(I guess it is because of age and the life experience that came with it, but I have developed a strong interest in preserving history as it was, warts and all, so the future gets to see the real story without the revisions. to this end I met with the president and the chief curator of the New Bedford Whaling Museum and received a green light of sorts for the idea I proposed. This is what I proposed and that upon which the proposal was based.)

As of now, we are no longer an assumption, a possibility, a whaling Shrodinger’s Cat. We have been found and we are visible

Prior to the New Bedford Whaling Museum and other repositories of historic documents beginning to transcribe them to be digitized and placed on the internet for easy reading or, if the transcription is true and an exact version mistakes and all, easier reading, the scanned versions of documents such as ship logs appeared on various web sites.

Prefacing each scanned log book on Archive.org is information about the ship and a list of topics a person, or persons, reading the log book saw as topics of interest.

So it is that the Log Book for the whaling ship Charles Phelps has this as its cover page.

However, this, and a subsequent cover page of another log, illustrates that what is actually of importance, not being on the communal radar is omitted from the historical record, or, worse, omitted because it was filtered through someone’s personal, political and/or religious beliefs. In this case there is a simple list of unremarkable topics, almost predictable, yet in this logbook was the following entry from January 30, 1843,

Besides describing his punishment for attempting to stab an officer with a knife and trying to get the cook to put poison in the captains bread that anyone could consume, the log entry notes, the ship steward had a stricter punishment than  would have been meted out except he “allso tried to hire a Portuguese [deckhand] to commit Soddomy”.

Although the general assumption is that there had to be Homosexual acts more as a release for a crew of men sailing around in a totally male environment than, perhaps, sexual orientation, even as this recording of an actual event brings the assumption into reality, it was not deemed for the above mentioned reasons  to a topic of interest.

As a result, a researcher looking for such a reference would move on to the next log hoping its cover page points in the right direction while passing the direction that could have actually been pointed out.

Likewise, when transcribing the log of the Newport as it wintered a Herschel Island 1894-95.

The cover page contains the usual ship information and list of topics of interest.

Yet again, we have this entry.

““Monday Feb 11th

A light breeze from the W.N.W. Cloudy and misty Bar. 30.10. Ther. -4 Got a load of meat put the Steward (Scott) forward for Sodomy and Onanism of Bark Wanderer one of the men deserted but was overtaken and brought back.”

I have found that, when relating this entry even to educated adults, I have had to define Onanism which could be a reason this entry was not noted, because Onanism was just a word and not a clue.

Confusion comes in as runaways had also been mentioned in passing among a number of other details in earlier and later entries and, because of the lack of punctuation in the original, sentences are blended and separation comes through context which is often lacking when events are listed in order of occurrence and not by category.

And this was in the log of the Newport no he Wanderer, so, again, he was either making a house call, or was afraid of getting caught on his own ship and walked through temps below zero across frozen ice to seek release below decks on another ship or the “of the wanderer” refers to another person entirely who had run off from that ship not from the Newport as a result of getting caught, and was just another listed runaway.

Another random mention in a meticulously kept detailed log

There is no mention of catching anyone, so it is possible the steward was a very busy man and the captain put him on time out. It mentions two activities that would require a bit of gymnastics if done alone but easily performed in pairs or more. It is not clear if the runaway was the other man, implying the unmentioned catching them in the act, or, like so many other mentions, just an event that happened and was unrelated  but, as there is no punctuation, would seem to be.

All we know for certain is the steward, Scott, had his recorded Homosexual act left to posterity to find. And I did.

The Wanderer’s log on the Island only kept weather conditions in the entries so there is no mention of the steward being arrested or anyone running away from the ship. They were frozen in place and the winter entries are very few, perhaps 30 pages in all from September through May.

There were many ships at Herschel Island that year and it was in cross referencing the log of the Newport with the personal journal of Captain Porter’s wife, Sophie, that a repeated ending of entries in the Newport’s log, “worked the lathe”, was the captain’s making replacement baseball bats for those broken during the many, almost daily, games weather permitting with one such game captured in a painting in the museum’s possession.

By cross referencing the Charles Phelps on the collected crew list on www.whalinghistory.org, which were supplied by NBWM transcribers, consulting the New York census from 1855-1865, I was able to find what happened to the steward of the Charles Phelps in later life and the fact that he was married with a number of children, introduces a further topic of study beyond the existence of Homosexual activity. 

Whether other logs of the captains of the Newport and Charles Phelps could reveal other entries on Homosexuality has yet to be researched.

The two stewards were on their ships the whole voyage, so there could be other instances.

Along with filling in the gap about Homosexuality on whaling ships, there is a further area of study. Before Psychology became an established science, there was no clear delineation between Homosexual activity based on orientation or situation, which is common with long male/male isolation. The Straight/Gay binary is rather recent as sex was sex as long as somewhere along the line a person produced an heir and society continued smoothly. After a Homosexual act or a series of acts  in a prolonged male-only confinement some go back to Straight upon return to mixed society, some find they are bisexual, some that they are actually Gay, but the act itself is not necessarily based on sexual orientation. Rather than a strict Binary of Gay/Straight, reality favors Kinsey.

Non-Binary was here before Sigmund Freud had to decide what was “normal” and what was “abnormal”, of course including anything related to himself as normal. He was a married man.

That is why the accepted assumption that there had to be homosexual activity, but not necessarily intimate, meaningful sex which would have involved emotion not just physical release, is has been replaced with fact.

What needs to be done is to collect all such references, cross reference where possible, to come to a possible delineation of situational Homosexuality and Sexual orientation based intimacy after combing the log books. Victorian vocabulary had two meanings, and, although the Quakers couldn’t care less about one’s sexual orientation because of their beliefs on equality, this changed as the 19 century did, and by the 1890s what had been tacitly allowed (tolerated) became an object of religious condemnation.

Why Williams had to offer pay is of interest. Why did he choose the Portuguese add-on crew member? What happened after his being in chains? What led up to the attempted crimes? Were the steward Scott incident and that of Smith one time occurrences or common with him and others? Were there other instances on Herschel Island that winter alone?

There are hints as theater company was formed by some of the crew of the Beluga that winter of 1894-95 that performed music and theatrical shows for the captains and their wives, and Sophie Porter refers to what seems to be the use of Drag at a social gathering.

This information, although in the logs, has, up to this point, been overlooked and not having been included in the list of topics covered in the logs has been denied to researchers.

I believe this area needs to be pursued beginning with the transcribing of the Charles Phelps log and expanding from there.

Upon sending the Newport log entry to a number of professors who deal with maritime history, this response sums them all up.

“There’s quite a lot written about homosexuality and pirates. However, I don’t know of anything published about this subject in the whaling industry.”  

We are at a point where this has changed.

What we were told not to think about Billy Budd is Billy Budd.

Being a museum, a repository of collected history and not a research institute, the museum has no internal mechanism to set up a dedicated department to this one topic as each newly discovered topic could demand a committee or advisory board, but can evaluate what information is supplied and curate it.

Thus, I have to continue my research on my own, although availing myself of any resources, can present myself as a volunteer with references to give me gravitas with museums, researchers etc. The museum will be very supportive and helpful, making resources available along with guidance and advice.

Being a Volunteer at the museum I can refer to myself in that capacity in the hope a little name dropping will help, but, obviously, I cannot speak for or represent myself as an official representative or spokesperson. This is standard.

I may have approached someone when I was a teacher  and, although I could give my name, job, and school, teaching there did no give we the power to speak for the school or the district, commit the school to anything, and/or pass on my own personal, poltical, or religious beliefs as those of the school.

I will be coordinating with the curatorial staff as part of the process, and they, in turn, will act as part of a network of people beneficial to the research and helping to expand that network,, and if the museum is contacted in a follow up to someone’s having had contact with me, Iwho I am can be verified and validated.

SO IT COMES TO THIS.

There are plenty of websites that are begging to have help transcribing documents. People in the community can, at their own speed and on their own time either read through already transcribed log entries translating terms like “special friend” to what they actually are to show our side of the ambiguous vocabulary, or transcribe an original, it gets easier with time, and take note of those entries that contain information about homosexual activity and those involved.

At the same time, researchers who hear about these two entries might correct the assumption that I was the first, if not to find an entry mentioning Homosexuality, at least the first to notice an entry’s significance, by coming forward with previous found references in other logs but previously having no idea what to do with them, and this would be added to the archive which I am thinking of calling the Quigley Institute of Non-Heterosexual Archival Archaeology, or send it directly to the curatorial department of the museum as we find more evidence of us in the historic record that has been there but unseen.

Why should we accept that a woman had a companion, when we know from life what it is really all about.

Students, Academics, and history buffs now and in the future will want this information and this would make a good research paper for publication or to get the degree, and certainly there are members of the Pride Flag who would want to get involved.

The museum wants the information. We can be the source of it.

I am transcribing the Charles Phelps log book with the intention of looking for anything overlooked by those who do not know what they should be seeing, and, rather than stick to a strict transcription assignment after, I am being allowed the time and resources to follow trails and further research tips I might receive or come across.

We are now visible and we can make us more so.

As soon as I get the “Institute” organized, which for now will be a laptop and an email address to which people can send tips, assemble a list of archival sources, and direct contact links to the appropriate people at the museum, I will send that all out, and the research can continue and begin.

If you know of anyone anywhere who would be interested, if you know someone who has been considering a book or research paper on this topic but had no starting point, pass this on. 

As far as the Museum’s support, they did not have a Non-Binary author of a banned book as the first speaker at the reborn New Bedford Lyceum because they were available, but because the museum saw it was important to do.

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I was once very religious and among my family and friends I have some who are extremely religious but not fanatically so. I know a monk or two. Have been heavily into Theology for a bit, I know there are nuances in religion through which believers must be guided or they will fall into some fringe religious belief system that is of no good to anyone.

Although I no longer share that belief system as organized religion has morphed it I do not misrepresent the beliefs of others for my own ends, like with a book in a library, if something religious is not to my liking, I move on to another or none at all.

The ones who take a kernel of a commonly held belief and then twist it to subtly lead people to their way of thinking, not for the benefit of the led but the leader, for the sake of my friends I have to speak out.

Ever since Jesus Junior got arrested the first time, Marjorie Taylor Greene’s reaction has been gnawing at me, not because it was an unexpected unhinged response, but, in attempting to out Jesus the rest of us, Ms Greene revised the Christian origin story.

According to her,

“Trump is joining some of the most incredible people in history being arrested today. Nelson Mandela was arrested, served time in prison. Jesus — Jesus was arrested and murdered by the Roman government.”

She need us to accept that it was the government that killed Jesus because her Q-anon inspired anti-government beliefs are her driving force and if she can win us over to her anti-government ideas by playing the Jesus card, no matter how misguided they are, she will do it.

However according Matthew in the Good Book,

“When morning came, all the chief priests and elders of the people plotted against Jesus to put Him to death. And when they had bound Him, they led Him away and delivered Him to Pontius Pilate the governor.”

Obviously it was not the government who arrested Jesus and wanted Him dead, it was the religious leaders.

The government in the person of Pontius Pilate was not into the idea at all and showed it multiple times.

“Now Jesus stood before the governor. And the governor asked Him, saying, ‘Are You the King of the Jews?’ Then Pilate said to Him. ‘Do You not hear how many things they testify against You?’ But He answered him not one word, so that the governor marveled greatly.”

Hoping to end the foolishness, Pilate offered a no-brainer choice, Jesus or one of the worst criminals in the area, and the religious leaders surprised him by going with letting that guy go.

Even the Missus attempted to thwart the desire of the religious leaders by advising Pontius,

“Have nothing to do with that just Man, for I have suffered many things today in a dream because of Him.”

“But the chief priests and elders persuaded the multitudes that they should ask for Barabbas and destroy Jesus. The governor answered and said to them, “Which of the two do you want me to release to you?”

They said, ‘Barabbas!’”

In Roman law on which our system is based, you had to state a specific charge not just a general statement and would be required to back it up with evidence. So, of course, in this case the government asked for both.

^“Then the governor said, ‘Why, what evil has He done?’ But they cried out all the more, saying, ‘Let Him be crucified!'”

Notice the absence of any real charge just a demand for death.

No charge, just lock him up.

In John’s version of events, Pilate came out said to the crowd,

“’Look, I am bringing him out to you to let you know that I find no basis for a charge against him.’ When Jesus came out wearing the crown of thorns and the purple robe, Pilate said to them, ‘Here is the man!’”

The famous giggle inducing “Ecce Homo” that got many an altar boy chastised after the Good Friday services.

What did the Romans do? Nothing. But, “As soon as the chief priests and their officials saw him, they shouted, “Crucify! Crucify!”

“But Pilate answered, ‘You take him and crucify him. As for me, I find no basis for a charge against him.’ The religious leaders insisted, ‘We have a law, and according to that law he must die’. When Pilate saw that he could not prevail at all, but rather that a tumult was rising, he took water and washed his hands before the multitude, saying, ‘I am innocent of the blood of this just Person. You see to it.'”

Could you blame him for his frustration?

The government had declared that the man had done nothing, offered a ridiculously obvious non-choice to maybe end the stupidity, and handed him over to the people who the religious leaders had fired up but who, themselves, are not mention among those crying,

^“His blood be on us and on our children.”

The religious leaders had used religion and the crowd’s faith to get the dirty work done while their hands remained clean without having to be washed.

And if you notice, Pilate, unlike all the pictures and the rather slanted representations, did not hand Jesus over to the Romans to be whipped and crucified but, as the new Testament states,

“Then he released Barabbas to them; and when he had scourged Jesus, he delivered Him to be crucified.”

You do not deliver what is already in your possession, as the government would be doing if it handed over its prisoner to itself, and Pilate did state that the government was through with this expression of firmly held religious beliefs after he had Jesus scourged, but as the New Testament clearly state it was not the Romans or the government who arrested Jesus. He was brought to it.

The government, in the person of Pontius Pilate made multiple attempts to get the crowd to see that this was wrong, even offering that no-brainer choice, pointing out the obvious, that Jesus hadn’t done anything against the law to justify government punishment, has him whipped maybe to satisfy the crowd’s frenzied blood lust., brings him back out in front of the crowd and had to be more than a little shocked they still wanted Pence.

And while we may bristle at the way Jesus was treated and the mockery He faced, we just got rid of a local county sheriff who would have been right in there with a select crew demeaning Him, so His treatment was not unique, and when the Romans were done and he was about to go out in public, they “put His own clothes on Him, and led Him away to be crucified.”

Not a major thing, but a small act of kindness.

And although we get distracted by this action in thee Praetoria, we forget Jesus was there because of the religious leaders not the government brought him there. I am sure Barrabas didn’t spend his booking having a genteel experience.

As a matter of fact, the passage relating who was crucifying Jesus is vague as it states that after the Romans handed him over

“as they came out, they found a man of Cyrene, Simon by name. Him they compelled to bear His cross.  And when they had come to a place called Golgotha, that is to say, Place of a Skull, they gave Him our wine mingled with gall to drink. But when He had tasted it, He would not drink. Then they crucified Him, and divided His garments, casting lots, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophet: ‘They divided My garments among them, and for My clothing they cast lots.’ Sitting down, they kept watch over Him there. And they put up over His head the accusation written against Him, ‘THIS IS JESUS THE KING OF THE JEWS.’”

Okay, who is “They”?

Religious leaders would have us believe “they” is the Romans, but we were already told that Jesus was handed over to be crucified after the Romans washed their hands of the whole thing.

Paintings tend to show Romans running the show from beginning to end, where the passage says those depicted should be the religious leaders. After all, it was the chief priest who were

^“mocking with the scribes and elders, said,  ^‘He saved others; Himself He cannot save. If He is the King of Israel, let Him now come down from the cross, and we will believe Him. He trusted in God; let Him deliver Him now if He will have Him; for He said, ‘I am the Son of God.’ ”

Even at the end there is no reference to any Roman when we are told that while “Some of those who stood there”, one of them “ran and took a sponge, filled it with sour wine and put it on a reed, and offered it to Him to drink. The rest said, ‘Let Him alone; let us see if Elijah will come to save Him.'”

“The rest” implies that person was one of them and “them” had been identified as passers-by not Romans.

The Romans, AKA the government, are only mentioned once in the passage,

“so, when the centurion and those with him, who were guarding Jesus, saw the earthquake and the things that had happened, they feared greatly, saying, ‘Truly this was the Son of God!””, in, I am sure, a very John Wayne voice

It seems it only took this one event for the Romans, the government, to see Jesus for who he was and not the three years of miracles that apparently were not convincing, or the room was a tough one, and the religious leaders, for their part killed him because of their firmly held religious beliefs with nothing political about it I am sure.

To further show this was not a government action,

^“On the next day, which followed the Day of Preparation, the chief priests and Pharisees gathered together to Pilate, saying, ‘Sir, we remember, while He was still alive, how that deceiver said, ‘After three days I will rise.’ Therefore command that the tomb be made secure until the third day, lest His disciples come by night and steal Him away, and say to the people, ‘He has risen from the dead.’ So the last deception will be worse than the first.’

Pilate said to them, ‘You have a guard; go your way, make it as secure as you know how.’ So they went and made the tomb secure, sealing the stone and setting the guard.”

The government refused any further role in this religious action so the religious leaders had to employ their own security.

The governments’ not having arrested Jesus but the religious leaders having done it is

very clear in Matthew.

Now in Luke there are more references to a Roman presence as opposed to the more generic “They” of Matthew.

In Luke’s version Romans are mentioned, but only as part of the crowd and acting no differently than they. After all this was a large gathering of people and as Romans were retentive about order, their would have been a Roman presence like the police at festivals.

“The people stood watching, and the rulers even sneered at him. They said, ‘He saved others; let him save himself if he is God’s Messiah, the Chosen One. The soldiers also came up and mocked him. They offered him wine vinegar and said, ‘If you are the king of the Jews, save yourself.’”

So, Marge, nice try, but some of us actually read the book and have studied it.

It was not government that arrested Jesus and then killed him, but the religious leaders by using the religion of the people against them.

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This is what toasts my corn and jerks my chains.

In the 1980s we Gays did not die of AIDS because of the unavailability of preventatives and/or curatives.

We died from the lack of will to find them because it was better to let us as a people die for political purposes than find a cure.

History is replete with genocides for political purposes.

The Christian soldiers of the 1980s did, indeed, march on to war and we were their main target and our loved ones their collateral damage. They claimed God wanted us dead and they made sure that happened by guaranteeing there was nothing to help us to show they were correct and so deserving of votes but ourselves.

The Republican party got in bed with religion and we are now living in the years of the child that marriage produced  as the old desire to eliminate comes back with a vengeance to finish their parents’ work, and some people who are from the stripes in the Pride Flag support these killers.

On a recent World AIDS Day I sat next to a man bemoaning all those lost over the years. He had lost many friends. Then he, in a very casual, conversational way, revealed that his first presidential vote was for Ronald Reagan and he has voted straight Republican ticket since because they have the better economic ideas. He was lamenting the loss of his friends that might have been prevented had those whom he supported acted earlier, if at all, and did not try to interfere with any progress in the fight against AIDS.

No. I am sorry. No.

That is aiding and abetting.

They wanted us dead during AIDS.

They fought any progress in gaining Gay Rights.

They tag us with subliminally loaded labels so anything negative we get, we deserve,

They stacked the Supreme Court that is undoing any progress we made and exposing some of us to a new form of guaranteed death, the denial of gender affirming medical care for Trans people.

They are banning books implying literature by and about us is intrinsically lewd and dangerous for children.

They lie about what Drag Queen Story Hour is and who Drag Queens are in order to use children as their pawns in the war they have been waging since they realized that after Stonewall we would no longer stay in the closet for their convenience but  would be our true selves instead.

And, as the rest of society began to see who we really were and not as those who claim they have no association with us claimed we were, the need to use us where the devil of religion had lost his power over thinking people arose, and, in their panic, they began to divide the Community in order to conquer by going after each stripe on the Flag, one at a time to see which is abandon by the others as the sacrificial lamb

They were allowed to settle on the Trans stripe by the others.

They fought to be as able to discriminate against us in the name ol the same religion that fought hard to let us die off in the 1980s.

During the last presidential administration, beginning as early as Day One of it, the president took actions to immediately remove won right, the ones with which we had already been endowed by the Creator and to get anit-Gay Justices on to the Supreme Court to undo any rights one up to and i9ncluding marriage and all the civil benefits that come with it many supported by the tax dollars paid by Gays but of which we were unable to avail ourselves of and may not again in the future.

Time is not confined in separate boxes but overlaps like a snowball rolling down hill as it gathers more to itself while losing nothing. A century may be divided into decades, but unlike sit-coms and mystery show episodes, things do not wind up at the end of each and new history begins with the next. They cross flow.

What got us to this point from the pre-Stonewall days and the ever evaporating false information took time and brought us from the before to the now through at least 40 years of intense struggle.

Like those who want to revise history in schools, there seems to be those who, while disliking what they heard of the past, would prefer to block that out so they can celebrate what we have without dealing with what it took between to get us here because it is unpleasant.

The thought seems to be that we can keep the good even if we ignore what it took and all will remain as is.

Under the present political climate, if we ignore those working years we will lose what we won, and fighting to get something lost back is usually next to impossible. The things done in the pst are not just in the past, but in the very real present. 

The modern problems that never happened before did, like book banning, and we need to be ready to defend what is written about and by us.

Our past is not what we chose but what we were allowed.

Sadly as we are returning to that position, there are those who ignore this and support people who say the right things and then either do not follow through or, having our vote and not needing anymore from us do nothing but remind people of the promise.

I cannot abide the border collies and camp Kapos in the Gay Community. 

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The Defense of Marriage Act basically forbade Gay people from living in committed relationships or face arrest, loss of job, social rejection etc. because of the religio-fascists’ claims we were incapable of forming them, and to ensure we could not have committed relationships they codified the ban on them with legislation.

“You cannot have what we will not let you have but will blame you for not having, using that to justify the denial.”

“Because the child would not eat, I never fed him. He starved himself to death.”

“I never play the lottery because I never win”.

We could not enter committed relationships because they made it impossible to and then blamed us for their creation.

The other big charge against Gay people is that we do not love America and are destroying it from within.

As part of the Gay Rights fight, although some thought it was not important while many did, the Gay Community fought for the right to lay down their lives for the Country by having to fight to be allowed to join the military. We had already been in the military since Van Steuben trained Washington’s troops, but could get punished and thrown out in spite a stellar career in it if, unlike the Straight troops whose goin’-a-whorin” was the stuff for swapped stories, a gay service member acted similarly according to orientation or for nothing at all other than having been reported on for unclear reasons.

The compromise was Don’t Ask/Don’ Tell which basically allowed Gay people to join the military but would be thrown out if their Gayness was revealed even if it were only to acknowledge its existence without ever exercising any action.

In the battle for the repeal of DOMA, along with the usual tropes about Gay people and the obvious rather boastful attitudes towards themselves as they argued that they would be too irresistible for gays to not uncontrollably attack them, the same argument they used regarding women in active duty, and this made them uncomfortable.

And something about Jesus.

The most out of touch argument that is being resurrected now by the religio-fascist to apply to anything good for Gays now that all their objections to Gay equality have failed is that Gays are anti-American and want to destroy this country.

Yet we had to fight them to allow us, if we so choose, to put our lives on the line for the very

country they claimed we hated, and they fought vehemently against us going so far as to make stuff up and try to pass them off as legitimate.

If we hated the country, why did we fight so hard to be able to help defend it?

Think about that when others claim they know our thoughts and motivations.

No.

They make them up.

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Heeeee’s Baaaaaaack”

The white supremacist, anti-immigrant, and anti-firmly held because they are promoted by his church religious beliefs former county sheriff, having been ousted by the people of Bristol County who are patriotic Americans who respect what John Adams left us, Massachusetts, has not retired to a villa on the Azores as many hoped, but is now chairman of former president Donald Trump’s Massachusetts campaign.

Our former sheriff who claimed to be the very bastion of law and order is the chair of a committee to elect a convicted rapist who illegally stored national secrets in his resort home’s bathroom with the lock on the inside to make for easier, uninterrupted perusal, endangering the troops that people like Hodgson claim to support unlike we “Christ-less Commies” who don’t,

He built a career on demonizing innocent Immigrants and refugees to have a monster in the closet from whom only he could save the people of the county, and here he is supporting a rapacious forced-sex traitor.

“Like most Americans, I want a President who creates real benefits and solutions for our families, neighborhoods, and our nation. President Trump has a proven record of strengthening our economy, securing our borders, prioritizing public safety, and improving our national standing throughout the world. As the Massachusetts Chairman, I will work tirelessly with our citizens to elect President Donald J. Trump so that he can Make America Great Again.”

He went on,

“President Trump looks forward to expanding his movement to compete for and earn the support of delegates from Massachusetts to the Republican National Convention.”

This is the guy who sent multiple emails to senior Trump advisor Stephen Miller to report his parish was informing the immigrants and refugees in the parish of their legal rights when they are assumed to be here undocumented and are approached by people like the sheriff and his, up to the email revelation, unknown “Special Force”, promised to send Massachusetts county jail inmates to the Southern Border as slave labor to build Trump’s Wall, and then lost his federal immigration contract with ICE because it was determined that among other things he was denying inmates their human and civil rights.

He is, in many respects, a mini-Trump, if even only in his own mind.

During the Trump years he did exactly as Trump directed.

During the height of Covid he took no real preventative steps to protect inmates from a rotating population guarded by staff that would leave the jail and mix with the public at the end of a shift, and return their next shift with the medically unguarded inmates.

He flaunted not wearing a mask and proudly stood in group photos without one because Trump would have wanted that, never mind any concern for those in the photo with him.

He wanted so desperately to be seen and rewarded, he became Trump’s Honorary Reelection Campaign Chair in the state but never got whatever prize he was hoping for.

Maybe this time he gets his Junior G-Man badge and decoder ring.

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