Given the numbers of pardons the president has granted in his second term it seems like a good idea to ask for pre-emptive forgiveness for any crimes of conscious I may commit. The president is so happy to pardon people I figure my chances are pretty good that I won’t end up in jail for very long. Here’s a partial list of my pardon plea for the president.
Pardon me for hating that you released the likes of George DeSantos, Rudy Guliani, Steve Bannon, your political and financial allies, dubious celebrities, and notorious criminals, like Juan Orlando, the former President of Honduras, who was convicted of drug trafficking charges and sentenced to 45 years in U.S. prison while likely fishermen in the Caribbean are murdered. Is Ghislaine Maxwell next?
Pardon me for being upset that more than 1,600 people who were charged or convicted of federal criminal offenses, including those who got a blanket pardon even though they took part in the notorious insurrection that took place at the Capital, were granted clemency.
Pardon me for being desperately upset because 25 people have died in ICE custody or for weeping when I hear stories of traumatized children being separated from their parents and held in ICE detention indefinitely. I can’t bear seeing kids as young as three years old being forced to sit before a judge in immigration court before being sent God knows where.
My heart also breaks for the women in detention facilities that are more like concentration camps, mourning the loss of their children while being subjected to sexual abuse, and the pregnant women who are denied vital healthcare and basic nutrition along with clean drinking water or are forced to labor in shackles.
As if that weren’t bad enough it’s sickening for anyone to be fed warm-riddled food, or to sleep on the floor, if sleep is possible with lights blaring 24 hours a day, or to use dirty showers if you can get one, or toilets that lack privacy.
This is just one of many testimonies about what detention life is like, reported by an advocacy group in Texas on CNN. “Families tell us that children are weak, crying because they are hungry and have limited access to clean drinking water, or can’t get medical help, even if they faint. Mothers have called it a prison and a living hell.” As Occupy Democrats posted on Facebook in December, “The war on terror has truly come home. Now we have dozens of Abu Ghraibs in our own backyards.”
Pardon me for wishing you could understand what it is like to be told, as one mother was, that she might never see her five-year-old daughter again, as reported by ABC News. Her daughter is one of at least 600 children sent by ICE to detention facilities this year. Experts note that the severe depression and anxiety these children and their parents experience is unimaginable, describing the trauma as unspeakable loss that leads to ongoing grief. Numerous accounts like these are documented by organizations, media, and first person accounts that families and friends share. They are utterly soul destroying.
Along with all of that, I beg your pardon for wishing that the United States could avoid committing war crimes, propping up autocracies and their self-appointed dictators, colluding with genocide, and destroying the alliances we have trusted and counted on for so long because of our shared values, which are rapidly disappearing.
Pardon me please for abhorring the disintegration of agencies that are vital to a sane healthcare system that supports a reasonable life expectancy, basic economic security, much needed social services, as well as necessary research, educational excellence, clean air and water, disaster relief, healthy food and clean water, non-nuclear proliferation and environmental integrity.
We have an endangered planet and an unstable world right now that desperately needs to recover from the faults and failures of what we are now experiencing to avoid falling into a disastrous abyss. No amount of power, privilege, or wealth will protect those who enjoy those luxuries because we are all in this together.
Pardon me for loathing the way you treat women, people of color, immigrants and those living in poverty, illness, and lost hope. How I wish we could find our way back to basic kindness, compassion, integrity, humanity, and belief in a country and a world capable of restoring hope, joy, community, and personal and political respect.
Pardon me too for suspecting that our last election was rigged and hoping that we will have an election this year that is free, fair, and devoid of machinations or cyber-interventions that could lead us further into dysfunction and worse dystopian nightmares.
Finally, pardon me for believing that you and your acolytes and appointees are completely devoid of human emotion, clear thinking, intellectual capacity, compassion or honesty. You have revealed who you are, and people of conscience reject your destructive and often cruel nature because we know that you are incapable of change. So pardon us all for our conscientious pleas so that we can finally rejoice when you are relegated to history.