"the american dream is like any other...

these are precedented times.

do you believe me?

you say, "how did we get here now?" or lament the last ten years, as if they are the only ones that matter when considering the state we're in.

but do you believe me when i tell you that being "here now" is being here still?

that now may be an advanced state of what has been,

yes, but it is still very much us.

from the trail of tears to assimilative boarding schools to the perpetually violated treaties,

chattel slavery to jim crow to mass incarceration and police brutality

(not to mention japanese internment camps or murderous union-busting efforts),

and everything in between,

it's us.

america is built on stolen land, by people stolen by criminals, who then faced assimilation or elimination.

america is maintained by the sugar-coating (read white-washing), or complete erasure of this history.

america is progressed by the false espousal of humanitarian ends, as a means to violently manipulate the flow of resources and the growth of economies.

america experiences exponential power by stripping its most vulnerable populations of theirs.

america is a modern empire and throws its weight as such.

we have not only fine-tuned the forced

displacement,

disappearing, and

disenfranchisement of whole peoples, but

we inspired the very autocratic regime that people try to compare us to now.

we aren't acting like the gestapo; we're acting like frontiersmen, slave catchers, and border patrol.

immigration and customs enforcement is an extension of what our government has always fundamentally been.

that's not to say that the nazis didn't learn from us; it simply means

we don't need to outsource our oppression tactics.

ours are homegrown, just

good, old fashioned

american fascism.