It’s impossible to watch what is now happening in the Southwest, with the Trump Administration setting up internment camps for children and babies, without being reminded of Germany in the late 1930’s and 40’s.  For those of us who know a little history,  what’s happening is also somewhat reminiscint of Roman Carthage.

Around 150 BC, the Romans marched in and captured Carthage, eventually turning it into one of the biggest cities in the Roman Empire.   They held it until 435, when the Vandals came in, capturing the city while most of the sports-obsessed Romans were off attending the games, chariot races, gladiatorial contests and whatnot,  at the local coliseum.

It may be overstating things to say the Vandals might never have taken the city, had the sports-obsessed Romans paid more attention to their defenses and less to sporting events.   Then again, maybe not, which brings us back to a parallel with the United States.

Not only are we an overextended empire, as were the Romans, we are equally sports-obsessed.  One wonders how the country would function if the populace spent one-third of the time it spends watching sporting events or playing fantasy football, with reading and thinking about how the country is being run.   This doesn’t mean getting all of one’s “news” on the FOX News Network, it means actually reading a mainstream newspaper either online or by subscription.  They will still bring it to your front door for a very nominal fee and it is still a good way to absorb some solid, objective information.   You might consider it your patriotic duty.

Mainstream newspapers are not engaged in doing fake news, regardless of what Donald Trump may be telling you.   Most of the fake news, in fact, has been coming from the mouth of Donald J. Trump.  And it’s bringing down our country.

Without belaboring the point of how fascism did not grab Germany by the throat overnight, that it was a process that developed over years and not months or days, it is not unreasonable to draw parallels with what is happening in the U.S., particularly in light of Trump’s “birther” movement, a president who equates Mexicans with “rapists,”  who labels all those of the Muslim faith as being dangerous, who turns his back on the needs of storm-ravaged Puerto Ricans and more recently gave his approval to torch carrying neo-Nazis, marching through the streets of Charlottesville.    And now, in one more horrendous and unbelievable stroke, Donald Trump has set up internment camps for toddlers and babies, calling them “tender age” camps, in an effort to make the fact that he has fixed his approval to tearing babies and kids away from their parents sound  less harsh than it actually is.   It is simply monstrous, and Trump, unrestrained by his Republican Party, is acting like a dictator.  Or at the very least, a power-mad oligarch, playing the race card for all it’s worth, as he attempts to turn white Americans against all people of color.

According to a study done at Princeton,  our Democracy, once the envy of the world,  is already dead.  Gone.   The scholarly study says we are now an Oligarchy, which works well for Donald J. Trump, who has shown himself to be a modern-day authoritarian Julius Caesar wannabe.  Are we now, with Vandals approaching the city,  literally playing ourselves into the hands of fascism?

With thousands of kids being torn from their parents, and no sign that the country has any idea as to how to eventually reunite them, isn’t it finally time to say “enough?”  Isn’t it beyond time for men and women of good conscience and decency to set aside politics, restore our system of checks and balances,  and remove Donald J. Trump and his poisonous, hateful, racist band of scoundrels from office?

Let us pray that our elected officials act responsibly before we lose all hope of regaining a representative federal government.    Don’t think it can’t happen here.  The unthinkable is happening right now, down on our southern border.    Thousands of kids are being torn from their parents and it’s being done in our names.  Yours and mine.