“Are you still making those calls,” said
Lady, and I had to confess—I’ve slacked off a bit. True—I did call the FBI (another one of life’s firsts) and demand to speak to Kash Patel. The guy answering the phone hung up on me twice, which only made me angrier. That was after the FBI arrested a judge in Milwaukee, Wisconsin—some ten days ago.
Last Friday’s atrocity (and Trump seems to be using Fridays as convenient launchpads into terrible weekends) was the arrest of the mayor of Newark. He’s a black guy who went to inspect an ICE facility with three Democratic members of Congress.
And so the mayor of Newark got arrested, and watching the one-minute and 50-second clip of it on YouTube was almost more than I could bear, on a Monday morning. I am done with it, with the United States, with the anger and the frustration.
We might as well admit it: Putin won. He has played one side off against another, and now we’re at the point where neither side gives a fuck about the other. I no longer go out to breakfast with the guys in my AA group—although they have known me for eight years, and seen me through innumerable crises (most of which were of my own making). But I no longer attribute goodwill to any of them. I no longer believe that there is a common ground between us. In fact, there is no common ground. You think you have friends? Wait—you’ll find out in time.
If you are an American, you’re a Nazi. If you’re a Christian, you’re Torquemada. True, I’m an American and grew up in a Christian home (marginally) but the past is gone. Like everyone else, I’ve given up on my fellow citizens. I assume ill will.
Well—why not? We watched the 1: 50’ clip and got angry, on cue. The comments section is filled with Trump supporters expressing their vitriol against Ras Baraka (the mayor). The spectacle served nicely to keep us hating each other, but the real asshole may be neither the mayor or his opponents but instead something called the Geo Group.
(https://youtu.be/IYF0wTbG9Ug?si=ro1KuEW7uh2y6yD2)
You haven’t heard about them—and neither had I—and that is exactly the point. Fortunately, the Guardian has heard about them, and has this to say:
Delaney Hall is owned by Geo Group, a massive, private prison company with Ice facilities throughout the US. The Trump administration in February gave a 15-year contract worth $1bn to Geo Group to operate Delaney Hall.
Yeah?
It’s probably reason number 8,314,942 for why I hate these people. Is there any situation where a private prison is justified? Should a group of investors make money on prisons? Already, Democrats are charging that Geo Group doesn’t have the permits to run the facility, but no worries. Lifted from Geo Group’s website:
The GEO Group is committed to providing leading, evidence-based rehabilitation programs to individuals while in-custody and post-release into the community through the GEO Continuum of Care®. GEO's diversified services platform provides unique capabilities for the delivery of educational and vocational programs, cognitive behavioral and substance abuse treatment, and faith-based services. The GEO Continuum of Care is enhanced rehabilitation and reentry programming, including cognitive behavioral treatment, integrated with post–release support services.
GEO has to say this stuff, but it doesn’t have to do it. In fact, they’re free (probably) to adopt the best practices of CECOT, the terrorism confinement center in El Salvador that Trump sent over 200 people to a couple of months ago. CECOT is modern, clean and brightly lit, and reading Wikipedia’s description of the facility only hints at the reality:
Each of the 256 cells can house an average of 156 inmates. The cells are equipped with four-level metal bunks with no mattresses or sheets, two toilets, and two washbasins. The cells are lit by artificial lights 24 hours per day. Each cell is provided with two Bibles, and CCTV cameras and armed guards monitor each cell. Solitary confinement cells can hold prisoners for up to 15 days and are only furnished with a concrete bed, a toilet, and a washbasin. The solitary cells are pitch black except for one small hole in the ceiling that allows some light inside.
Well, it’s not much of a toss-up, but a toss-up nonetheless. Would I prefer the light and the company of 155 men, but with two Bibles? Probably…OK, certainly. But really where I’d like to be is where my feet are. And I am—thank God. After many years of too much drink and too much turmoil, I’m happy to be in this little room writing to an unknown (and unlikely) reader. I have everything I need, as a friend of my says.
I can call Kash Patel, and did so. Another friend is Cuban, and he once told me that if, in the wee hours, I hear footsteps outside my door, I assume it’s a couple of drunks, stumbling home to sleep it off.
He hears the same footsteps, but it’s the DGI—the Cuban equivalent/offspring of the KGB.
Then he told me the story of Shostakovich, or maybe Prokofiev—I couldn’t remember. But AI does, and gives me the story:
During a period of extreme political pressure under Stalin, when Shostakovich feared for his life, he slept in the stairwell outside his apartment to protect his family from potential arrest.
I think of Shostakovich when I make these calls. It’s foolhardy to do it—why should I put myself in the bullet’s path? But it’s criminal not to do it, or whatever the “it” is you’ve decided to do.
“A single death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic,” Stalin did or didn’t say. I call Patel because somebody has to, and I’m it. I’m old, white, educated, and mostly respectable. I know about Shostakovich and have played his music, and I hang with people who do, or might. I belong, for the moment, to the upper middle-class / intelligentsia. I’m not a foreign grad student writing an op-ed for my school newspaper. If I can’t call the FBI to give them hell, no one can.
But if I don’t call?
I’ll be sleeping with Shostakovich in the stairwell.
