The Sheer Depravity is Astounding

For the past several years, whenever I am conversing about current events, I often find myself starting out by stating , "I know at this point nothing should shock me anymore, and yet..."

And so, when it comes to the deportation of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, I have to say, "I know at this point nothing should shock me anymore, and yet... 

...and yet, how is this happening?

A man without a criminal record, and with court-ordered protected status, is sent to a torture prison in El Salvadore due to an administrative error.  This man is a father, and was taken away from his family, including a 5-year-old austic son who he was caring for.  Then the court orders the Trump administration to facilitate his return, and the Trump administration refuses to do it.

As far as moral conundrums go, this is one of the easy ones.  Just return the wrongly imprisoned father to his wife and son.  This doesn't have to be political.  This doesn't have to be a left/right issue.  Just do the obviously right thing.  Please.  This is one of the easy ones.

And yet, they won't do it.

And then I thought to myself, "How are we as a country allowing this to happen?  Why are we not flooding the streets and demanding Kilmar Abrego Garcia be returned?  Have we gotten to a point where we are so complacent and so desensitived that we can just read this in our news feeds and then go on to read something else?"

And that's when I realized, I could no longer stay silent.

The past few years, I've been trying to reinvent myself as apolitical (see here and here).  I had become embarrased of my youthful political advocacy, for a number of reasons (in my youth, I had been arrogant, annoying, certain that I was always right, dismissive of other views, tribalistic, I had uncritically adopted the opinions of the thought leaders of the Left, etc.).  Now that I'm middle-aged, I wanted to just be quiet and respectable and normal.

So that's why I wrote a few months ago: I'm (Mostly) Going to be Keeping Mute on Political Events.

I also, although I did not state it at the time, really wanted to keep this blog politically neutral, because I'm currently on the job hunt, and I figured employers would view a politically outspoken blog as a liability.

But how can you keep silent when this stuff is going on?  

The deportation of Kilmar Abrego Garcia is as blatant a miscarriage of justice as you could ask for. If we as a society can accept this, then we as a society can accept anything.  

And I know that statistically Kilmar Abrego Garcia is just one person, but the way he's being treated is an indication of what our society will tolerate.  When future historians write about Kilmar Abrego Garcia, what are they going to say about how the American public reacted to his case?

And if we stay silent when this type of thing happens, then, what really is the point of being alive?  We're only on this earth for a few years.  We have to at least do a little bit to confront the injustices of our time.

In a previous post I had said 

if I have nothing to offer other than stating the obvious (i.e. "this obviously really bad thing is obviously really bad"), then I'm just going to stay quiet

... but I take it back.  Sometimes there's value in stating that something is bad and that you disapprove of it.  If we get to a point where people stop doing this, if people are no longer outraged by blatant injustice, then we as a society have lost our morality.

I'm also going to be contacting my local representatives to let them know who I feel about the deportation of Kilmar Abrego Garcia.

And, I guess maybe I'll be doing more political posts on this blog after all.  I didn't want to, but... well, to quote from The Fellowship of the Ring:

“I wish it need not have happened in my time,” said Frodo. 

“So do I,” said Gandalf, “and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”

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Bonus Links: A Tale of Two Men: Look at MAGA family values, in all its repellent splendor.

see also this tweet: 

Oh really, @StephenM? "The leftist media"?

Does that include your Solicitor General, who admitted to the Supreme Court that you made a mistake in deporting Garcia?

Does that include all nine Supreme Court justices, who wrote that the District Court order "properly requires… https://t.co/OwcuM6U5Gi

— Jon Favreau (@jonfavs) April 14, 2025