And I didn't speak up...
by Diane Joy Schmidt
March 28, 2025
Another month has passed and the fear of the assault on American democracy has spilled over us while edicts issued from the Oval office a month ago seem like a year ago.
Is the coalescence of governing forces today pushing the United States toward rule by oligarchy under an AI-driven corporate American, Christian Nationalist regime profiting from its control of power? Since the founding of our Republic we have been pulled and tugged between equality for all and ‘les droit de rois’ the right of kings and perhaps, and the closely related, le droit du seigneur, the right of the lord or the rule of the patriarchy.
From the Declaration of Independence in 1776 to the Bill of Rights in 1791, the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863, the 19th Amendment, the right for women to vote in 1920, MLK Jr.’s “I have a dream” speech in 1963 — but then 2 months later JFK’s assassination; LBJ passed the Civil Rights Act in 1964, but then RFK and MLK’s assassinations followed in 1968, Reaganomics and the Tax Act of 1981, the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision in 2010 allowing political influence by the wealthy, to its Presidential immunity ruling on July 1, 2024, we have been struggling to define what is the nature of our country and what does it mean for us. Which American dream do we want?
Last month Trump established a White House Faith Office led by Paula White. On March 27th, Rachel Maddow of MSNBC led her broadcast with the news of what White is hawking online while the administration takes a chain saw to the country's safety net. You can, if you send White $1000, get an angel appointed by God to attend to you personally.
While poking fun at White may seem innocent enough, the underlying issues are deadly serious and the latest approach the administration has taken, arresting, Gestapo-style, students off the streets in the name of fighting antisemitism, just seems ... wrong. Rabbi David Saperstein, one of the pre-eminent members of Reform Judaism in the United States, addressed a congressional committee on Thursday, March 27th to point out that this approach will engender more antisemitism and is completely against Jewish values.
Diane Joy Schmidt is the publisher and editor of the New Mexico Jewish Journal. The views and opinions expressed in this essay are the author’s own and not necessarily shared by other contributors and supporters of the New Mexico Jewish Journal.
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