Good Morning.
The vice-president of the United States sold his soul to the scorpions during a recent trip to Arizona. He was born into a family of Irish Catholic Democrats and was once quite taken with the speeches of Martin Luther King, but sometime during college he became a born-again, evangelical Christian, definition still up for discussion. He got married, had some kids, and was eventually elected to Congress from Indiana and later on, became the state's governor. His role model was Dick Cheney who coaxed George 43 into a war in Iraq based on false information about weapons of mass destruction and who encouraged the use of torture. The current VP has fought relentlessly against gay rights and does not think human activity contributes to global warming. He is against the use of birth control and stem cell research. He supports the construction of a wall at the southern border.
His views, in part or in whole, obviously appeal to some and not to others, but his recent embrace of former sheriff Joe Arpaio of Maricopa County should send chills up and down every American spine, regardless of political leanings. Arpaio, now eighty-five years old, has a long history of ruthlessness that ultimately got him charged with criminal contempt for violating a court order that told him to knock off his racial profiling. During his tenure as sheriff, he routinely arrested Hispanic people whom he automatically assumed were in this country illegally. He set up a tent city that he fondly referred to as a concentration camp and kept the inmates, clad in pink jumpsuits, in barbaric conditions that included temperatures approaching 145 degrees. He fed them moldy bread, bologna also tinged with green, and rotting fruit. He failed to investigate sex crimes. He was and still is one of those birther people who declared Obama to be an illegitimate president because he was born in a foreign country. After his conviction on the contempt charge but before he was sentenced or served any time, he was pardoned by the current president, whereupon he turned around and announced his candidacy for the senate seat being vacated by Jeff Flake, a conservative who says he has had enough of the bloodthirstiness in American politics. Apparently the vice-president has not. During his trip to Arizona, he called Arpaio a tireless champion of the rule of law and said he was honored by his presence. When he referred to him as an American patriot, the crowd went wild.
A man who equated his sweltering tents to a Nazi prison camp is an American patriot? A man who is so abusive with his racist policies that he ends up in court deserves to be honored? A man who flagrantly violated a court order is a champion of the law? Sadly, none of it, including the crowd reaction to the vice-president's accolades, surprises me, and the alarming reality is that the new brand of conservatives, to the dismay of more thoughtful Republicans, believes this sort of inhumanity to be acceptable, even Godly. You gotta be kidding me.
Best regards,
Elisabeth
Save
Comments