<![CDATA[Ailantha

<![CDATA[Ailantha - Blog]]>Fri, 07 Aug 2026 02:07:54 -0700Weebly<![CDATA[Dr. Fauci In The Hyenas' Den]]>Mon, 03 Aug 2026 07:00:00 GMThttps://www.ailantha.com/blog/dr-fauci-in-the-hyenas-den

Anthony Fauci, born in 1940, grew up in Brooklyn, New York in an apartment over his parent's drug store where he and his sister helped out. He was the captain of his high school basketball team.
In college he studied Greek and worked summers on a construction gang. He graduated first in his class from Cornell Medical College where he focused on infectious diseases and the immune system.
After finishing his medical residency in 1968 Fauci joined the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, of which he was Director from 1984 to 2022. In 2023 he joined the teaching staff of Georgetown School of Medicine, Division of Infectious Diseases, where he still teaches.
According to Wikipedia, among his vast body of work and contributions to the fields of science and medicine:
"Fauci has been at the forefront of U.S. efforts to contend with viral diseases like HIV/AIDS, SARS, the Swine flu, MERS, Ebola, and COVID-19. He played a significant role in the early 2000s in creating the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR)[24] and in driving development of biodefense drugs and vaccines following the 9/11 terrorist attacks.[25] Fauci has been a visiting professor at many medical centers and has received numerous honorary doctorates from universities in the U.S. and abroad.[26]
He developed therapies for formerly fatal diseases such as polyarteritis nodosa, granulomatosis with polyangiitis, and lymphomatoid granulomatosis.
Fauci discovered how to re-dose cancer drugs in a way that turned a 98 percent mortality rate of the disorder vasculitis into a 93 percent remission rate.[14]"
And it was Dr. Fauci who who led our country's response to the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic.

And though Anthony Fauci is among the world's most respected, prolific and cited scientists, last Wednesday, July 29, the United States Senate Chamber was transformed into a Roman Circus Maximus where the day's scheduled blood sport spectacle was the tearing apart by Senate Republicans of 85-year-old Dr. Fauci.
The crowds who cried out for Dr. Fauci's blood were still enraged six years later that at the height of the 2020 pandemic and before a COVID vaccine had been developed, Fauci advised wearing masks, social distancing, and temporarily shutting down non-essential public gatherings in order to fight the wildfire spread of the disease.
But what truly ignited their rage was his crime of inciting the ire of Donald Trump and, by extension, the ire of the whole of Trump's MAGA world base.
Fauci dared to speak out during the pandemic against Trump's promotion of scientifically unproven and dangerous snake oil cures for COVID, such as ingesting a livestock de-wormer, taking an anti-malarial drug, injecting or drinking household disinfectants like Clorox, and exposing the body's internal organs to high doses of ultraviolet rays.

And for that offense Trump and his minions and sycophants spent years attacking, harassing, deriding, and threatening Anthony Fauci to the point that, for his safety and the safety of his family, Fauci had to hire private security. And Joe Biden, before he left office, issued Fauci a preemptive Presidential pardon, also for his protection against any political retribution.
But the day of political retribution arrived anyway, and last week there he was, alone in the center of the arena while Republican Senators on a special committee, small men immeasurably far beneath Anthony Fauci in stature and intelligence, attacked him like a pack of unloosed hyenas miraculously granted the twin gifts of speech and melodrama,

...mocking him, deriding him, belittling him, accusing him of being responsible for the COVID pandemic, of being in league with a Chinese laboratory they claimed leaked the virus, calling him a narcissist, a megalomaniac, a liar, a disgrace, a criminal, a self-dealer who used his office to enrich himself during the pandemic while millions were dying; they asked him if he was sorry for what he'd done, demanded he apologize, laughed at him, spit personal insults and even obscenities at him, grinding out so much red meat to entertain and excite the MAGA voting base while thrusting themselves into the spotlight.
Anthony Fauci sat through the ordeal in silence except to invoke his right to remain silent while these shameless human hyenas performed on and on for the pleasure of their MAGA base and their MAGA master.

I read that Anthony Fauci was raised a Catholic but also considers himself a humanist who has faith in the goodness of mankind.
I pray that last Wednesday's crucible was not enough to make him lose that faith.

References:
https://www.c-span.org/program/senate-committee/dr-anthony-fauci-testifies-on-origins-of-covid-19-pandemic/683492

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/29/us/politics/fauci-testifies-rand-paul.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthony_Fauci

]]><![CDATA[Cyclosporiasis Shamed; Or, Are Cyclospora Democratic or Republican?]]>Sat, 25 Jul 2026 07:00:00 GMThttps://www.ailantha.com/blog/cyclosporiasis-shamed-or-are-cyclospora-democratic-or-republican

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Cyclosporiasis Shamed; Or, Are Cyclospora Democratic or Republican?

Recently I was out brunching with The Posse, as my group of lady friends refer to ourselves when we get together weekly to nosh and discuss many things.
Or, when we're not out noshing, we're just as likely to be out representing for the causes we stand aligned on.

However, on this particular day, after my meal arrived, my usual order of a Golden Waffle with a side of fruit,

...one of the ladies asked me if I was going to eat that fruit.
For a brief moment I thought maybe she wanted my fruit. But no, quite the contrary: my friend was concerned about me eating the fruit, there being a nationwide - or, I don't know, maybe it's just in the Midwest at the moment - anyway, as most of us know, there's an outbreak of a dreadful parasite called Cyclospora that causes a dreadful disease called Cyclosporiasis,

...the current epicenter of which appears to be in the Toledo, Ohio area.
Granted, Toledo is over 100 miles from where we are in Columbus, but still, who can say what 100 miles means in parasite migration?
True, most of the warnings about avoiding Cyclosporiasis seem to be about avoiding lettuce, a certain brand and kind of lettuce having been so far fingered as the chief culprit in the spread of that awful sickness. However, there's also a school of thought that maintains that we should avoid eating all fresh produce for the time being, or at least all fresh produce that has not been meticulously washed at home, preferably with a parasite-killing produce spray.
Anyway, my Posse, on the day that I ordered the fruit, seemed to be in agreement that these days going to a restaurant and ordering and consuming fresh fruit, the provenance, handling and washing of which we don't know, is playing Cyclosporiasis roulette.
However, despite my friends' concern, I ate my waffle with fruit anyway. I also asked a couple of them if, since they had no intention of eating the fresh blueberries that came with their blueberry pancakes, I could have their blueberries. Which they gave me, seeing as I was heck-bent upon throwing caution and good sense to the wind and eating any and all fresh restaurant fruit during a Cyclosporiasis outbreak.

Now, I want to make one thing clear: I'm not a Cyclosporiasis denier. It's just that I really like fruits with my waffle. And I really like blueberries. So, I, you know, ate them.
Later in the day I got to pondering about the politics of disease; I mean, how the seriousness of some diseases is embraced by Democrats, while the seriousness of others is embraced by Republicans. For example, Democrats have been all about preventing the spread of COVID-19 and measles, while Republicans worry more about the Ebola virus hitching a ride and landing on our shores.
However, the Cyclospora parasite seems not to have any particular party affiliation; that is, neither party has yet tried to score any political points from its noxious existence. It seems to be a bipartisan bug that we're all, whatever our persuasion, equally worried about.
Well, okay, maybe some of us not quite as much as others.

]]><![CDATA[The Joy Of The World Cup]]>Tue, 21 Jul 2026 07:00:00 GMThttps://www.ailantha.com/blog/the-joy-of-the-world-cup

As of yesterday the World Cup, that apex of international socceerdom, was, alas, over for 2026 and will not return to our blue green globe for another four years.
Now, anyone who knows me even a little will attest to the fact that I am the most inveterate of sports non-fans. The competitive athletic games from the local to the international level that rock the world of those around me barely catch my attention if at all, and then only vaguely and in passing. (I'm ashamed to admit that this was true even when it was my own children who were participants in said athletic games.

My children loved sports. I loved my children. I still couldn't make myself care whether their teams won or lost. I was just glad they were out getting some fresh air and running around with the other kids).
But this year I loved the World Cup. I loved watching, listening to, and reading about - well, not the games, of course; I watched not a minute of a single game and had no idea of who was playing who when or where.
What I loved about the World Cup - and followed closely with much joy - were the reactions of the first-time visitors to the United States who'd come here for the games. I loved reading about their surprise in discovering our country and their delight in all things American.

My Facebook feed was full of videos of visitors from other countries reacting to their first experience of American foods, stores, restaurants, highways, air conditioning, and other parts and parcels of Americana.

And how fun it was to learn of our guests' immediate addiction to that most common, taken-for-granted, and ubiquitous of American condiments, ranch dressing.

But most wonderful was hearing of their surprise upon discovering that, rather than being 360 million iterations of Donald Trump as they had feared, Americans were actually friendly, generous, welcoming people.

My heart was lifted by every Facebook reel, every news article, every radio spot about how much World Cup visitors loved us Americans, our food, and our country. It made me feel patriotic, proud to be an American, proud of my fellow countrymen and women. It was a cool, refreshing rain on my parched American soul.
I can't say I know which team ultimately won the World Cup. But I know that the American people, and all those visitors who we came to know and who came to know us, were the true winners.

Which is, I believe, what it's really all about. Or should be.

]]><![CDATA[So This Is Why We Started A War With Iran]]>Thu, 16 Jul 2026 07:00:00 GMThttps://www.ailantha.com/blog/so-this-is-why-we-started-a-war-with-iran Two mornings ago I came into the kitchen where Tom sat reading the news.
"You gotta see the front page of the New York Times," he said. "You're not gonna believe it, it's crazy! It's like something out of a spy novel, except that nobody would believe it!"
I pulled up the front page article my mate was talking about:

As it turned out, he was right. It was crazy. It was like something our of a spy novel that nobody would believe. And if the source hadn't been the New York Times I wouldn't have believed it either.
The article tells the story of the outrageously bizarre plot cooked up by Israel and years in the baking to bring down the Iranian regime and replace it with...Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
That's right, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad: the Death to Israel, Death to America, Death (or at least torture) to Anyone Who Opposed Him, nuclear-proliferating hard-liner who ruled Iran with a cruel iron fist from 2005 to 2013,

...and who likely would have ruled shorter had elections there been fair and democratic, or longer had the Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei not decided his time was up.
That Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
Four New York Times reporters who were covering the U.S.-Israeli war against Iran,

...got wind of a story that Israeli operatives had spent years grooming their country's supposedly despised enemy - Ahmadinejad - to take over Iran once Israel, with the help of the United States, managed to overthrow the current Iranian regime.
Apparently once he was no longer in power and denied permission to ever again run for President, Ahmadinejad became a critic of the Iranian government and its brutality against its citizens. He became more a man and friend of the people. He said that if he were ever again President, he would normalize relations with Israel. He even praised Donald Trump during Trump's first term as President.
Which, I suppose, begs the question of whether Ahmadinejad was courting Israel before Israel began courting him? But that's not clear at this point.
In any case, according to the story (which, with a little digging, I found more pieces of in three related Times articles referenced below), at some point some years ago Israeli agents contacted Ahmadinejad and recruited him as their choice to be Iran's future leader. They met with him in secret, sometimes overseas. They gave him money for housing and travel.
In 2024 the head of Mossad, Israel's intelligence agency, met undercover with Ahmadinejad in Budapest, and sometime after that Mossad contacted the C.I.A., apprising the United States of Israel's plan to topple the Iranian government and install Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as the new President.
The plan, as Israel envisioned it, involved not only the United States and Israel launching a bombing campaign against Iran, but recruiting and training Kurdish rebels based in Northern Iraq to carry out a ground invasion at the same time into Iran to help defeat the Iranian military.
Now, at what point the United States bought into this plan isn't clear. But we were in on it. Which begs another question: Were the supposed nuclear negotiations between Iran and the U.S. held in February 2026 days before Israel and the U.S. began air strikes on Iran just a smoke screen? What else could those talks have been, and how could they have been meant to succeed since the plan with Israel to bomb Iran and overthrow its government was already in place?
In any case, that plan fell apart on the day it began. On February 28, 2026, Israeli bombers killed the Iranian leadership and American bombers killed 120 school children. The Kurdish rebel fighting force never materialized.
But here's the strangest twist of all: On that same first day the Israelis bombed the guard compound in front of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's home, killing all his body guards. After the strike a black car driven by Mossad agents arrived on the scene, picked up Ahmadinejad and whisked him away to a safe house somewhere in Iran. From which he soon after disappeared, the circumstances of which are not clear.
What does seem clear, though is that Ahmadinejad is now in the hands of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, Iran's powerful military unit that answers to the Supreme Leader. Who was not brought down by Israeli or American bombs after all, but only replaced.
And the war goes on. But now what is it for?

References:
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/13/us/politics/israel-mahmoud-ahmadinejad-iran.html

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/13/world/iran-israel-ahmadinejad-bangkok-fire.html

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/19/us/politics/iran-israel-us-leader-ahmadinejad.html

]]><![CDATA[What Lindsay Graham Never Had The Chance To Do]]>Sun, 12 Jul 2026 12:58:17 GMThttps://www.ailantha.com/blog/what-lindsay-graham-never-had-the-chance-to-do

It's Gospel truth that none of us knows the day or the hour when our soul will be required of us. And yet, whether one held U.S. Senator Lindsay Graham in esteem or contempt, who among us wasn't shocked to wake up to the news this morning that this man who had loomed so large in the national consciousness for decades was dead? Not only did Lindsay Graham die suddenly last night, but only hours after returning from Ukraine, where he was involved in a diplomatic mission of the highest level with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

Someone once told me they believed that we don't die until we've finished everything we need to do on earth. Appealing as that thought may be, people die too early too often to put much stock in it.
In any case, I don't believe it was true for Lindsay Graham. Though he accomplished much, for better or worse, during his lifetime, and his last undertaking during his time on earth was certainly a significant one that played out on the world stage, still I believe there was one more to-do Lindsay Graham probably intended to take care of someday, but now never will.
I believe that Senator Graham was likely planning, when the time was right and he felt it was safe, on renouncing Donald Trump. I say this because in the past, at times when Graham had nothing to lose and nothing to gain by being honest and standing up for his convictions, he did condemn Trump.
Back in 2015 Graham excoriated Donald Trump as a "race-baiting, xenophobic, religious bigot." In the election year 2016 he said, "If we nominate Trump, we will get destroyed... and we will deserve it." In those days he called Trump a jackass. He refused to vote for him in the 2016 Presidential election.
But then a few months after Donald Trump won the 2016 election, Lindsay Graham turned from a fiery principled critic of Trump to Trump's most faithful ally and staunchest defender.
That is, until the MAGA attack on the Capital in 2021, after which Graham seemed to have unearthed his moral righteousness, saying of his former relationship with Trump, "All I can say is a count me out. Enough is enough."
But then a short time later, when it became clear that the members of the Republican Congress lacked the courage to convict Trump for his role in inciting the Capitol attack, Lindsay Graham once again tossed aside his integrity and followed the Republican majority in voting against Donald Trump's conviction.
And when Donald Trump's star once again began to rise, Lindsay Graham once again hitched the wagon of his political career to that star.

But in quiet moments of self-honesty, did Lindsay Graham not know that he sold his soul, and did he not plan someday, when Donald Trump was out of office and influence, on repenting his relationship with Trump and publicly buying back his soul and his legacy?
I'll bet he did. But even Lindsay Graham didn't know the day or the hour his soul would be required of him and his legacy set in time.

References:
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/from-staunch-critic-to-fierce-ally-grahams-long-strange-and-consequential-friendship-with-trump

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cvgj25j6nmeo

]]><![CDATA[Why They Could Get Away With What Graham Platner Can't]]>Wed, 08 Jul 2026 07:00:00 GMThttps://www.ailantha.com/blog/why-they-could-get-away-with-what-graham-platner-cant

Why They Could Get Away With What Graham Platner Can't

As of tonight, Wednesday, July 8, it's over for Graham Platner, the magnetic progressive populist oyster farmer who became the Democratic Party's Great Blue Collar Hope for winning back the United States Senate.

As the whole country by now knows, Platner was accused by a former girlfriend of entering her house and raping her while he was blackout drunk, a state caused by a vast intake of alcohol during which a person is capable of walking, talking, and committing rape or other forms of violence, but incapable of remembering later what transpired while they were intoxicated.
Graham Platner denies he raped his girlfriend. That's likely because he doesn't remember raping her.
True, Platner had a history of alcohol abuse, ill treatment of women, and an erased Nazi tattoo. But those of us who were rooting for him were willing to overlook his sins of the past because his seemed to be a story of redemption, of going and sinning no more, of a turning away from his reprobate past and a recovery from the PTSD that stoked his substance abuse and the subsequent abusive behavior it caused.
But rape, even committed while in a state of trauma-induced blackout drunkenness, and even if it happened years ago, was a sin too far, an aggression that wouldn't stand. This was disheartening for those of us who saw in Graham Platner not only a chance of winning back the Senate for the Democrats but a champion for progressive policies on issues such as healthcare, housing, climate, education, billionaires paying their fair share in taxes, and more.
But what Graham Platner stands for now doesn't matter. Democrats, myself included, have dropped and renounced him. His political career is dead, along with our hopes for what he might have accomplished.
Still, I found myself pondering with my mate Tom how it could be that someone like Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth could get away with having paid off a woman he drugged and raped in a hotel room and, according to former coworkers, frequently coming in drunk to his job at Fox News. Not to mention his Nazi tattoos, which he didn't even feel the need to remove.

Or how RFK Jr. could breeze by an accusation of sexual assault by his children's nanny with the excuse that he wasn't a choirboy.

Or how the accusations by dozens of women of rape and sexual assault against Donald Trump didn't keep him from being twice elected President of the United States, or continually loved by his MAGA base and supported by his Party faithful.

"It's this simple," said Tom. "These days a Republican can get away with it. A Democrat can't. The Democrats just won't put up with that kind of behavior in their leaders anymore."
I guess that's why I'm a Democrat.

]]><![CDATA[My Bicentennial Story For America's 250th]]>Sat, 04 Jul 2026 07:00:00 GMThttps://www.ailantha.com/blog/my-bicentennial-story-for-americas-250th

My Bicentennial Story For America's 250th

Today being a very special birthday for our country, I thought I'd share my 4th of July memory - which happens to be my favorite of all favorite 4th of July memories - of where I spent our nation's last big birthday celebration, the Bicentennial, on July 4, 1976.
Like millions of Americans, I spent that very special Fourth of July at a family picnic. Our picnic was in a lovely meadow outside a small village in Hungary a few kilometers from the Soviet border.
In the spring of 1976 I was working for the U.S. Army as a crafts instructor on a post in Aschaffenburg, Germany,

...and was engaged to a young captain named Tom Liszkay.

By May Tom's tour of duty was up and I'd left my job and we were touring around Europe by Eurailpass for a few months before returning home to the States.

Tom being between a first and second generation American - his mother was a Hungarian immigrant and his father was born in the United States of Hungarian immigrants,

...we decided to include in our travels a trip to Hungary to visit his uncles, aunts, and cousins there.
Now, in those days Hungary was part of the Soviet Bloc, a Communist state under strict control of the Soviet Union, as Russia was known at that time. The United States and the Soviet Union being Cold War enemies back then, for an American to travel behind the Iron Curtain was a weence daring. And scary.
But back in those days Tom and I were young and more than a weence daring. And only a little scared. (Though Tom, with his Hungarian name, was slightly more scared than I was).
Before our trip we needed to visit the Hungarian Embassy in Cologne, Germany, to acquire visas to enter Hungary,

...and permits to travel around the country.

(We were told we would be required to register with the police upon our arrival in each new town. If we did not, we were warned that upon leaving Hungary our travel passes would be checked at the border and if there were not dates stamped on our passes reflecting everywhere we'd been...well, I don't know exactly what would have happened. Of the four families we visited, nobody wanted to take us to the police station and two absolutely refused to. I suppose that with armed soldiers patrolling the streets everywhere we went, people wanted to stay under the radar. We somehow got out without any adverse consequences, though).
From Cologne we traveled to Berlin, since were in the neighborhood,

...and from Berlin on to Vienna.
In the last days of June we crossed from Austria into Hungary, where we would crisscross the country visiting Tom's relatives in the towns of:
Győr,

...a good-sized city where Tom's uncle, aunt and cousin lived in a tiny apartment with a living room, a small kitchen, a bathroom and one bedroom. Tom told me that his uncle had once owned the whole building, but after the Communists appropriated the building and redistributed the apartments his family was allotted this one. Tom's aunt and uncle normally slept in the living room and his teenage cousin had the bedroom, but during our visit we were given the bedroom while the family slept in the living room.

From Győr we traveled to Pusztadobos,

...then Nyíregyháza,

...and Salgotarjan,

...where Tom's cousin, a hair dresser, gave me what she called a "beautiful frizura (hairdo)" so I would look good in Budapest, our last stop along the way,

...and which I thought was a more beautiful city than Vienna, in spite of the old bullet and mortar shell wounds in some of the buildings left over from the 1956 Hungarian revolution, when the country tried, but failed, to break free of the Soviet Union.
And, aside from the armed soldiers patrolling the streets in the cities and one young, bored functionary in the tiny village police department in Pusztadobos who obviously felt that it was the chance of a lifetime to meet and intimidate two American visitors, the Hungarians in general were the nicest, most generous, friendliest folks I've ever met. They didn't speak much English, Tom spoke - and taught me - only a few words of Hungarian, and yet we all managed to somehow communicate.
Which brings me to July 4, 1976, the Bicentennial. It so happened that our itinerary brought us to the village of Pusztadobos, the rural village on the Soviet border from which Tom's mother emigrated, on Saturday, July 3.
Soon after we arrived Tom's young cousins,

...took us for a walk around the village. It looked like a place out of a storybook. Some of the homes had thatched roofs. There were cherry trees growing along the paths.
At one point the children ran into some of their friends. During the course of their conversation I thought I heard the words "Abbot and Costello" repeated several times. Turned out I did.
Turned out there was going to be on television that night an old black and white Abbot and Costello movie from the 1950's, but apparently an American movie showing on TV - even an old black and white one - was a national event. Tom's relatives bought a special dessert from the bakery for us all to enjoy while watching Abbot and Costello, which we did.
The following day was Sunday, July 4. Tom's relatives owned a piece of farmland, and so they ordered a couple of taxis to take us out to the property. We then walked to a scenic spot for our picnic.
It was a lovely 4th of July, a balmy sunny day, us sitting under the trees on a blanket in the grass, eating our sausages and bread and plums, cobbling together conversation from the few words we understood of each other's languages, laughing and laughing. Our hosts seemed unaware that this day was a special one for Americans, and neither Tom nor I had the vocabulary to explain to them about the significance of the July 4th and the Bicentennial.
And yet it felt kind of wonderful to me, to be there on that 4th of July, making new friends whose language, culture, and life experiences were so different from mine, and realizing that our differences really didn't make any difference. We could still come together and find plenty of common ground. Somehow it felt so American.
Happy 250th 4th of July, Everyone. May we all someday have friends the whole world over.

]]><![CDATA[Thoughts On The Supreme Court's Decision On Birthright Citizenship]]>Tue, 30 Jun 2026 17:01:33 GMThttps://www.ailantha.com/blog/thoughts-on-the-supreme-courts-decision-on-birthright-citizenship

Thoughts On The Supreme Court's Decision On Birthright Citizenship

Today the Supreme Court of the United States of America handed down a decision on a case that the Supreme Court of United States of America should never have taken in the first place: that of whether the President of the United States has the power to delete our Constitutional rights by simply issuing an executive order.
The Constitutional right in question was that bestowed upon us by the first sentence of the Fourteenth Amendment, also known as the Citizenship Clause, which states:
All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.
And the President in question who sought to cancel out this inherent principle of our democracy with a quick stroke of his pen was...who else?

Now, in pondering why the Supreme Court agreed back in November of 2025 to hear this case that had previously been unequivocally struck down by lower courts, at first I thought, well, mayhaps a Trump-weary SCOTUS intended to hear the case, hand down a final ruling on the subject and shut up the face of Donald Trump about it once and for all. I mean, of course the Supreme Court wouldn't overrule the Fourteenth Amendment?
But then the Court's conservative majority, which has been fulfilling one after another of Trump's desires on his anti-immigrant wish list, just a few days ago gifted him with several especially cruel immigration rulings, among them one allowing Trump to end Temporary Protected Status for Haitian and Syrian refugees and another allowing his administration to turn away asylum seekers at our southern border.
This made me wonder: If Trump's hand-picked justices were cold-blooded enough to hand down what was in effect a death sentence to hundreds of thousands of Haitian and Syrian refugees and deny the right of human beings to seek asylum, a right that is a tenet of international law and dates back to ancient times, might not these same justices be jaded enough to allow Donald Trump to mutilate our Constitution and cause cataclysmic upheaval to our social order?
But then, today the Supreme Court handed down their decision to uphold our Fourteenth Amendment and reject Donald Trump's ploy to abolish it. Which felt like wonderful news until it sunk in that the verdict to keep our Constitution intact passed not unanimously or even nearly unanimously, but by a single vote, five to four.

Had just one more justice favored Trump with their vote, then those five could have thrown our constitution and our country into a crisis. Which makes today's ruling feel less a cause for celebration than a warning that our country is hanging under the sword of Damocles.

References:
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/supreme-court-meets-to-weigh-trumps-birthright-citizenship-restrictions-blocked-by-lower-courts

https://news.lee.net/news/nation-world/government-politics/on-immigration-supreme-court-accedes-to-trumps-restrictive-agenda/article_7805bb97-1824-585d-b255-6139bd87ad12.html

https://apnews.com/article/supreme-court-birthright-citizenship-trump-immigration-c73cf0c70bb550ebf0a55fafddbd935c

]]><![CDATA[Mission San Juan Capistrano, A Beautiful Monument To The Theft Of Land, Lives, And A Culture]]>Sat, 27 Jun 2026 07:00:00 GMThttps://www.ailantha.com/blog/mission-san-juan-capistrano-a-beautiful-monument-to-the-theft-of-land-lives-and-a-culture

Mission San Juan Capistrano, A Beautiful Monument To The Theft Of Land, Lives, And A Culture

...Continued from 6/19/2026:
On Wednesday, June 3, Tom and I left Fallbrook and soon thereafter we were on the scenic highway back to Los Angeles.

The town of San Juan Capistrano was along the way, so we decided to stop there and see the famous old Spanish mission where, I learned as part of my Catholic education, the swallows return every spring on Saint Joseph's Day, March 19, to nestle in the mission eaves.
However, as we were to learn, the swallows no longer come to the mission since their nests were cleaned out in the 1990's, but the birds still do return and settle in elsewhere around the town for the spring and summer (though we didn't manage to see any swallows during our visit).
The historic mission district of San Juan Capistrano appeared to be a tourist-friendly spot,

...in the center of which was our destination, the Mission San Juan Capistrano.

The entrance to the mission opens into a lovely courtyard landscaped with flowers and trees.

One can wander among the ruins of the mission's massive Great Stone Church, destroyed in an earthquake in 1812.

We walked along the colonnades of the mission veranda,

...which opened into rooms and artifacts from the past.

The posters and pictures on display in these rooms tell the mission's story.

Mission San Juan Capistrano was founded in 1776 by Father Junipero Serra, Spanish Franciscan missionary who accompanied the the army sent by the king of Spain to colonize the New Spain territories of Mexico and California.
For his part Junipero Serra oversaw the building of missions up and down the coast of California and the conversion of the region's indigenous people to Catholicism. For this Junipero Serra was made a Saint by Pope Francis in 2015.

From Father Serra's missions grew the major cities of California from San Diego to San Francisco. Serra introduced European crops and flowers which flourished in the area's Mediterranean climate and eventually turned the state into an agricultural giant spread with an abundant variety of blooming plant life.
Junipero Serra brought in the first cattle, which quickly proliferated and from which arose California's vast ranching industry.
California was born and grew from Juniper Serra and the Franciscan missions, and Mission San Juan Capistrano is called the jewel of these missions.

But in the words and images on display here there was a subtext that made only light reference to a massive ugly truth of Junipero Serra's missions that couldn't be missed by those of us who were already aware of it, and that truth, embedded in the pictures and posters of Mission San Juan Capistrano, is this:
That Mission San Juan Capistrano and all the Franciscan missions along the California coastline were built upon the backs of enslaved, cruelly mistreated indigenous people.
In this region it was the Acjachemen people who were baptized,

...then brought to the mission where they were enslaved and used as labor for the priests.

The society and traditions of the Acjachemen were taken from them by the Franciscans and replaced with European culture and religion.

Their land and way of life was stolen by the cattle ranchers.

And once inside the Mission, there was no escape for the Acjachemen. They were condemned to servitude for life.
Here's an excerpt from Wikipedia that was not among the artifacts at Mission San Juan Capstrano:

Nor was this excerpt from one of Serra's letters:
“In the matter of correcting the Indians,” Father Serra wrote to the governor of California in 1780, “when it appeared to us that punishment was deserved, they were flogged, or put into the stocks, according to the gravity of their offense.”

I did find this historian's understated, feather-light admonishment at the bottom of one of the posters:

It reads:
"As stewards of history it is important to consider scholars, historical records, and first hand accounts. For some, Serra’s legacy is questioned. Because of his leadership of the California missions, and thereby the system of Spanish colonialism, some hold Father Serra responsible for the loss of California Native American population and culture. As a leader, Serra oversaw Spain’s mission system which identified Native Americans as potential Spanish subjects and did not value the original native religion, culture or autonomy. A goal of the padres was to teach the indigenous people to live a life of European culture and societal norms while abandoning their own traditions. Furthermore, colonialism inadvertently introduced European diseases to the native Californians. Without immunities or modern medical knowledge, diseases spread quickly which caused the loss of thousands of Native Americans and decimated their population. There was great loss to the California Native American way of life during this time."
However, another poster offers this moral defense of Juniper Serra:

On the wall of the mission there is an inscription that reads, "Veritas Vos Liberabit,"

...which means, "The Truth Will Set You Free."
Whatever truth the indigenous people of California learned from Junipero Serra did not set them free, but enslaved and destroyed them. The least we can do centuries later is fully acknowledge the awful ugliness of that truth,

...instead of beatifying the man.

References:
https://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/30/us/attack-on-statue-of-new-saint-junipero-serra-digs-up-old-conflicts.html

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/16/opinion/junipero-serra-catholic-saint.html

]]><![CDATA[Here's What I Remember About My Mom]]>Wed, 24 Jun 2026 11:53:54 GMThttps://www.ailantha.com/blog/heres-what-i-remember-about-my-mom My mom, 98 years old, praying for a win for the Eagles.

Today is June 24, my mom's birthday. It's been five and a half years since she crossed over and, though she doesn't visit my thoughts as often as she used to, this morning I woke up and there she was, as alive as ever in my memory, images of her clicking by like a slide show in my mind.
She's smiling in every scene. That's how I remember my mother, always smiling. Smiling, laughing, singing - she could break into a song at anytime, much to my mortification during my middle and high school years. My friends, on the other hand, found my mother funny and delightful. Most everybody found my mother funny and delightful. My mother was often funny even when she wasn't trying to be, a trait I seem to have inherited.
Ah, Mom, I want to do something to commemorate you today. But what? I know you went through bad times, sad times, hard times, navigated some turbulent waters, who hasn't in their life? I know there must have been times you upset, annoyed, or aggravated me.
But somehow - except for breaking into song in front of my friends when I was 13 - I can't seem to clearly remember any of those times anymore. Or if I do, they carry less weight than a feather on my shoulder.
So here will be my commemoration to you, Mom. I'll remember only the good times, the happy times, the funny times, I'll call my sister today and we'll laugh over memories of you and those times. I know you would like that.

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