Zero Day: The Streaming Series Or The Truth?
By
Leonard Zwelling
Without giving away anything about this gripping, new six-part series on Netflix, it asks a very relevant question for today’s America. What is it going to take to get the citizens of this country to wake up to what the extremists on the right and left are doing to tear us apart? The evidence from the behavior of both parties at the President’s speech to Congress suggests we are nowhere close yet.
This seems particularly germane at the moment.
I have just been told that the U. S. Citizen and Immigration Service has issued an order from the Department of Homeland Security requiring all aliens to register with DHS or risk the threat of “criminal and civil penalties.” In other words, that famous line from the World War II movies of “show me your papers” has become reality in Trump’s America. (It was really “May we see your papers, please?” from Casablanca.)
I guess we should have seen this coming. The fear the President has drummed up about killer illegals roaming the streets of the United States looking to do harm would gradually extend to people here legally. Yes, illegal criminals should be deported, but most illegals are not criminals. They are cutting your lawn and building your house. A friend recently had a man who worked for her for twenty-five years deported after he dropped his son at school. Somehow this all seems wrong.
I cannot imagine how many graduate students to which this new edict will apply. I believe there are even MD Anderson executives that fall into this category of “alien.” I suspect that the rest of us will have to have our passports with us at all times soon enough.
In theory, there is nothing intrinsically wrong with having proof of citizenship on your person, but the culture of a free U.S. has never required this before. It is not Zero Day that our current environment reminds me of, as much as Phillip Roth’s The Plot Against America set in pre-WWII New Jersey where a fictionalized presidential contest is shaping up between FDR and the Trump-like Charles Lindbergh and his America First backers. This latter group is mega-MAGA.
Zero Day is right. We need to find a way to allow the truth to triumph in a social media-clogged internet full of left- and right-wing conspiracy theories and lies. This is going to be difficult now with the biggest liar sitting behind the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office.
Whether my Trump-loving friends like it or not, the President’s shunning of our European friends and getting cozy with our Russian adversaries is not an example of “keep your friends close and your enemies closer.” It’s just plain foolishness. So are the threat (and imposition) of tariffs in a globalized world where iPhones have parts from many countries as do American cars.
With the Musk-led mass of indiscriminate firings of thousands of federal employees (with some vital ones having to be rehired), the citizens of America are slowly waking up to the price they elected to pay for a secure southern border. We should be able to have a secure border without having to prove we belong here. However, give Trump credit. He was right all along when he said Biden’s need for legislation to fix our border was simply false.
Many of us warned about just this occurring. Civil rights will be next now that employment rights mean nothing. The Fourteenth Amendment is about to be shredded.
Next will come the lack of relief in courts of law that are under the thumb of the executive branch as is Congress.
The United States is in real trouble. Kamala Harris surely would not have been the answer. Donald Trump doesn’t even understand the question.
His speech was a tour de force, well-delivered and well-constructed. The Democrats ridiculous auction signs of protest displayed a lack of any ideas that would provide an alternative to the Trump plans.
The country is going the path of Trump. He took a page from Joel Osteen’s playbook with his speech. “No bad news.” If Trump turns out to be right in his strategies for the economy, dealing with our enemies, and dealing with our allies, he will get full credit.
If
