Kilmar Agrego Garcia | The Direction of Intention

What’s In A Name? [David’s blog on Two Artists Tuesday]

Posted on August 26, 2025 by davidrobinsoncreative

When at long last the humidity and heat broke, when the evening air was cool, we took a slow walk along the lake. It was a reprieve from the heavy air that seemed to me a metaphor for the state of the nation. Oppressive. Incessant.

Walking is for us an act of re-balancing. When it is “all too much” we walk to re-enter the present moment. For me in particular, walking gets-me-out-of-my-head or at the very least slows the pace of thought to something graspable. These past many weeks we’ve rarely walked. The heat and humidity was too much.

As Kerri took photos of the pastel sky, I breathed in the cool evening air, breezes from off the lake, and I thought of The Crucible.

Arthur Miller’s play, The Crucible, was written during the hysteria of the McCarthy era. At the end of the play, John Proctor has a choice, to sign his name to a lie, or to be executed. Wrestling with the untenable choice, he ultimately cannot bring himself to sign away his name:

“Because it is my name! Because I cannot have another in my life! Because I lie and sign myself to lies! Because I am not worth the dust on the feet of them that hang! How may I live without my name? I have given you my soul; leave me my name!'”

He could not live with himself if he signed his name to a lie that was being used to justify the murder of his neighbors and friends.

It is a play as relevant today as in 1953 when it was written. Joseph McCarthy eventually lost all credibility – he lost his name – when much of what he claimed was proved to be false.

Call it witchcraft. Call it communist hysteria. Call it woke socialism…Every single horror enacted in the past several months is built upon a lie. There is no national emergency at our borders. The crime in Washington D.C is at a 30 year low. The voter fraud in the United States is statistically zero. Mail in ballots are among the securest ways to vote. There was no emergency necessitating the president to take away congress’ power of the tariff. The 2020 election was not stolen. Democrats are not rabid socialists attempting to ruin the nation. “Waste, abuse and fraud” was – and is – a straw man for gutting our government and our standing in the world.

It’s all a lie just as McCarthyism and the communist hysteria was a lie perpetuated to justify political repression and a power grab.

It is bracing that so many willingly sign their names to the lies that are now being used to justify the murder and abuse of our neighbors and friends – here and abroad. Looking at the pastel sky, grateful for the return of the cool, I wondered how long it will be before the heavy lie catches up with those so eager to sign away their names.

It always catches up. Lies collapse on themselves: they eventually turn and feed upon the very people who perpetuate them. Just ask Rudy Giuliani. Witness what he did with his name. The only question is how many people of integrity, how many John Proctors or Kilmar Abrego Garcias will be disappeared, how many decent people will be vilified, their good names smeared and erased, before the heat breaks, before the manufactured hysteria retreats, before cooler heads and competent minds reclaim the democratic ideals and the power of the nation?

read Kerri’s blogpost about THE PASTEL SKY

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Filed under: Identity, Merely A Thought Monday, Power | Tagged: Arthur Miller, artistry, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, hysteria, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, Kilmar Agrego Garcia, McCarthy Era, name, power, power grab, repression, reputation, story, studio melange, The Crucible, the melange, woke | 1 Comment »

All Of Us [David’s blog on KS Friday]

Posted on April 18, 2025 by davidrobinsoncreative

There are some small cracks of light. Cory Booker’s marathon speech on the floor of the senate, the thousands attending Bernie Sanders and AOC’s rallies. And then recently, a possibility that finally – finally – carried an action-beyond-words, something that could impede this march to authoritarianism:

“The president of North America’s Building Trades Unions, Sean McGarvey, received a standing ovation when he said to a room full of his fellow union workers: “We need to make our voices heard. We’re not red, we’re not blue. We’re the building trades, the backbone of America. You want to build a $5 billion data center? Want more six-figure careers with health care, retirement, and no college debt? You don’t call Elon Musk, you call us!… And yeah, that means all of us. All of us. Including our brother [International Association of Sheet Metal, Air, Rail and Transportation Workers] apprentice Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who we demand to be returned to us and his family now! Bring him home!” ~ Heather Cox Richardson. Letters from an American, April 13, 2025

Kilmar Abrego Garcia, wrongfully deported to prison in El Salvador, is a union brother, a sheet metal apprentice. His brothers and sisters in the union want him home. They want due process respected and restored. For all of us.

“Let’s be very clear about exactly what’s happening here: President Donald J. Trump is claiming the power to ignore the due process of the law guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution, declare someone is a criminal, kidnap them, send them to prison in a third country, and then claim that there is no way to get that person back.” ~ Letters from an American, April 13, 2025

In case it’s not clear, we are experiencing a Constitutional crisis. The administration is ignoring the judicial branch. The elimination of due process is the straw that breaks democracy’s back.

As individuals we have no recourse beyond our vote – and it is currently not clear that we will have another chance to exercise that basic right. We can speak. We can gather and rally but have no leverage with an executive that refuses to acknowledge or adhere to the law. He is supported by a Congress that refuses to perform its duty as check-and-balance to the executive. His hand-picked Attorney General, in the midst of egregious and obvious crimes by this administration, is great at playing hear-no-evil, see-no-evil but is otherwise a useless toady. The Supremes rolled over and died when granting presidential immunity. Is anyone surprised that the executive is ignoring their ruling?

Keep in mind, due process is a basic right – as is voting in a free and fair election. Any administration that suspends due process under the law will need to either corrupt the election system (as is currently happening) or terminate voting altogether – by invoking the Insurrection Act (as is currently being discussed).

In the midst of so much darkness, union president Sean McGarvey opened a small crack of light. Unions leverage power by stopping work. They shut down the machinery of production until power is willing to listen.

I gave myself permission to dream: we could stop this nonsense now if we joined a nationwide union work-stoppage. If we made clear to our government that they should fear us; we should not fear them (as the elimination of due process is meant to achieve). As Sean McGarvey said, “We need to make our voices heard. We’re not red, we’re not blue…”

We are – all of us – the citizens of the United States, the backbone and beating heart of America, a democracy, guaranteed fundamental rights in our Constitution.

We need not be passive during the assault on our basic rights as guaranteed in The Constitution. We do, however, need to recognize that we are neither red nor blue; we all lose equally if Kilmar Abrego Garcia is not brought home. We lose all – if the basic rights guaranteed in the Constitution are not honored and extended equally to all people.

It is way past time for the backbone of America to step off the job and sit for a spell. If Congress and the courts cannot – or will not – do their jobs, perhaps the citizens should follow their lead and stop doing their jobs. Perhaps we should cease productivity – all of us – until the oligarchs and the authoritarian-wanna-be, the hapless Congress and kowtowing Supreme Court recognize that working people are the engine that fuels democracy – and capitalistic democracy is the system that feeds their out-of-proportion prosperity. And, more to the point, remind them that they work for us – all of us – and not the other way around.