a winner, those who created it will probably do more than thank their agents, publicists, partners, and pets. They’ll likely talk about the times we’re living in, as every creative artist or public figure should, given the stakes. We hope they’ll present the film as a cautionary tale, not an endorsement of violent resistance.

It’s easy to see why One Battle has been so successful. It’s gripping, funny, and wonderfully acted. It’s a satire of political madness, left and right. But parts of it also feel real in ways that most movie satires or political thrillers don’t. Although it was completed before Donald Trump’s reelection, its images of vicious immigration raids and out-of-control police now echo America’s daily reality.

Ilse Koch loved to dress up in odd, fancy costumes while she pranced through the Nazi death camp at Buchenwald, Poland., in the early 1940s

As the wife of the Kommandant, she reportedly loved walking bare-breasted between lines of male inmates, ordering the death of any who might look at her in a way that displeased her.  It was further said she loved fancy tattoos, and would kill those whose decorations she liked so she could strip their skins to use as lampshades and book covers.

Such stories have been widely questioned.  But American Col. Richard Denson described this “Witch of Buchenwald” at one of her trials---where she was sentenced to life in prison---as "no woman in the usual sense but a creature from some other tortured world."[3]

Some MAGAs today deny the obvious parallels between Trump and the Nazis.

But when Vice President JD Vance  called Donald “America’s Hitler” he may have meant it as wishful thinking.

We never shared a shift report in the early hours of the morning. If we passed each other in a hallway or stood in line for coffee in wrinkled, mismatched scrubs, I wouldn’t have known who you were.

But I knew you.

I knew you by the ache in your feet after twelve hours on the floor. I knew you by the weight you carried in your pocket and your heart. I grieve for you because you knew the cost of caring.

You knew the “nursing bladder” and the missed lunches. You knew the feeling of driving home in silence because the radio was too much noise after twelve hours of alarms and never having a break.

You knew the unique isolation of being surrounded by people all day but feeling entirely alone with the burden of their lives at the end of the day. Holding hands, holding breaths, holding the line between hope and loss, then being expected to clock out and return to the world as if nothing followed you home.