Lipsyte, Robert Lipsyte Is Waiting for ICE

“I must admit that, given the country we all now find ourselves in, I consider myself lucky. This old man still takes two long walks a day through New York’s streets and I have yet to see (or at least recognize) ICE agents anywhere in my neighborhood. Still, who knows when that will end? After all, we’re now living in a country whose president has already sent National Guard troops into American cities and has threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act, which would allow him to send units of the U.S. military into just such cities. And honestly, at this point, it couldn’t be clearer that nothing is beyond him…”

“…I was raised in the post-World War II “it can’t happen here” era. Hadn’t my parents’ generation crushed the Nazis for all time? While we’d been taught that democracy, like a faith or a marriage, did need tending, we had mostly taken it for granted. Yes, I did understand that life as I had lived it was under attack, but there was still, I thought, some time to respond.

“The Republicans would come to their senses, right? They weren’t the Germans of a past era. The monster would sooner or later be brought down. And yes, he was bad, but he certainly wasn’t Hitler. And he looked so sickly. Eventually, the court system would kick in or the Epstein files would produce the Big Bang, whatever that might be. This was America, for God’s sake. We didn’t deserve to go down like this.”