An email from George Takei for myDemocrats.org:
Just a few weeks after my fifth birthday, in the spring of 1942, my parents got my younger brother, my baby sister, and me up very early, hurriedly dressed us, and quickly started to pack.
When my brother and I looked out the window of our living room, we saw two soldiers marching up the driveway, bayonets fixed to their rifles. They banged on our front door and ordered us out of the house. We could take only what we could carry with us.
We were loaded on to train cars with other Japanese-American families, with guards stationed at both ends of each car as though we were criminals, and sent two-thirds of the way across the country to an internment camp in the swamps of Arkansas.
For nearly three years, barbed wire, sentry towers, and armed guards marked home. Mass showers, lousy meals in crowded mess halls, and a searchlight following me as I ran from our barracks to the latrine in the middle of the night -- in case I was trying to escape -- became normal.
So when I hear Donald Trump's transition advisors talk about building a registry of Muslims and his surrogates using the internment of Japanese-Americans as their model, I am outraged—because I remember the tears streaming down my mother's face as we were torn away from our home. And I am resolved to raise my voice and say, loudly and clearly, that this is not who we are.
My mother was born in Sacramento, my father grew up in San Francisco, and my siblings and I were born in Los Angeles. We were American citizens, as proud of our country as we were of our Japanese heritage. But in the fear and mass hysteria of wartime, none of that mattered. When our government allowed hatred and racism to overtake our values, nothing else mattered.
We cannot allow our country to be led down that dark path ever again.
... I am committed to fighting for our values, our democracy, and the moral character of our nation. And I am committed to standing with the Democratic Party against bigotry and oppression for the next four years and beyond, no matter what form it takes. I hope you will do the same.
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TWEET OF THE DAY
BLAST FROM THE PAST
At Daily Kos on this date in 2009—GOP health care derangement syndrome: Stop me if you've heard this one:
Government takeover! Destroying America! The end of the world as we know it!
Yes, we've heard it all before. But did you know how many times, and for how long?
The fact is that the Republican Party told teabaggers' grandmas (of "death panel" fame) that Social Security was going to be the end of America. And today you can't swing a euthanized cat without hitting a Republican at a microphone insisting he's Social Security's greatest champion.
Republicans likewise told teabaggers' dads that Medicare would be the end of America. And today you can't swing a ... oh yeah, you've heard that one.
Today, of course, Republicans will spend the entire day telling teabaggers themselves that the health insurance reform bill will be the end of America.
Gosh, poor America! That's a lotta ends!
Not sure you remember just how sure Republicans were about all those ends? Remind yourself with this trip down Fevered Nightmare Lane.
On today’s Kagro in the Morning show: Time to prepare yourself for Thanksgiving with Trump voting relatives. What lies ahead for Obamacare? For Medicare? Speaking of preparing yourself, it’s time to get ready for an era of unparalleled corruption! Why wait for January? Trump isn’t!
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