Day One Hundred Sixty-Eight
July 6, 2025
Alligator Auschwitz is apparently operational after setbacks due to flooding. A FL state Rep was denied access because of “safety concerns.” While totally unconfirmed (and I have no real way to check), I need to note for myself that someone filmed large trucks leaving the camp with large Air Conditioning units on the back. And it made them wonder, were the ACs brought in for the media only? This regime is all about bullshit and optics. Someone else a few days ago on TikTok said the camp has incinerators. Which, OK. Maybe for trash? But today I read they are “people sized.”
God, let these be rumors. Let the utterly depraved side of human nature not truly have come back into power for long.
But now ICE is super-charged and funded to the max. People really have no idea what is coming. Todd M. Lyons, the acting director of ICE, is demanding people stop criticizing ICE agents. Fuck that. I see where this is going, but reality hurts more when it happens. And I don’t want it to get there. ICE is the new SS. Total Executive power. No oversight. Utterly terrifying.
NPR reported a few days ago that the Department of Homeland Security and DOGE is building a database of Americans ostensibly for voter verification. DHS and DOGE:
[H]as recently rolled out a series of upgrades to a network of federal databases to allow state and county election officials to quickly check the citizenship status of their entire voter lists — both U.S.-born and naturalized citizens — using data from the Social Security Administration as well as immigration databases.
Such integration has never existed before, and experts call it a sea change that inches the U.S. closer to having a roster of citizens — something the country has never embraced. A centralized national database of Americans' personal information has long been considered a third rail — especially to privacy advocates as well as political conservatives, who have traditionally opposed mass data consolidation by the federal government.
Legal experts told NPR they were alarmed that a development of this magnitude was already underway without a transparent and public process.
This won’t end well. This regime is building the literal surveillance state conservative screamed about for years.
Today in church, I was reminded that if we are supposed to see the structures of the world from the perspective of the lowest, the poorest, the most vulnerable.
As our priest said, “Issues of food and hunger can be delayed for those who have resources. Issues of civil rights can be delayed for those who have the free use of all the benefits and perks of their society. Issues of healthcare and wellbeing can be delayed by those who have ready and available access to medical attention. Issues of immigration and refugees can be delayed by those who have the right papers and the correct status. But Jesus as revealed in the Gospel most emphatically says ‘no’ to this sort of delay. And the Kingdom call says ‘no’ as well. The time for action cannot be delayed.”
How so many in this country call themselves Christian and yet sit idly by when horrors happen to their fellow humans, I will never comprehend.
We need to do better, now.