Gagging Order

I want to start writing more; on a daily basis. It's hard though, once you stop writing, to pick it up again. For some reason it isn't like riding a bike. You don't just get back on. It's as though my training wheels are terribly rusted and the bolt isn't fastened right, so that when I write, what comes out is wobbly and unsure and leaning sideways and always about to fall over. Each sentence seems a sudden swerve away from catastrophe. The brakes work well enough, though. Too well. Didn't I say this wasn't like riding a bike?

It's tempting to write about politics again. There is just so much there to talk about! Every day another story farts out into the world that leaves me dumbfounded and incredulous. Today it was Trump's executive order to force through the Dakota Access pipeline, despite the massive protests just months ago, and not 24 hours after a massive oil spill from a neighboring pipeline in Canada! He didn't stop there though. Ole Donnie seems to have made it his mission to erode access to healthcare and abortions for women on a global scale, and with verve. He expanded the reach of a gag order which denies American funding to any foreign nongovernmental health organization providing women with counseling or information about abortions. One is left to wonder if this might be a retaliatory response to the Women's March.

That's not the only gag order, though. His administration has also started serially gagging federal agencies. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Department of Agriculture (USDA) have been silenced, and oddly, so have the Twitter accounts for some of our National Parks - specifically those Tweeting about the chilling reality of climate change, or Trump's inaugural crowds. This level of forced compliance is startling.

Well, I just opened Twitter and was greeted by some breaking news: Trump Expected to Order Mexican Border Wall by Wednesday. Briefly skimming the article reveals that he also intends to target legal immigrants and Syrian refugees this week. Jesus. He's wasting no time. What kind of administration targets the targeted? These people are fleeing countries where they're being killed and persecuted. They're leaving their jobs, their families and friends, their homes. They're risking their lives to come to us, the most powerful nation in the world, seeking safety and shelter and we're being told to turn them away. Remember when America was seen as a sanctuary?

Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed, to me:
I lift my lamp beside the golden door.

What's confounding is that this country is founded on immigration. We are a country of immigrants, with shared values, hopes, and dreams. Our diversity is what creates our unity. But perhaps no more. It seems we are being pitted against one another based on difference and meaningless distinctions. We are resorting to fear, suspicion, distrust. Callousness. Boogeymen are being installed in our minds in the hopes that we'll be complicit in closing our doors and walling up our hearts against kindness, that we'll become bad samaritans. The natural order of things is being turned on its head. Trump is literally gagging order. It's tied up in the back room of a Trump hotel somewhere with a ball-gag in its mouth, getting pissed on by a pair of Russian prostitutes.

Maybe I'm being alarmist. It's not really as bad as it seems. I mean, it's not like he's appointed a climate-denier to head the EPA...or issued a gag order to block the agency from communicating with the public or the press...or frozen their budget for grants and contracts...right?

...right?