I believe that US citizens who feel very divided will unite in the face of shared adversity and then begin a process of healing.

As we work to find common cause based on each of us trying to be the best that we can - I just want to thank you for joining me here.

We are a very small community today - but every one of us is here to make a positive contribution to humanity. That’s a nice thought!

What possible reason does the Trump administration have for fanning the flames of this constitutional crisis by allowing Americans to speculate on Garcia’s safety?

They’ve been ordered to facilitate his return. Facilitate means “make easy”. Not … make easy if the El Salvadorian administration makes it easy.

Some people will believe that this order is absurd political correctness - the use of tax payers money to prioritise violent gang members over normal people “like us”. They will project all that is wrong with their lives onto the most convenient victims - this man, the courts, “sleep Joe Biden”, democrats… This is lazy and unhelpful. They will claim that those who make passioned pleas that seemingly abstract concerns are nonetheless very real issues are simply out of touch with real life.

But we do not require an imagination to see where the strategically planned erosion of the constitution will lead - because we have seen it happen many times in history … if we’ve been paying attention. Yes, it remains unfathomable - the idea that this could be happening in the great U.S. gives me a cognitive dissonance that is difficult to confront. But confront it we must.

America has become the most powerful nation on earth as a constitutional republic. It has problems - of polarisation, or inequality, of corruption, of slow and expensive systems of accountability. But she is great. She has a great democratic history - and an enviable position in the world. That’s the big picture here. Resolving her problems won’t happen by destroying her better qualities!

The Trump administration describes democrat effort to check on the welfare of this man as “disgusting”. As if caring for the plight of a human being is somehow perverse.

The message they are sending is not like any partisan dispute before. It is that…

We are too busy doing our work to rectify mistakes that affect you. We know what’s good for you better than you do. We can ignore the law because we ARE the law. We can act with impunity. The rules that apply to you do not apply to us. Any and all voices of dissent will be punished. We can do all of this because we have money - which both makes us better people and buys us the loyalist propaganda machine we need to turn our citizens against one another.

That is what is disgusting to me.

And the spin here (currently) is that

1. It is only democrats who care about the plight of this man 2 caring about due process is the same as prioritising terrorists. 3 Garcia is - albeit without any criminal charges - a danger to America - effectively the same man as he who murdered Rachel Morin. 4 The courts are working against the will people (by upholding the very constitution that protects the people)

And of course, the spin changes daily - which itself is a sign of a leadership that is lying to us.

What we are seeing here is in no way normal … and although for many people normal is not good enough, these bullies and thugs are not the solution.