America the Ugly

The world sees us differently now

At some point, we have to admit it. This is who we are now.

For months, social media (much more than corporate media, I must say) has been documenting the brutality, the bounty-hunting thuggishness, the swaggering cruelty of the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown. Far from focusing only on “the worst of the worst,” Trump’s forces are terrorizing and disappearing many good people because of the color of their skin, or the language they speak, or the neighborhoods they live in, or the jobs they do. This is who we are now.

You’ve probably seen this video. It speaks volumes about America under Trump.

The story is now clear.

In Chicago this week, a beloved preschool teacher, Diana Santillana Galeano, was seized by armed ICE agents inside a daycare, as terrified children watched. It’s a shocking moment that has shaken a community to its core.

Santillana, a Colombian immigrant with a valid work permit, had built a life of care and trust at the Rayito de Sol early-learning center, teaching toddlers their first words in Spanish and English. Federal agents claim they were pursuing an immigration violator—though, as several federal judges have found, Trump’s agents often lie. Parents and city leaders say they witnessed a cruel assault on decency, a breach of sanctuary, and an act that violated the spirit and probably the letter of the law protecting schools as safe spaces. Now Diana sits in detention, and Chicago is left asking how a woman devoted to nurturing children became the face of a system that seems to value fear over humanity.

Now, listen to this boy.

Manny is 16-years-old. You know him. He is an American boy.

On Tuesday, Manny’s voice, choked with fear and tears, broke through the indifference and desire to look away in a Hillsboro City Council meeting in Hillsboro, Oregon, and across the country. He struggled to speak of his fear, the fear that shadows his childhood: “I might not ever be able to say goodbye to my parents if they are taken,” he said, tears streaming, his words echoing far beyond that meeting.

Manny described a life ripped apart. One day, he was like your kid, or mine, just growing up in America—school, friends, sports, the future we once promised, the future his parents dreamed of. Now it’s grinding anxiety and the looming loss that will probably catch up with his family. But in this moment, his moment, Manny forced that room, and now the rest of us, to reckon with what we are doing. How we have transformed our debate over immigration policy from fixing a broken system to inflicting this evil on millions of hardworking people and their children who are helping, not harming, our country. How we are wrecking the lives of so many American kids who have done nothing wrong and simply want their families to stay whole. “Dreamers” we once called them in a more innocent time; even Republicans called them Dreamers. How we are shaming ourselves before the world and trashing our civic soul.

Manny’s statement, raw and unfiltered, became a viral touchstone for the human cost of the Trump immigration crackdown, reminding everyone that behind the statistics and sanitized news stories, there are our neighbors. Good people, and their kids. There are a million Mannies, and more.

The world looks at America differently now.

We are the nation that elected a government that is engaged in a nationwide campaign to brutalize and terrorize decent families.

We are the nation that carries out this shameful campaign in open disregard of basic legal protections.

We are the nation whose president cheers it all on and urges tougher measures.

We are the nation where thinly veiled white supremacy is proclaimed in government, embraced by millions, defended by well-funded institutions.

We are the nation that kills people on the high seas and does not bother to offer any but the most meager and conclusory legal justification for it.

We are the nation where the obscenely rich get obscenely richer, and our leaders hold Gatsby parties and political fundraisers, while food runs out for the needy.

We are the nation whose president is named in the Epstein files.

That’s America’s image in the world now.

It’s awful.

I still believe in the basic decency of this country, and the election results this week seem to confirm what many polls have shown: Trump is losing ground, in part from this mercenary sadism he has loosed in the land. He won’t succeed in turning this country into his authoritarian dreamland.

But we won’t be going back to the way it was. What we have seen, what has been done in our name, will change us, too. Rebuilding a decent America will require reckoning with all this.