In the best audio dramas, the writing, story, and acting will all click.(Photo: BBC)
Audio dramas have been described as television for your ears.
If you’ve never heard of audio dramas before, you may have heard the term audio fiction, fiction podcast, radio play, or full-cast audio drama. They have a full cast of voice actors, sound effects, and a score. So, yeah, like television for your ears.
If this still sounds like a foreign concept, remember the original Orson Welles’ “War of the Worlds” that had everybody in an uproar? That was an audio drama. Remember how Ralphie in A Christmas Story listened to Little Orphan Annie on the family radio? That was an audio drama, too.
But before you start thinking audio dramas hum only from wooden, old-timey radios, a resurgence of the form has made the last few years a sort of golden era for them. Why? Some have speculated that audio dramas were easier to produce when everyone was home during Covid. The pandemic shut down much of the entertainment world, so really good writers, producers, and actors turned to audio dramas to keep themselves busy (or keep themselves afloat).
But whatever happened, audio dramas are back and seem back to stay. Market research firm Digital Bulletin valued the U.S. audio drama market at $2.7 billion last year and projected growth to $6.1 billion in 2033.
All of this is to say: There has never been a better time to listen to audio dramas. I’ve been a fan for years and I listen to shows when I work out, work in the yard, cook, walk, or whatever. If I can put my brain on pause for a minute, I can stick a show in there and be whisked away while my body cuts the grass.
To get started, find the fiction section of your favorite podcast app. It’s just called “fiction” in Apple Podcasts. Then scroll until you find something you like. Or hit up the audio drama subreddit for recommendations.
Big warning here, though: The quality of shows varies greatly. In some, the acting will suck (like, really suck). In others, the writing and story will suck. But in the best ones, it all clicks, and while you do the dishes, you’re transported to the deck of the Pequod hunting Moby Dick.
Here are three recommendations to, hopefully, help you find your first (or next) audio drama favorite.
Photo: Sundance Now
Exeter
Jeanne Tripplehorn (The Firm) and Ray McKinnon (Deadwood; O Brother, Where Art Thou?) play detective partners in the small South Carolina County of Exeter in 1995.
In the first season, detectives Colleen and Pruitt follow evidence and hearsay to unravel a string of grisly murders: a woman found in the woods, mauled to death by a pack of dogs; a local preacher’s head found in the middle of the road placed on a collection plate. The second and third seasons continue the taut storylines laid out in the first season.
Exeter mesmerizes and never forces you to suspend your disbelief, especially on its Southernness.
The Lovecraft Investigations
I didn’t know I loved H.P. Lovecraft (his stories, anyway) until I heard The Lovecraft Investigations for the first time.
In its first season, podcasters Matthew Heawood (Barnaby Kay) and Kennedy Fisher (Jana Carpenter) set out to discover how a young man named Charles Dexter Ward went missing from his locked room at a Rhode Island asylum. They pull at any loose thread they can find until they uncover a powerful cult that has worshipped (and kept alive) a Mesopotamian god for 1,000 years.
This thread continues through seasons two, three, and four. In them, Matt and Kennedy find friends, chase UFOs, and watch as an entire town vanishes before their eyes.
Photo: Audible
Treat
The audio drama format is perfect for horror. If that’s your thing and you’re looking to dip a toe into the audio fiction world, find Treat.
Kiernan Shipka (Mad Men, Twisters) stars as an unpopular teenager in a quiet town that holds a killer secret. Can she save her town, her family, or even herself from this evil from the past? Listen to Treat (billed as a hour-and-a-half audio movie). Dun-dun-DUNNNN!
Police on standby during the June 14th Los Angeles No Kings protest against government policies and supporting democracy and immigrant rights (Photo: Brphoto | Dreamstime.com)
“Freedom isn’t free” is a slogan I have heard much of my adult life, almost always associated with praising our military and the sacrifice veterans have made. We are well educated about soldiers freeing us from British tyranny in the American Revolution and keeping us free from the Nazis and Japanese in the Second World War. The question of this moment is, what are the greatest threats to our freedom in the here and now, and what price will they demand from us? It is time to reconsider how we think about the price of freedom and who needs to pay it.
Living near Washington, D.C., as I do, I see Congress in action at committee meetings and votes. Many of these legislators clamor incessantly for preparations for war with China, Russia, and Iran, while cheering on the undeclared and illegal wars in concert with Israel against Palestinians, Yemenis, Lebanese, and Syrians. That cheering makes war inevitable, as we see with this latest attack on Iran. Neither Iran nor any of these nations is a significant military threat to the U.S. but perhaps China is, which has not shown hostility to the U.S. except when we carry out war games and build dozens of military bases in their neighborhood. The only serious foreign threats to the U.S. that I see are the 12,000 nuclear weapons in nine different nations, which can annihilate civilization. That threat could be reduced or eliminated by reducing the number of nuclear weapons or eliminating them altogether. Instead, we are spending a fortune building new ones.
Less apocalyptic but more likely threats to freedom loom large in the rise of authoritarianism and the political divisions it thrives on, the flouting of the Constitution and the rule of law (both domestic and international), environmental degradation, potential pandemics, and increasing wealth inequality impoverishing millions. When ideologies make it hard to talk to neighbors and family, we lose trust in our common identity as Americans. When neighbors are kidnapped off the streets and sent to foreign prisons without due process and against court orders, our loss of trust in government becomes severe. Supporting genocide overseas diminishes our global reputation.
As I look at these threats, a strong military cannot protect us from any of them. In fact, huge expenditures on the military contribute directly to several of these threats through its monstrous environmental footprint and the way it stimulates potential enemies to arm themselves against us. It contributes indirectly by siphoning resources that could otherwise be used for tackling the many serious problems we face. Worst of all, the military can be co-opted by a tyrant, something that we saw being done in real-time with the ridiculous and costly parade on June 14th. Soldiers who find identity in this kind of display will be the ones who enforce our loss of freedom, unless they ask themselves a question.
I urge every member of the armed forces and police to consider, what is your red line? What order will you refuse to follow because it violates your oath to the constitution, your duty to protect the common good, or even defend basic human dignity? I think of the police officers who surround every demonstration I witness. They are usually polite, protect people from traffic, and sometimes intervene with counter protesters. Most of the time I appreciate their work. My question to them is, what will you do when they give you an order to arrest us for no more than we are doing today?
What will you do when they order you not just to arrest us but to intentionally harm us?
What will you do when they tell you to deport us to concentration camps?
Because they are either the prime enforcers of our freedom and safety or instruments of violence and tyranny, each armed officer needs to know their red line ahead of time, so when the order comes they do not follow it blindly.
Since armed forces can’t protect us from most modern threats, each of us must define our own red line.
How long we will look the other way when our neighbors are abducted, our colleagues doing useful work in science and medicine are laid off, and protest is criminalized?
When will we stop cooperating with violations of the law and brutality toward our neighbors? By cooperation I mean keeping our heads down and not speaking out and going about our business as though this is not our problem. We saw millions recognize their red line and demonstrate on June 14th. Will enough of our neighbors join us, and will demonstrations be enough?
How can we invite others to join us in using tools more powerful than demonstrations? Proven tactics from the huge array of nonviolent action: things like blockading illegal deportations, blocking illegal shipments of weapons, or refusing to pay taxes until the rich pay their fair share, and the government obeys the law.
The single most powerful instrument for freedom is probably the general strike that can shut down the entire system or at least the worst parts of it. We need to learn about such things from our fellows in the unions and begin to train intensively to become effective.
We will do well to stop thinking that the only thing between us and tyranny are the police and the military. The price of freedom needs to be paid by all of us. Let’s gather our neighbors and support one another in taking the bold and sometimes risky actions we need to preserve our freedom.
John Reuwer, MD, is adjunct professor of conflict resolution, St. Michael’s College, Colchester, Vermont.
One of Brother Juniper’s
delicious breakfasts (Photo: Brother Juniper’s | Facebook)
Brother Juniper’s has been voted “Best Breakfast” by MemphisFlyer readers for more than 20 years. The classic breakfast joint on the Highland Strip serves famously delicious and large portions of original family recipes dating back over 50 years.
“It’s an honor to win,” says owner Sarah Elliott. “We keep trying to put out the best food that we can with high-quality ingredients.”
We talked over a plate of one of her favorite meals: a potato dish with bacon, cheddar and mozzarella cheeses, green onions, sour cream, and an over-easy egg. I pierced the egg and watched the golden yolk coat the smoked bacon and roasted potatoes. “We get our eggs from an Amish farm. … They have the bright orange yolk … and we serve it with love.”
Brother Juniper was an Italian monk who cooked for St. Francis of Assisi in the 13th century. Brother Juniper’s restaurants, a product of a missionary-outreach program, began opening across the country in the 1960s. The last remaining location is right here in Memphis. Elliott’s parents, Jonathan and Pauline Koplin, bought the restaurant when she was 12, and she’s been working there ever since. Elliott recently purchased the restaurant, making her the new official owner. She says her family has been helping her with the transition. “It’s stressful, but I’m so excited. I’ve grown up here and know all of the ins and outs.”
Brother Juniper’s first Best of Memphis win was in 1999, the same year Elliot’s parents took over Brother Juniper’s College Inn in Memphis. Since then, they’ve added merchandise, hot sauces, jellies, catering, and most importantly, new and creative menu items. “There were about five omelets on the menu back then, now there are 15,” says Elliott. She’s the brains behind one of their most ordered dishes: the cinnamon roll pancakes. “Not to brag, but they’re really popular,” she says. The dish includes two massive pancakes with cinnamon sugar swirls and cream cheese icing. They also added a coffee bar in 2010, which serves classic espressos, lattes, and more. “Some people come in just for a cup of coffee or to-go drinks, and we had to keep up with the hipster coffee spots,” says Elliott.
Many of the menu items come from Elliott’s family. “A lot of it was my dad, Jonathan. My grandmother was such a good cook that he learned most of it from her.” Besides the Koplin family’s contributions, other recipes originated from previous Brother Juniper’s owners across the country. The familial contributions are what take their dishes to the next level.
Besides serving the best breakfast in Memphis for over 20 years, Brother Juniper’s also serves Memphis citizens and nonprofits. Local artists’ vibrant paintings add pops of color to the walls by the coffee bar. Elliott mentions Lindy Tate, a frequent customer who’s had art on the walls “forever.” Beyond that, they promote and support different nonprofit organizations each month on their “Community Spotlight” bulletin board. There’s a tip jar by the entrance for cash donations and information about each organization. Brother Juniper’s also welcomes all Memphians to a free Christmas dinner every Christmas Eve. To Elliott, these parts of her business are nonnegotiable. “We want to be more than a restaurant.”
While my fork scraped the bottom of my plate, Elliott painted the scene of a typical Sunday morning at Brother Juniper’s. “There’s a crowd waiting outside the doors. … The dining room fills up, and people start running around like chickens with their heads cut off.” They’ll serve hundreds of customers in the 10.5 hours they’re open on Saturdays and Sundays. The restaurant runs with an all-hands-on-deck team effort, says Elliott. She’ll wait tables if they’re short-staffed, run food, take coffee orders, greet arriving guests, and even step into the kitchen to help cook. She mentions Brother Juniper’s feature on Rachael Ray’s show, $40 a Day. “She kind of put us on the map for nationwide attention. That helped us blow up a bit.”
As Elliott takes the reins, she’s preparing to pass on the same traditions to her own children. “I have two little kids who will grow up here, and they already help me out. It’s great to keep the legacy.”
Just two millennials moving back home (Photos: Jesse Davis)
At the beginning of this month, my wife and I made a move, one that we hope will go some way to improving our fortunes. We’re joining the not-insignificant number of millennial adults who have moved back in with their parents.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, more than 50 percent of millennials who have moved out of their parents’ home have, at some point, moved back. That was a number I never thought to find myself in, though. That particular safety net didn’t exist for me until I got married. Both my parents live with their respective sisters, so to move “back home” was something of a logistical challenge, not that it was exactly an outcome I had hoped for, either. So, with my wife’s Bonus Mom, as she calls herself, renting her basement to us for the family discount, an amount not unlike pre-Covid-inflation rental rates, I recognize the privilege I have. Not everyone has a safe place to fall back to after they’ve fallen on their face.
Still, despite how fortunate we are, it rankles that our economic reality turned on the whims of a South African billionaire and his team of underqualified coders at DOGE. Their cuts to funding for federal agencies like the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation spelled doom for the future of science research in this country, true, and also for my wife’s and my jobs. It’s not so much that a sudden change in national policy so drastically affected my household that bothers me. After all, we are all subject to changes in the global climate; new trends and technologies change how we interact and consume, and livelihoods are affected. No, it’s the frivolous nature of DOGE’s cuts that gall me, how completely devoid of merit the entire organization is, how shortsighted their so-called “savings” will prove to be, and how much harm has been done, now and far into the future.
I can’t help but wonder how many other American citizens are making similar moves, just so a self-obsessed confidence trickster can create the illusion of fiscal responsibility and Art of the Deal-like economic wizardry — all while adding to the national debt and simultaneously eroding the nation’s few bulwarks against future threats, such as climate disaster, severe storms, and disease. Are there former NASA scientists navigating a terrifying new medical diagnosis while also figuring out what insurance they now qualify for? Are there former national parks employees moving themselves and their kids into smaller apartments? Surely, there must be. I can say for certain, there are two new parents with a new baby and new (low-paying) jobs who have just moved into a parent’s basement while they work to save and strive for more secure careers.
Life goes on for us average Joes, as our leaders throw themselves military parades, order illegal air strikes, do the trade-war tango with our allies and enemies, and bully local governments into sucking up to them. Shouldn’t our national policies and budgetary goals strive to make life safer and more secure for the vast majority of us? Businesses fail, droughts and floods and blizzards happen; no one is perfectly protected from life’s buffets. But that statistic I mentioned earlier — that more than half of millennials now live or have lived with their parents after moving out — that doesn’t seem like an indicator of a healthy and thriving economic system. Unless, that is, it’s meant to work more like a casino slot machine than anything else. It’s paying out, dummy — just not for you.
I had hoped to litter this feature with statistics and quotes from reputable sources. I wanted to add context about the minimum wage, tax structures over time, etc. But to be perfectly honest, I’ve got work at a temp job soon, boxes to unpack, and probably a baby diaper to change. So take these words with a grain of salt, and be careful what you read on the internet (and in print). Just because someone has a fancy byline in a newspaper doesn’t mean they don’t live in their wife’s step-mother’s basement.
Jesse Davis is a former Flyer staffer; he writes a monthly Books feature for Memphis Magazine. His opinions, such as they are, have literally never ordered avocado toast. Not even once.
Ensemble for “Freda’s Voice” by Robert Patterson, far right (Photos: Lucy Owens)
There will be a distinctly personal aspect to the four-day Belvedere Chamber Music Festival when it kicks off its 19th year this Wednesday, June 25th, at Grace-St. Luke’s Episcopal Church — and that personal quality exemplifies just how much Luna Nova Music, the nonprofit that launched the festival, is built on relationships that span the globe. Italian composer Gianluca Verlingieri began attending the festival in 2007 as the winner of its first Student Composition Contest. Now, many years later, he’ll be paying bittersweet tribute to a recently deceased Memphis friend.
As Patricia Gray, executive director of Luna Nova, explains, Breen Bland and Jeanie Mercer “were complete believers in this whole project. We used to bring the student composers to Memphis for the festival from wherever they came, and I would find housing for them. At the very first one, the first-place winner was an Italian composer named Gianluca Verlingieri, who stayed with Breen and Jeanie, and they got to be big friends. They had all these things in common. They were big cooks. They liked the same music. Well, it turns out that they kept this up over all these years. When they would go to Europe, they would visit Gianluca. He is now a very successful composer in Italy.”
Mark Volker
After Bland passed away in December, “Gianluca volunteered to write a piece that was dedicated to Breen, to be premiered at the festival,” Gray notes. “So he wrote this piece for violin and cello that’s going to be on the first concert. And Gianluca will be back in Memphis for this performance of his piece for Breen.”
As the composer notes in the program, the Galician-Portuguese title, “Falar sen voz [To speak without a voice], in memoriam Breen Bland,” describes “what music often does. And it is also what the memory of a loved one does — continuously — within us.”
John McMurtery
Verlingieri’s piece in Bland’s memory not only evokes the deep personal connections behind the festival; it also reveals one strength of any concert series primarily devoted to contemporary compositions, as opposed to works from over a century ago: Whether personal or political, new music speaks to our time. Consider the works’ titles, so unlike the dry catalog entries of older works in the classical repertoire: “Fast Track,” written in 1999 by Jonathan Chenette; “Ghost Rags,” written by William Bolcom in 1970; “Flouting Convention,” Louis Anthony deLise’s 2024 work; “Moonsong,” David Crumb’s piece for piano and cello, also from last year; or, perhaps most evocatively, “Glimpses of a Better World,” a new piece written by P. Brent Register, with movements like “Trapped,” “Find It,” “Little Things,” “Silence,” and, arguably the most unlikely of classical titles, “I Like Dogs.” These works reflect our lives, our language, our loves, and our loss as we exist today.
As for the newest of the new music, one aspect of the festival evokes not only the present, but the future. The Belvedere Student Composition Contest may be the festival’s most impactful element, shining a light on the latest up-and-coming talent and providing a venue to debut their work. This year, the festival honors “is it still autumn?,” a piano trio by first-prize winner Matthew Tirona of the New England Conservatory and Tufts University; “Three Urban Scenes,” a piece for flute, clarinet, violin, cello, and piano by second-prize winner Ethan Resnik of Rice University; and “Piano Trio No. 1” by third-prize winner Brittney Benton of Yale University.
Gregory Maytan
Beyond that, the festival offers an opportunity for Luna Nova’s players to stretch out on less common material both old and new. As Gray sees it, including older works is important to the festival’s programming, providing historical context to the newer works, as with the chaconne movement of Bach’s Partita No. 2 in D minor that will kick off the festival. “Bach is a towering figure that puts the whole world in perspective,” says Gray. “We feel like it’s kind of a cleansing thing to start with some movement of Bach.”
This year, that particular passage will also serve as a tribute to Breen Bland. “Breen and Jeanie also were the hosts for Gregory Maytan, an amazing violinist that’s coming here from Germany, and Gregory of course has played that Bach chaconne a number of times. In fact, Breen had a recording of it that Gregory listened to at home often. So that was another reason it made sense to begin the first concert with it.”
Other recognized giants of the classical world will make an appearance, largely through 20th century works such as Romanian Folk Dances and selections from “Duos for Two Violins” by Béla Bartók, “Suite for Violin, Clarinet and Piano” by Darius Milhaud, “Five Melodies for Violin and Piano” by Sergei Prokofiev, and L’Histoire du Soldat by Igor Stravinsky, not to mention pianist Maeve Brophy’s take on “A Shaded Lane” from Florence Price’s Village Scenes, and cellist Hannah Schmidt’s interpretation of Philip Glass’ Orbit, which premiered in a 2013 Yo-Yo Ma performance that also featured Memphis-born dancer Lil Buck.
Expect many sonic surprises from roughly two dozen contemporary composers (including music inspired by art at the Dixon Gallery & Gardens composed by Gray’s husband, Robert Patterson of the Memphis Symphony Orchestra).
If the chamber music form lends itself to every variety of musical exploration, its inherently close-up and personal nature has led the Belvedere Chamber Music Festival to touch the hearts of Memphis audiences, and they keep returning. “I think it’s an easier draw,” Gray muses, “because you can tailor these programs to what you have available, to who you know you’ve got to play, and what they play, and how good they are. And you can tailor it to your audience. I think that there’s something that’s very approachable about it, just from the point of view of it being pretty easy to get in the car and go to a church and listen to music for an hour.”
The free Belvedere Chamber Music Festival takes place evenings at 7 p.m., June 25th to 28th, at Grace-St. Luke’s Episcopal Church (use the west entrance), with additional concerts on June 27th and 28th at 3 p.m. Visit belvederefestival.org for details.
A solid work ethic helped Maria, a laborer, pull her family up into the middle class. Now, she and her husband Jose live in fear of deportation and separation from their U.S.-born children. (Photo: Karen Pulfer Focht)
Editor’s note: Maria and Jose are not the real names of the two main subjects of this story. As a general practice, the Institute for Public Service Reporting does not use pseudonyms but is doing so in this case because of the sensitive nature of this story, which shines light on the plight of many immigrant families.
Sitting on a metal stool at her breakfast bar, Maria sighs and stares into the distance as she recalls her unlawful entry into the U.S. two decades ago.
“[Where I come from] it is nearly impossible to get a visa for this country,” says the curly haired mother of four who migrated here from Latin America in the early 2000s to escape crushing poverty and the roaming gangs that terrorized her hometown.
Her journey to a middle-class life in Tennessee came at great cost. The day she stuffed her life into a backpack, she said goodbye to her mother, father, and siblings — virtually everything and everyone she had ever known. She left with a tube of toothpaste, a toothbrush, a deodorant stick, and two changes of clothing as well as her ID that she stashed inside her bra for safekeeping.
Maria and a crew of laborers on clean-up duty. This photo has been altered to protect identities. (Photo: Erika Konig)
“You don’t know if you will be killed or raped,’’ said Maria, who was a young adult when she hired a team of smugglers to guide her on a treacherous trek across towering mountains, murky rivers, and rugged wastelands. “There is so much uncertainty.”
Following her husband, Jose, who came to the U.S. before her, she’s lived the past decade in Tennessee where she and Jose earn a living laboring with their hands. Together, they’re living an American dream, building a future for their children, three of whom were born and raised in the U.S.
But the family’s sense of security came tumbling down when Jose was arrested on a decades-old immigration violation — a legal dilemma that could result in his deportation. Back in the early 2000s, an attorney had advised Jose to skip an immigration court hearing, he said. It was poor advice — and a clear mistake.
Still, Jose thought he had put the matter far behind him, until recently when police pulled him over for a traffic violation. That’s when his old immigration case popped up in a computer check.
Police alerted federal authorities and Jose then was arrested by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents and held in custody briefly before being released with a temporary work permit. He now attends routine immigration check-ins. The possibility of deportation — and family separation — is a constant threat hanging over both Jose and Maria.
“I go out, and I don’t know if I will make it back,” Maria said. “You could get caught at work, stopped by police. … You can’t even go out to eat at a restaurant” without fearing being arrested by ICE agents, she explained.
What’s changed for Maria and Jose is a wave of anti-immigrant sentiment that’s spread across Tennessee, intensifying following the election last November of President Donald Trump. Much of that sentiment is built on contentions by Trump and others that the ranks of the U.S.’s estimated 11 million to 14 million undocumented immigrants are overflowing with murderers, rapists, terrorists, and other hardcore criminals — “illegal alien monsters,” Trump called them in his address to Congress in March.
Examples of heinous crimes do exist. Yet repeated studies have shown immigrants are far less likely to commit crimes than the native population. One, a six-year study in Texas, found that “undocumented immigrants are arrested at less than half the rate of native-born U.S. citizens for violent and drug crimes.”
Getting to the truth can be difficult, given the broad secrecy and misinformation surrounding deportation efforts nationally and in Tennessee, according to records reviewed by the Institute for Public Service Reporting and interviews with more than a dozen immigrants, attorneys, law enforcement officials, a college professor, and others who study U.S. immigration policy.
The best evidence suggests that the typical undocumented immigrant more closely resembles Maria and Jose than Jose Antonio Ibarra, the infamous Venezuelan man convicted last year of murdering Georgia nursing student Laken Riley, whose story has become a rallying cry for the mass deportation movement.
“The majority of us come here to work,” Maria said.
“Very loving people”
On a typical weekday Maria rises before the sun, cooks breakfast for her family, then gets ready for the day before driving her teenage daughter to school. By 8:45 a.m. she is dressed for work, ready to begin her day in manual labor.
It’s a tough, busy life, but not nearly as chaotic as the one she knew in her homeland.
“There are two things you can do: join the criminals or join the group of people who are living in hiding and constant fear,” Maria said of her options back home.
Growing up, Maria dreamed of becoming a medical professional. She found only misery and fear.
The best her hardscrabble hometown could offer was the equivalent of 15 U.S. dollars a week mopping floors and cleaning bathrooms. Then there were the heavily armed gangs that roamed the streets, stealing what little people had. One day, a man pointed a cold gun barrel at her back. He stole her watch — a Casio with a black leather wristband and gold-colored bezel — the only piece of jewelry she had ever owned. Incidents like this happened often, she said. Her brother’s house has been burned down twice.
“Completamente inseguro,’’ Maria said in her native Spanish. Completely unsafe.
“You go out to work and could get robbed. You could be home and get robbed,” she said.
The Institute for Public Service Reporting was not able to independently verify Maria’s account, but it is consistent with news reports and studies of the region of Latin America from where she and Jose are from.
Nothing has come easy for the couple, not even here in their adopted country.
Over the past two decades in the U.S., Maria has worked many jobs: as a nanny, a cook, a factory worker, and a laborer, all while juggling her responsibilities as a wife and mother working to make ends meet.
She is one of the estimated 13.7 million people living in the country without authorization. She and her husband Jose pay taxes but receive no government benefits such as Social Security or Medicaid.
“They believe in the Bible and what it teaches,” said their pastor, a lifelong Tennessean. “I’ve never had a problem with them as far as their honesty and the way they deal with people. They’re very loving people. … They love to serve and so they are very involved in the ministries.”
Activists march outside the ICE’s Nashville field office last month as a bus leaves with dozens of detained individuals following a series of raids. (Photo: Martin Cherry | Nashville Banner)
Crackdown on illegal immigration
Stories of unauthorized immigrants like Jose and Maria can’t be found on ICE’s news releases web page. The site serves as a virtual rogue’s gallery of nefarious characters, seeming to reinforce the nation’s worst fears of an immigrant crime wave. ICE arrested a Guatemalan child sex offender on March 7th in New York, the site says. It removed a Romanian fraudster a day earlier in New Jersey. The agency has taken down a Mexican fugitive wanted for kidnapping, an El Salvadoran child rapist, a Chinese sex trafficker, a Colombian child molester who once served as a priest, and scores of others since Trump took office in January.
Trump’s “border czar,’’ Tom Homan, told reporters last month the crackdown has achieved “unprecedented success.’’ The White House reported then that about 139,000 people had been deported since Trump took office in January. Though deportation numbers at times fell short of numbers under former President Joe Biden, the Trump administration says the comparison is not fair. That’s because illegal border crossings have fallen precipitously. The federal government reported in March that 7,181 people were apprehended nationwide during border crossings, a 95 percent decrease from March 2024, according to the Associated Press.
“We’re going to keep doing it, full speed ahead,” Homan said of the crackdown.
In his address to Congress, Trump recited the story of Laken Riley, a 22-year-old Georgia nursing student who was abducted and murdered last year by an undocumented immigrant from Venezuela who had been previously arrested on a theft charge. Her murder stirred a national debate over border security, leading Congress in January to pass the Laken Riley Act, which allows ICE to detain unauthorized immigrants accused but not necessarily convicted of theft-related crimes.
Immigrant advocates like Matthew Orr say the Laken Riley law has helped create an atmosphere of zero tolerance in which Hispanic- or foreign-looking people are racially profiled.
“What is to prevent local, state, and/or federal authorities from levying a completely false shoplifting charge against an immigrant, for the sole purpose of detaining them?” asks Orr, managing attorney for Latino Memphis, a nonprofit that advocates for Hispanic residents seeking healthcare, education, and justice.
Already, numbers of people with no criminal record or with records of petty offenses are being swept up in the mass deportation efforts, immigration advocates say.
In February, the Department of Homeland Security sent more than 170 Venezuelan nationals to Guantanamo Bay; National Public Radio (NPR) reported that about a third of them had no criminal record.
In March, after the Trump administration invoked the Alien Enemies Act, more than 250 undocumented immigrants were rounded up without hearings and flown to a maximum-security prison in El Salvador on suspicion of belonging to the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua. The administration has conceded that many do not have criminal records, The Washington Post reported. Many of the deportees, among them a Venezuelan soccer player, continue to claim they are not gang members. CBS News reported that “an overwhelming majority have no apparent criminal convictions or even criminal charges.”
Earlier this spring, the administration also began arresting international students who are in the country legally and without criminal records. Several of them have been linked to pro-Palestinian protests. The federal government has accused some of them of being “pro-Hamas” and acting in “erratic behavior,” prompting more allegations of unjust treatment.
Latino Memphis’ Orr warns that the erosion of the right to due process could have dire consequences for immigrants and citizens alike. “Due process protections are not a privilege for criminals but a safeguard for the innocent. This is not a political issue,” he said.
Secrecy and missteps in Tennessee
Tennessee is attempting to gauge the impact of crime by undocumented immigrants under a law passed last year by the General Assembly. It requires local law enforcement to report the number of people living here without authorization who’ve been charged with or convicted of crimes.
In its first report under the law, the Tennessee District Attorneys General Conference in January released its 2024 Immigration Report. The report captured data only from the last quarter of 2024. During that three-month period, there were 2,719 reports of crimes committed by individuals unlawfully present statewide, the report said.
Overall, the report listed 3,854 charges (some defendants had multiple charges), including 447 violent offenses. Those violent offenses included 11 homicide charges, six counts of aggravated rape, and three others involving rape of a child.
But the report is deficient on several counts, said Meghan Conley, assistant professor of practice in the Department of Sociology at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville.
For one, the report fails to separate criminal convictions from mere allegations, Conley said.
The report also fails to provide overall state crime numbers needed to assess the share of crime committed by undocumented immigrants. But numbers obtained from other sources suggest the percent of crime committed by undocumented immigrants is low.
For example, the Immigration Report cited 59 reports of criminal acts by undocumented immigrants in Shelby County for the last quarter of 2024. Over the course of a year, that total would reach 236 criminal acts. That represents about 1.7 percent of the approximately 14,000 criminal incidents reported in Shelby County last year by the Memphis Shelby Crime Commission.
One would expect that share to be larger based on population numbers. According to the Migration Policy Institute there are about 26,000 unauthorized persons living in Shelby County. That represents about 2.9 percent of the county’s population of 910,530.
Conley sees additional problems with the report including a flawed data collection system.
“Law enforcement officers do not have training to understand the complexity of immigration law and immigration status,” Conley said.
Shelby County District Attorney Steve Mulroy agreed, saying the data might be unreliable for reasons that include lack of training.
His theory proved difficult to test, however. Neither the Memphis Police Department nor the Sheriff’s Office responded to inquiries about the training that officers received to collect this data.
Digging deeper, the Institute requested the raw data that the District Attorneys General Conference received from local law enforcement agencies, but the request was denied. The report comes as Tennessee also is developing a state immigration division to assist in President Trump’s mass deportation initiative. By law, many records in that office are exempt from disclosure.
Mulroy said drug trafficking passing through Shelby County does have a distinct foreign-born element, and that is an issue of concern. But he adds that “exaggerated fear and loathing of undocumented people” and “migrant crime” are unwarranted: “Based on my experience, I have no reason to think they commit any more crime than documented people or native-born people,” Mulroy said.
In a joint investigation in 2019, the Marshall Project and The New York Times found little correlation between changes in crime rates and changes in estimated undocumented immigrant populations in 161 cities around the country — including Memphis, Nashville, Chattanooga, and Knoxville — between 2007 and 2016.
“There’s no connection at all that we could see between any type of crime and the undocumented immigration,” said Anna Flagg, senior data reporter at the Marshall Project.
Crime rates remained the same in metro areas regardless of whether the population of undocumented immigrants increased or decreased, Flagg said.
Like Maria, Jose earns a living laboring with his hands. A recent traffic stop has raised his fears of deportation. (Photo: Erika Konig)
Jose is arrested
The crackdown on illegal immigration has hit close to home for Maria and Jose.
Their troubles started when Jose was pulled over by police due to an equipment failure on his car.
As Jose tells it, an officer told him that ICE had a warrant for his arrest. It was issued years ago by an immigration judge after Jose failed to show up for a court hearing. In his absence, the judge issued an order to remove him from the country. In an interview, Jose said he didn’t go to the hearing for fear of being deported and due to bad legal advice. During the recent traffic stop, an officer told him to expect a call from a detective.
“I gave her my phone number, and when I heard that, I knew the police would not call,” he said. “Immigration is going to show up at my house.”
Weeks later, ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations officers knocked on his door, he said.
In another twist, officials who reviewed his record decided to release him on his own recognizance and provided him with a work permit, he said. Records held by ICE were unavailable.
In the wake of the traffic stop and the decision to allow him to remain in the U.S. at least temporarily, Jose was overcome with emotion.
“I cried like a baby,” he said.
Given the intensity of the current crackdown on illegal immigration, however, Jose may still face an uphill battle to remain in the U.S.
An undocumented immigrant who is under supervision following an order of removal “can be removed at any time in ICE’s discretion,” said Memphis immigration attorney Sally M. Joyner. An immigrant’s options for remaining in the country include proving that he or she failed to receive notice of a removal hearing, establishing a reasonable fear of persecution or torture if deported, or requesting humanitarian status, Joyner said.
Jose said if he’s ordered to be removed he will appeal his case even though he doesn’t have an immigration lawyer and says he can’t afford one.
“Every day I pray to God to give me the opportunity to stay here with my kids,” he said.
Violation of immigration laws
Contrary to popular opinion, living in the U.S. without permission isn’t necessarily a crime. It’s a civil violation, according to immigration attorney Orr.
On the other hand, entering the country without express authorization is a crime. Avoiding examination or inspection by the federal government violates 8 U.S. Code § 1325, and is a misdemeanor punishable by a fine or up to six months in jail.
By some estimates, nearly half the U.S.’s undocumented population entered the country legally as students, professionals, or workers who then overstayed their visas. Those infractions are violations of civil law, not criminal law.
Orr likens overstaying a visa to a publicly traded corporation violating the Securities and Exchange Commission’s civil rules and regulations. He finds it infuriating that many unlawfully present immigrants are portrayed as dangerous criminals.
“The idea is to place all of the ills of society at the feet of the immigrant and to convince the general public that immigrants are your enemy. They’re taking your jobs; they’re criminals; they’re dangerous,” he said.
The criminal migrant rhetoric is proving effective. A February poll conducted by NPR concluded that people who get their news from conservative news outlets are more likely to believe false statements about immigrant communities, including that large numbers of migrants coming into the U.S. have been released from jails or mental institutions and that immigrants are more likely to commit crimes than the U.S.-born population.
Maria and Jose’s pastor said that lack of knowledge is troubling.
“If most people knew the lengths that people went to be here and contribute, I think they would have a little different attitude,” he said.
“The majority of the people that have come here and they’re undocumented that I have known have been very decent people, hardworking people, loving people,” he said. “I would not have any idea what the percentage is, but to be violent criminals, I would say it would be a very small percentage, and I wouldn’t think it would be any higher probably than any other group of people that’s here.
“I think most of them want to be here to stay; they want to raise a family; they want it to be a safe environment; they want it to be a stable economy because it’s their future.”
Meanwhile, Maria and Jose live with the knowledge that anything can change at any given moment. Maria said her family gathers strength from the moments they spend with each other, their interactions with friends, and through their daily prayers.
“I’m here because of God’s greatness,” said Maria.
“Everything is in God’s hands.”
The Institute of Public Service Reporting’s Marc Perrusquia contributed to this article.
Participate in art-making at the Dixon and be part of the National Scrollathon visual art installation in Washington, D.C.
(Photo: Charles Zizzo)
This Thursday, the Dixon Gallery & Gardens invites all to collaborate on a project that will draw in more than 250,000 participants from around the country and, eventually, culminate in a visual art installation at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C. It’s called the National Scrollathon.
Created by brothers Steven and William Ladd, each Scrollathon has its participants roll fabric strips around wooden dowels. Participants make two of these rolls, one to keep for themselves — “like a little memento,” says Kristen Rambo, the Dixon’s communications manager — and one for a community piece that’ll be photographed for the D.C. installation. The piece created Thursday may even go into the Dixon’s permanent collection.
Photos: Ladd Brothers
The Scrollathon is meant to bring together community members of all ages and backgrounds as participants imbue personal stories and statements into the making of their scrolls, often sharing with the group. The idea began in 2006 when the Ladd brothers were looking for something young students could create. Turns out, kids weren’t the only ones who could benefit in the scrolls’ opportunity for self-expression, the artists realized. And so, over the years, the Ladds have hosted Scrollathons for the incarcerated, veterans, seniors, and festivals.
Now, the National Scrollathon, say the brothers on their website, “will bring one Scrollathon to every state; five U.S. territories; Washington, D.C.; 10 locations that will specifically involve individuals of native ancestry. The scrollathons [take] place over five years, concluding at our nation’s 250th birthday in 2026.”
“We’re the only participant in Tennessee,” Rambo says.
To participate in the Dixon’s Scrollathon, register for a one-hour time slot at dixon.org/events.
Scrollathon at the Dixon, Dixon Gallery & Gardens, 4339 Park Avenue, Thursday, June 26, 10 a.m.-2 p.m.
Noah Thomas Miller’s pieces in “Home Is a Dream I Keep
Having” take inspiration from Finnish landscapes.(Photo: Abigail Morici)
The houses in Fiskars, Finland, look the way houses are supposed to look, Noah Thomas Miller says. He was there earlier this year for an artist residency. “I would go on hikes and look at these country houses, and I feel like this is the way you thought the world was going to be when you were a little kid.”
The houses had matching red roofs, as if they’d been plucked out of an illustrated storybook. So he brought back those little buildings, engraving them into Baltic birch wood and painting them with those signature red roofs. “I made my own town in that same sort of way that’s very picturesque, just making these dreamy homes,” Miller says.
He even titled one of the pieces “Home Is a Dream I Keep Having,” and the dual UrbanArt Commission show he’s presenting with Sarah Moseley has taken on the same name. The two are friends and found inspiration in each other for the show. “Sarah is the first person outside of my sister that I’ve worked on pieces with,” Miller says.
For Miller, visual art is somewhat of a new bullet point for his resume. He’s been a filmmaker for most of his creative career; that’s what he studied at the Memphis College of Art. But after working behind a computer screen for so long at his day job, not even counting his hours spent editing film and looking at footage, he wanted to do something with his hands, to take a break from the all-consuming screens. So he signed up for a membership in Crosstown Arts’ woodshop only a few years ago.
He started with furniture. It was practical. Until it wasn’t. “We can only have so many tables, so many chairs.” But he learned the machines, the tools; he learned that he could carve grooves for coasters to stay put on tables and record cabinets. His skills evolved, and so did his ideas. “It was like, ‘Oh, I can use this to draw.’”
Soon, he was making paintings of sorts on wood. He would get his paint — house paint — mixed at Lowe’s. “I’m not a traditional painter. I’ve never studied painting. I just started doing this,” Miller says. For the past few years, he has had a set of five or so colors he turns to for his color palette. “They feel like my colors,” he says. In this show, he introduced a pale blue and brown, yet there’s comfort in this palette, a familiarity that’s not unlike home to the artist.
Likewise, it was natural that Miller turned to wood when in a creative need, for its familiarity. He’d always been working with the material, helping his dad renovate their homes. “I feel like every place we lived, my family renovated themselves,” he says. “We bought really cheap, and then our house was always just a construction site in a way. And growing up in that, this became familiar. And the last few series and shows I’ve had have all been kind of about houses and the idea of home because I do have the biggest attachment to all of these houses and my family members. … And then in a different way now, I paint houses and build houses.”
Miller hasn’t forgotten his love for film, though. “I know some people have described my pieces … like storyboards in a way,” he says, but for this show, he tried to marry the forms more overtly. In one piece, he inserted film strips from his time in Finland among carvings of his red-roofed houses — something he hopes to do more of for future pieces. In another piece, he has included a film photograph by Moseley, situated in the skies above another red-roofed home.
Moseley, for her part, turned to film for its unfamiliarity. She’s the art director at Goner Records and is used to working in digital design, creating posters, flyers, and props. It’s been years since her last solo art show in 2017, and back then she was showing collage and illustration mostly. “Making physical work unique to me is kind of a new exploration,” she says.
Photography was a break from the art she’d make for work, and a break from life around her. “A really good friend of mine died,” she says, “and he gave me a bunch of cameras when he was alive, and I put my cameras down for, like, seven years. I didn’t touch him for a long time. His death was traumatic. And then I was cleaning and I came across these vintage cameras that I’ve had forever, and I was like, ‘Well, I need to take these out and use them.’”
She began taking pictures of nature around her home, on her walking path along the Vollintine-Evergreen Greenline. “These flowers and trees, I feel like they are part of the house, my home. … It’s my mental chill pill,” she says. “I have a lot of anxious energies sometimes. I give it to the trees; they can handle it.”
Film, too, can handle her anxious energies, subverting her perfectionist tendencies, Moseley would learn. She began making double exposures, where two images layer in one photograph. “You just kind of let go and just see what happens. It’s so experimental and you really have no idea what you’re doing.”
These photographs, in turn, are centered in her pieces, framed in wood that had been stored in her house’s attic for years. The frames themselves are hand-painted in bright colors with symbols of life and death, new beginnings — candles, lit and extinguished; a sun and moon.
“I bought my first house in 2022,” Moseley says, “and it’s just something that I never thought I’d be able to do, and I got really lucky. And it’s a really old house with really old house problems. And I feel like the house is alive in a way, and I’ve been getting to know it.
“For this show, I contacted the lady that I bought the house from. She was like, ‘I’ll tell you my story about my life, how I ended up with the house, and what I did when I lived there.’ She sent me this, like, novel about the beautiful Sunday dinners she would have with her queer friends in the ’80s and moon nights and music nights. … It was just really beautiful to get to hear about the life that was lived before me in my house, like my studio.”
To Moseley, the house is active; its history matters, as do the people that come and go in search of home, of that dream. Perhaps it’s the dream of familiar red-roofed homes, consistent, filled with memories. Perhaps it’s something else, a longing that can’t be described or met until change comes around.
“Home Is a Dream I Keep Having” will be on view through July 18th.
Puppeteer Chase Bernard brings Ziggy, an alien curious about human creativity, to life.
Ziggy’s not from around here. He’s an alien who found humanity’s greatest gift to the cosmos. Launched by NASA in 1977, the two Voyager spacecraft explored the outer solar system before rocketing off into deep space. On board each one was a golden record inscribed with the sounds of Earth — natural sounds, human speech, and, most crucially, music. Ziggy found one of the records floating in space, and now he’s come to Earth to ask for more Chuck Berry songs — and find out more about our art.
That’s the premise of Ziggy’s Arts Adventure, a 15-minute kids show produced by Louisiana Public Broadcasting (LPB). On the first episode of the third season, which recently premiered on WKNO-TV, Ziggy and his friend River decide to repaint the gate of their junkyard arts center. But what colors should they work with?
“Color is something I can work with?” exclaims Ziggy.
It is indeed. Along the way, Ziggy learns that “the more the merrier” is not always the case with colors, but on the other hand, “It’s hard to see what’s special when there’s only one color.”
Ziggy takes to the talk show desk to quiz New Orleans watercolorist Katherine Klimitas about complementary hues and the color wheel. Then he and his non-puppet friend Thimble lead a real elementary school class in a color-by-number exercise. Finally, safe inside his spaceship, Ziggy reports back to his home planet on what a dizzying array of colors the humans have discovered.
It’s all in a day’s work for Clay Achee, who created Ziggy’s Arts Adventure in a “punk rock warehouse” in Louisiana. “I grew up here in Baton Rouge, and as a kid, I was very artsy,” Achee says. “I loved painting and drawing, and I loved puppet stuff, but that wouldn’t come up until way later in my life.”
Achee studied film at the Savannah College of Art and Design. “I was in Georgia and sort of expected to be like a Bruce Springsteen song, where I was free from my hometown, and I was never going back. Then they passed a bunch of tax incentives in Louisiana right when I was graduating film school, so I came right back and worked for a lot of years in the film industry here in different aspects. I was doing a lot of assistant directing by the end. But while I was doing that, I was really sad about not making my own stuff. It was a very strange progression from ‘I miss making stuff with my hands,’ to ‘I loved puppets as a kid!’ to ‘Hey, we have YouTube now and I can learn to do anything!’ And I kind of started making puppets as a hobby. I started giving them as presents. Our friend’s pregnant; here’s a puppet for your kid. Then I was selling them at arts markets, and eventually I started doing this YouTube channel.”
Achee refined the show that would become Ziggy’s Arts Adventure over the course of several years. Things really clicked when he met Chase Bernard, who became Ziggy’s puppeteer. “We were shooting stuff in my garage, and then we moved into this punk rock warehouse in an industrial part of town, where we were trying to shoot very wholesome children’s content.”
When the pandemic hit in 2020, “I’m in my 30s. I’m having a baby, and I find myself in a punk rock warehouse working on a kids’ show without any funding, and I wonder how I ended up there.”
When he reached out to LPB, they were already watching the show. “They asked, ‘Do you think you could teach like a school subject with this?’ And I was like, ‘Is art a school subject?’ … They had gotten a little grant, and they rolled the dice on us.”
Ziggy’s Arts Adventure is fast-paced and colorful. Thanks to production designer Christian Walker — himself a Memphis filmmaker and member of the Bluff City punk rock institution Pezz — the elaborate world of the junkyard arts center is reminiscent of Pee-wee’s Playhouse, which Achee says was a big inspiration to him as a budding puppeteer. Ziggy exists in a great tradition of Southern puppetry. Mississippian Jim Henson’s Muppets are an obvious influence, both in craftsmanship and tone. Alabama artist Wayne White was the main puppeteer for Pee-wee’s Playhouse and also was the art director for Peter Gabriel and Smashing Pumpkins videos. “I watch his documentary [Beauty Is Embarrassing] about once a month now!” says Achee.
Ziggy’s Arts Adventure was a hit for Louisiana Public Broadcasting. “We were able to do three seasons, and we’re super proud and excited about the third one. This is the first time that it’s being shown outside the state of Louisiana, thanks to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which helped us fund a pilot program. We’re in Memphis and South Carolina,” says Achee. “The Ziggy outreach program has begun!”
This Friday, June 27th, WKNO will host Ziggy’s Arts Adventure Outdoor Music Festival from 5 to 7 p.m. Ziggy (performed by Chase Bernard) will be joined by African drummer Ekpe Abioto, Cazateatro Bilingual Theatre Group dancers, Rozelle Elementary, and the Memphis Youth Arts Initiative Drumline. There will be drop-in mini workshops by local organizations and a kids zone complete with a waterslide. Cherry the Miniature Horse will be on hand to perform tricks, and there will be food trucks and icy treats to cool off during this first week of summer. The big outreach event comes at a perilous time for public television, which is being threatened with a massive funding cut by the Trump administration and Republicans in Congress.
Achee hopes his show can help turn kids on to art the way his mind was expanded by his art heroes. It’s the culmination of a lifetime’s work, he says, and beyond his wildest childhood dreams. “It’s weird when I think about it that way — what would the little 10-year-old in me say to ‘What would you like to do when you grow up?’ I would like to swim in pools of ice cream! Through the film industry, and through my love of puppetry, there’s a ton of things that I was pursuing in my life that ended up making a lot of sense.”
Ziggy’s Arts Adventure airs Friday at 11 a.m. and Saturday at 6:30 a.m. on WKNO-TV, and online at ziggy.lpb.org.
In 1938, the CBS Radio Network broadcast an episode of The Mercury Theatre on the Air called “The War of the Worlds,” based on the novel by H.G. Wells that chronicled an invasion of Earth by Martians. The broadcast is only notable some 87 years later because thousands of listeners to the show came to believe it was real, and that’s because it was presented as breaking news in a series of bulletins which periodically interrupted what purported to be a program of live music.
The first calm “news reports” describe an unusual object falling from the sky in Grovers Mill, New Jersey. The crisis escalates dramatically when an on-scene reporter describes creatures emerging from what is evidently a spacecraft. The aliens employ a heat ray against police and onlookers, and the radio correspondent describes the attack in an increasingly panicked voice until his audio feed abruptly goes dead.
Subsequent news updates describe an alien invasion that the U.S. military is unable to stop. Then the story is seen through the eyes of a survivor played by a young, then-unknown actor named Orson Welles. In the end, the Martians succumb to some sort of Earthly microbes.
Because so many people were fooled by the broadcast, there was an outcry against the show’s creators for the program’s faux realism and deceptive format. In a news conference the following day, Welles apologized.
I was reminded of the “War of the Worlds” episode on Saturday, as I watched President Trump — flanked by fellow Martians J.D. Vance, Marco Rubio, and Pete Hegseth — announcing that the United States had just bombed three nuclear sites in Iran. Trump managed to get through 17 seconds of teleprompter text, ending with his carefully read pronunciations of the targeted sites, before going off on a ramble about how “everybody has heard those names for years” (Really?) and how the bombs would stop “Iran’s nuclear indrucement [sic] capacity.” Perhaps he meant “enrichment,” but who knows?
He then freestyled a weave about how Iran’s “specialty” was “blowing off arms and legs,” before going on to congratulate fellow warmonger Bibi Netanyahu, adding that he and the Israeli prime minister “had worked as a team like perhaps no team has ever worked before.” Right. Beavis and Butt-Head would like a word.
After threatening Iran with another bombing and bragging how “there are many targets left” that would be “easy to attack,” Trump wrapped things up by praising his “spectacular” generals and adding: “I just want to thank everybody, and in particular, God. I just want to say we love you, God. And we love our military.” I’m sure God was honored.
Within minutes, Fox News and other Trump-fluffers jumped into action, praising the president for his bold decisiveness and “courage.” GOP politicians raced to the nearest camera to kiss Trump’s ass. Democrats were quick to accuse Trump of overstepping his authority and violating the U.S. Constitution by launching military attacks without the approval of Congress, but it was mostly just more futile noise. And there were rumblings from some in MAGA world, who vaguely remembered that Trump had promised he wouldn’t drag the U.S. into another war. Oops.
For me, the whole affair brought back the “weapons of mass destruction” facade erected by George Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, and Colin Powell in order to invade Iraq in 2003. And we all remember how that worked out so very well.
War is never neat and clean. War is never spectacular, never easy. Nations that are attacked will retaliate, one way or another, no matter how “successful” the initial assault. Young people die in combat. Innocent men, women, and children become civilian collateral damage. Countries are destroyed. Cities are reduced to rubble. And victims don’t forget.
Remember their names: Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Gaza, and now Iran — places where hundreds of thousands of people died for lies, for politics, for machismo, for oil, for greed and ambition, and to deflect attention from domestic issues.
Now we’ve been sucked into another conflagration in the Middle East by a man with no concept of — or concern for — the potential destruction and death he’s enabled. For Trump, it’s all a show, about as real to him as “The War of the Worlds.” Except this time, the whole world is the audience, taking it all in and wishing it weren’t true.
