My favorite holiday is normally July 4. My inner patriotism comes out when I watch A Capital Fourth (PBS). The playing of patriotic songs before a large crowd in sight of the Capitol with fireworks in the background moves me. I most like seeing the various service bands and chorales performing their divisions’ military anthems–makes me want to go find my old Army uniform.

This year my patriotism is at its lowest ebb as our nation seems to move in same direction that Nazi Germany did in the 1930s. Recently President Trump flew to Florida just to visit the construction of a “concentration camp” in the middle of the Everglades. ICE agents wear masks and work in swarms to arrest brown-skinned people in California who are waiting at a bus stop to go fight fires or outside a Home Depot seeking day work.

Some of them are criminals but very few. Some are American citizens. Most are likely illegal immigrants who in most cases have been living in the US for years escaping climate change, political oppression, and working very hard at jobs most Americans will not take.

The secrecy surrounding their arrests prevents us from knowing who they are. The Constitution has been suspended. The Supreme Court allows the Trump administration to ignore the right to a trial.

Homeland Secretary Kristi Noem is one of President Trump’s favorite props for media shows of the captured. I am sure he knows my male gaze will go toward Homeland Secretary Noem: she shows off her fine figure in tight clothes.

Her cuteness is juxtaposed with shirtless young men and husky cops. One photo shows a group of the captured squatting uncomfortably while manacled. I find the images repulsive, though I admit they pop on websites and Entertainment Tonight.

Joe Biden is famous for saying over and over throughout his political life that “America is the only country founded on an idea.” That idea is summed up in The Declaration of Independence and has served us well for 249 years. We are supposed to be the country that is different. We have an idea about the equality of all people that binds us together in a system of law and order that has been working pretty well since of our invention by the open-minded enlightened founding fathers.

The MAGA-controlled Congress is now an extension of an administration that is literally afraid to buck the boss. Our Constitutionally mandated deliberative body is an arm of the Executive branch. I see more than a few parallels to the Fascist and Nazi dictators that were as popular in the 1930s as MAGA has become. The trains did start running on time in Italy and Germany. Order was restored via strong man dictatorial control.

That new order led to WW II and my parents’ participation in an effort to save democracy. I took pride in that as I watched A Capital Fourth but deep down I am very uneasy about the MAGA movement’s steps toward what could set up a totalitarian state that replaces our democracy.

The essence of the Christian roots of America is best said in the Sermon on the Mount. I reduce all the “Blessed are the . . .” to the Golden Rule: Treat others as you want to be treated.

How have we become a nation that sanctions the cruelty of concentration camps in Florida and banishment of brown-skinned people by ICE agents wearing masks to cruel prisons in the dictatorship of El Salvador?

I hope that the only country founded on the idea of equality of for all is not becoming a country gathering around an idea of hatred for the other and permanent division.