A Process Question
I’m like a dog with a bone, I guess, I find something and I can’t let go. Which means, as I dig through my life and find something interesting, I want to write about it even if it might be a topic that makes someone uncomfortable. That’s how I came to write about my wife’s dementia and eventual death. And that’s how I now come to write about politics. It’s a thing in my life, and it interests me even though I’m not a political scientist with tons of studies and degrees to match. Although, in this day and age, when you can get a degree from a search engine, the latter means nothing.
So, right now I’m going to talk about due process. It seems as though deportation, as it’s currently practiced, involves picking people up off the street, putting them on a plane, and sending them to a prison in a foreign country. That feels really wrong. And it ought to bother everyone left or right, because what if it happens to you? And you’d say, why would it, I’m a citizen. But how would you prove it? You’d have no chance to confront your accuser. No chance to prove anything. You’d just be gone.
Of course, understanding that involves empathy and an understanding as well that a regime engaging in that sort of behavior might be perfectly willing to expand the scope of the people it scoops up to include you. Because it’s not uncommon for people in power to claim that people who oppose them are terrorists, and you’d say, but I don’t, and I’d say, okay, how would you prove it without due process? And it can happen here because it’s already happening.