TRUMP INAUGURAL
By Luis Torres
Trump’s Strongman Stuff is Already in Evidence and the term has just begun
Trump inaugural speech was “rambling, incoherent and blustery.”
The steamroller of fascism in the United States has begun to roll in earnest. We are into the first week of the full-blown Trump regime. He has told us what he plans to do, and I believe him. He shouted it on and on during the campaign and he punctuated those notions with the vile inaugural address and the foul off-the-cuff speeches he gave throughout the day on January 20. Pendejada after pendejada.
The always eloquent Susan Glasser, writing in the New Yorker’s online edition on the day of the event, described the inaugural speech as “rambling, incoherent and blustery.” That is putting it kindly, to be sure. What it was was extremely mean-spirited, accusatory and clearly punitive and vindictive. And filled with half-truths and outright lies. But I don’t think he was lying about what he plans to do. And that’s why we must keep our eyes wide open and remain vigilant and active. Can we fight, legally, for four solid years – and maybe beyond, without succumbing to exhaustion? I don’t know, but it’s clear we’ve go to try.
It was, among other things, a brazen, racist, xenophobic speech. Could somebody on this planet blindly love himself more than Trump seems to love himself? Well, of course, he’s the Chosen One. To try to eliminate any doubt about that, Trump said in his inaugural speech: “I was saved by God to make America great again.” He actually said that. It was hard not to fall off my chair when I heard that.
But, again, he has told us what he would do on “Day One.” I believe him. So should everyone. He started by pardoning practically all of the January 6 insurrectionists. The convicted criminals who essentially tried to overthrow the government four years ago. It’s easy to see why Trump, as a convicted felon, feels such fellowship with the crooks he calls “patriots” and “hostages.” Dios mio.
“I was saved by God to make America great again.”
His speech, and all the other festivities were moved indoor, presumably because of the cold weather and the wind. Frankly, I suspect he wanted to be indoors so his complex, complicated comb-over wouldn’t be unraveled. (But that’s just me.) In his speech and in his subsequent little pathetic theatrical game of signing executive orders in front of the crowd and then swashbuckling the massive markers he used to put is placa on comically official-looking documents. He tossed the pens to MAGA-hat-wearing fans as souvenirs as the faithful choir cheered loudly.
He has plans for “massive deportations of criminal immigrants.” I guess the crime is simply that you are an immigrant—it doesn’t matter how you get here or when you got here. He wants the border between the United States of America and the United Mexican States to be considered a place that’s the hotbed of a “national emergency.” He wants to use local law enforcement as well as federal authorities to round up immigrants and send them somewhere else. Mexico? Venezuela? Mars? Sabrá Dios. Authorities in California and several other states are readying legal challenges. Immigrant rights advocates are gearing up to challenge this inanity as well. By the way, California will need lots of rebuilding after these horrific, destructive wildfires that claimed thousands of homes. Did you know that, about fifty per cent of construction workers in California are immigrants? Just saying.
Some folks don’t believe Trump will really try to deport millions of immigrants. “It’s only bluster,” they say. I doubt that. Why? Because it has happened before in the relatively recent history of this country.
During Trumps innumerable rallies and his softball “interviews” on flaccid Fox News, he went on and on about how Mexican immigrants—and immigrants from Guatemala, Venezuela and, I don’t know, the moons of Uranus, are “taking our jobs.” They are bad news and they carry diseases. Here’s what people were saying in the Great Depression of the 1930s. Unemployment was sky high. Despair was equally as high. There was no Internet then, no social media. But newspapers and right-wing radio (yes, there was such a thing) were quick to blame immigrants for the woes of the country. They are taking our jobs. They are ruining our culture, our society. Sound familiar? Scholars Francisco Balderrama and Raymond Rodríguez document what happened in their excellent book “Decade of Betrayal.”
During the Great Depression entire families were shoved into boxcars and sent to Mexico.
So, under pressure from right wing forces, the federal government, with the acquiescence of state and local governments throughout the Southwest, began the process of deporting Mexicans. Sending them to Mexico. Many were born in the U.S. Many were legal resident immigrants. It didn’t matter. Entire families were shoved into boxcars and sent to Mexico. Others fled on their own before being handcuffed and hoisted onto trains, in actions similar to what was happening to Jews in Hitler’s Germany.
My parents, who had come to this country legally and above board from Chihuahua, packed up and headed back. They eventually returned to the U.S. Otherwise I would never have been born in Los Angeles—a United States citizen by birthright. I am the youngest of nine, the only one born in a hospital—the massive General Hospital in Boyle Heights, thank you very much. (Además, Trump wants to go against the Constitution and end birthright citizenship.) But the point is, Trump wants to do mass, indiscriminate deportation again, only with more force and brutality. He pledges to use the U.S. Army to achieve his goals. Watch out.
Trump’s plan is to establish “centers” where Mexicans and others can be housed for indefinite periods of time, in preparation for removal across the southern border. Concentration camps in the United States for people who are not white. What a notion. That couldn’t happen here, could it? Well, of course, it did.
More than one-hundred-thousand Japanese Americans were rounded up and placed in concentration camps.
Jacobus tenBroek and his co-authors document clearly what happened after Imperial Japan bombed Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. Remember that stuff about “A date that will live in infamy” that we learned in school? That terrible attack led the United States to enter World War II. Back in the U.S. right ring forces turned on the Japanese American community. Within a year after Pearl Harbor, more than one-hundred-thousand Japanese Americans were rounded up and placed in concentration camps away from the Pacific Coast.
The authors of “War, Prejudice and the Constitution,” write: “The wave of antipathy toward Japanese Americans which engulfed the Pacific Coast in the opening months of World War II had its origins far back in the history of California and the West. It was generated in the climate of indiscriminate antiforeignism which characterized the gold-rush period, and took definite shape during half a century of anti-Chinese activity, during which a hostile image of the ‘Oriental’ emerged that was subsequently shifted to the Japanese.” A pernicious chapter in United States history, to be sure. But it can happen again.
In his impressively documented book about the history of the Chinese and Chinese Americans in California, Jean Pfaelzer sets the stage for how the Chinese were treated in California and throughout the West in the 1880s. Lynchings. The burning of communities. The outright brazen violence was intended to chase the Chinese out of cities and towns. Those racist efforts were, regrettably, quite successful. Lots of death and destruction.
The scenes in the book “The Driven Out” are painful to read.
The scenes in the book “The Driven Out” are painful to read, for anyone who has a conscience. In 1882 the federal government enacted the Chinese Exclusion Act, which forbade the immigration of Chinese. Again, they were accused to taking jobs from white people and spreading diseases. The attitudes that led to those actions gain new agency with the rhetoric of one Donald Trump. And it was plain to see and plain to hear on Inauguration Day.
Trump’s authoritarian intentions come as dictators worldwide are solidifying their unbridled power. Just the kind of guys Trump admires and wants to emulate.
Again, lots of folks are saying “This can’t happen here.” When Adolf Hitler was solidifying his power in 1930s Germany, people in this country were saying the same thing. The popular writer Sinclair Lewis speculated about that during this country’s seeming seduction by right wing forces. He wrote the memorable book “It Can’t Happen Here.” But his book raises serious questions about that. Just to remind everyone that this country, while built on admirable ideals and traditions, has to struggle perennially to maintain democracy and freedom – for all its people. And let’s not forget about the Alien and Sedition Acts passed during the First World War. You could be thrown in jail for critizing the U.S. government or its involvement in the war. That’s the kind of thing Trump seems to want to do—or at least be capable of doing.
So, here we are, barely a week into the new Trump “administration.” Doesn’t deserve such a lofty word. So, what do we do? Sure, we fight by every legal means necessary. We fight for reason. For fairness. For sanity. And to do that we need to see quietly clearly what’s in front of us.
Oh, and he wants to make Canada the fifty-first state. He wants to somehow annex Greenland. He was to forcibly take back ownership of the Panama Canal. Oh, yeah, and he wants to remain the Gulf of Mexico. He wants to call it the Gulf of America. It’s already in América, pendejo.
________________________________________________
Copyright 2025 by Luis R. Torres. To contact Torres write: Luis.r.torres@charter.net Cover of the book Driven Out used under “fair use” proviso of the copyright law. All other images in the public domain.