Don't Follow Your Bliss

 They didn't change the name. Shortly after its construction in 1848, the United States Army chose to name this fort in El Paso, Texas after Brevet Lieutenant Colonel William WS Bliss, son-in-law of then President Zacahary Taylor. 

The name has nothing to do with perfect happiness or great joy. Before it was called "Bliss," it was simply called the Post of El Paso. 

Fast forward almost a century later to 1942 when the fort became one of several internment camps for Japanese Americans who were kept prisoner there without any sort of due process. In the middle of the desert where they could not destroy their adopted country from within. Of course, neither could they defend it, since they were being kept behind barbed wire fences for the specific crime of not being white. 

You many have already figured out where this one is headed. The Second Trumpreich is hastily reviving that portion of the now fundamentally ironically named Fort Bliss by turning a portion of its 1,700 square miles back into an internment camp. This time for detainees kidnapped by ICE. The yeeha faction of MAGAts refer to it as "Lone Star Lockup," in hopes of competing with "Alligator Alcatraz" in sunny Florida. Fans of this new prison camp are excited to tell you that it is the largest facility of its kind in the country. ICE would like you to know as well that they expect the one billion dollar investment in turning the one thousand bed capacity to five thousand will “streamline and expedite removal processes, which is one of the Trump administration’s priorities."

Maybe now would be a good time to remind everyone that the Epstein Files have yet to be released and all this "bigger, faster, stronger" hoo-ha is meant to obfuscate the central problem of having a convicted felon orchestrating the incarceration of anyone but himself.

Oh, and the good news for those being kept in what the government calls "soft-sided facilities" and we call "tents," unlike its counterpart in Florida this prison camp is less likely to be ravaged by hurricanes. Just flash floods, extreme heat and high winds associated with monsoon season. And while Republican Senator John Cornyn of Texas insists that the people being taken to Fort Bliss would not be “gardeners or housekeepers,” I hasten to remind everyone that seventy-two percent of those being taken off our streets have no criminal convictions. All the stories about daring apprehensions of an ice cream man are more in line with reality than the shootouts that you might imagine these heavily armed goons in which these heavily armed goons might be involved. Mostly they hang around outside immigration courts and wait for those who are showing up for their ordered appearances to grab them. 

And what do you get for trying to follow the law? A trip to Fort Bliss! 

These are ugly times indeed.