Day 161: An epistle from the occupation

60 days after the shock and awe of the sociopath’s first 100 days and what I feel is shellshock not awe.

With so much evil happening it is easy to miss a few acts of cultural violence, probably healthy to miss most of them, very dangerous to miss any.

A Department of Homeland Security press release dated June 27, which was yesterday a Friday, so deliberately meant to go out with the trash reads:

“Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem today announced the termination of Temporary Protected Status for Haiti.”

It goes on to explain that the Secretary is trying to return integrity to the “temporary status“ designation. This returning integrity is carefully crafted rhetoric used by this immoral administration to legitimize heartless cruelty. It’s also a dog-whistle to the white-power Christian-nationalist right-wing political arm of the terminally broken Evangelical movement in America signaling that the status is ended because Haitians are not white. It goes on:

“The environmental situation in Haiti has improved enough that it is safe for Haitian citizens to return home.”

Not certain what she means by an “environmental situation” but that is Homeland Seurity’s version, the State Department’s version is very different:

“Haiti has been under a State of Emergency. Crimes involving firearms are common in Haiti. They include robbery, carjackings, sexual assault, and kidnappings for ransom…Protests, demonstrations, and roadblocks are common and unpredictable…Mob killings and assaults by the public have increased…The airport in Port-au-Prince can be a focal point for armed activity…They often target lone drivers, especially women.”

Haiti bears the wounds of near constant American intervention starting in July of 1915 when Woodrow Wilson’s guns allowed the Marines into Haiti an occupation that would continued until 1934.

A December 19, 2021 New York Times piece by Chris Cameron looked at Biden’s intervention as part of a pattern that includes those of Clinton and George W.

“That cycle of crisis and U.S. intervention in Haiti — punctuated by periods of relative calm but little improvement in the lives of most people — has persisted to this day. Since July, a presidential assassination, an earthquake and a tropical storm have deepened the turmoil.”

Since that article in 2021 Haiti has only deteriorated making a lie out of Kristi Noem’s claims to the contrary. We have destabilized Haiti for the last hundred years to the point where it is suffering a truly dystopian crisis. But that doesn’t matter to the sociopath and his minions. Again from that 2021 NYT piece:

“A bloody history of American influence looms large, and a century of U.S. efforts to stabilize and develop the country have ultimately ended in failure.”

Kristi Noem, Marco Rubio, and the sociopath have no intention of repeating American intervention. Instead they’re following a three pronged white imperialistic strategy: evict the Haitians who were given promise here in America no matter what there living situation is; keep American citizens from going to Haiti; remove American financial and boots on the ground aid. Luckily the courts intervened on some committed aid but for all intents and purposes this administration will ignore Haiti because our racist sociopathic president believes that:

“In Springfield, they are eating the dogs. The people that came in, they are eating the cats. They’re eating – they are eating the pets of the people that live there."

“Why do we need more Haitians, take them out.”

“Why are we having all these people from shithole countries come here?”

“They all have AIDS.”

It is our nation, our tax dollars, our shame.