It’s odd how sometimes seemingly unrelated events converge and open our minds, at least for some of us, to new insights.

For today’s example, I cite the decision of the Washington Post, facing economic losses arising from the decisions of its billionaire owner, Jeff Bezos, to eviscerate further the professional journalism staff, including its sports, international, metro, books, podcast personnel, allegedly due to “declining revenue.” The decision was made at the direction of an owner who just invested $40 million or more to produce a documentary “movie” about the president’s wife. The movie has been an unmitigated disaster at the box office because apparently even the MAGA crowd is not much interested in Melania’s story, at least not if they have to pay to see it.

In typical corporate speak, the Post self-describes the layoff decisions as “restructuring across the company.” Bezos is allegedly one of the richest men in the world. He could easily underwrite the Post’s losses until he figures out that the losses are of the same cloth as the economic devastation that Donald Trump has visited on the Kennedy Center by adding his name to it (leading to the refusal of many world-class artists to continue performing there). Aligning with Trump has a price and the Post is now paying it. Bezos apparently doesn’t want to pay it so he’s imposing the problem on the Post staff.

The Post itself reports that,

“the Washington Post Guild, which represents hundreds of newsroom employees, said the staff has been reduced by 400 people over the last three years. “These layoffs are not inevitable. A newsroom cannot be hollowed out without consequences of its credibility, its reach and its future,” the union said.

But it’s worse than that. The Editorial Board of the Post (Post EB) has lost its collective mind.

A recent example is its February 4 “opinion” entitled:

Blue states banning cooperation with ICE will backfire —

The Trump administration’s immigration excesses are no excuse for Democrats to adopt their own.

Let’s look at the Post’s explanation of that position.

First, the Post declares that “President Donald Trump arrived in office with a mandate to secure the border and deport illegal immigrants who had committed crimes.” The source of that “mandate” is unclear at best, and ignores the elaborate network of laws that govern the deportation of alleged criminals. But at least the Post editors recognized that,

Immigration and Customs Enforcement could have focused primarily on apprehending dangerous criminals, which would have been an easy win for Trump and, more importantly, made America safer. Instead, DHS prioritized quantity over quality. The ensuing dragnet, combined with the needless demonization of immigrants and unprofessional behavior from many agents, turned immigration into a liability for Republicans.

[Yes, shooting defenseless protesters to death is definitely unprofessional behavior that will get people’s attention]

The Post EB goes on to emphasize that “blue-state leaders have advanced policies to block local law enforcement’s cooperation with immigration enforcement,” citing Maryland, Maine, Delaware, Virginia, New Mexico, New York, Hawaii.

But without state and local cooperation, ICE gets a strong justification to deploy force in pursuit of the violent criminals whom the overwhelming majority of Americans don’t want on the streets.

Handing over criminals in the security of a jail is safer not just for agents but also for the people they’re apprehending. Democrats will come to regret adopting policies that shield criminals and, as a result, push ICE agents into neighborhoods.

The Post EB has thus adopted Trump/Miller/Noem’s double-talk in a thinly veiled effort to justify the violence being perpetrated against multiple (largely if not entirely Democratic) communities. The sad truth is that ICE has entered neighborhoods and unleashed violent (and blatantly unconstitutional) searches and arrests (including several murders) that have nothing to do with whether state/local authorities are involved. ICE does what it chooses where it chooses in pursuit of the racist policies of Stephen Miller and the rest of Trump’s storm troopers.

 The Post EB cites a statement from Todd Homan to the effect that ICE’s arresting people already in jail is easier that doing it on the street. No doubt that’s true, but the idea that ICE requires 8 to 10 heavily armed men in masks and protective gear to make an arrest in public strongly suggests that these thugs are lacking proper training in both the constitutional protections of the Fourth Amendment and many other elements of police procedure. There are plenty of videos of ICE thugs violently assaulting women, young children, and elderly men.

Does the Post EB really believe these acts are caused by the lack of local and state cooperation? The reluctance of multiple states to participate in this racist-based violent assault on immigrant communities has nothing to do with how ICE operates (it is widely reported, and pretty well established that the ICE assaults on US citizens are driven by quotas set in the White House that have nothing to do with who is a criminal and who is not).

Todd Homan’s “explanation” of the relationship between the work required to remove a convicted criminal from a jail with local cooperation and the work required to arrest people on the street (and in their homes, schools, hospitals, clinics, etc.) boils down to, “ you do what we tell you or we will wreak havoc on your communities without regard to the Constitution or the law.”

The Post EB’s understanding of the constitutional rules governing who is retained and who (and when) a person is released after being charged with a crime is at best a close copy of the Trump administration’s policy of, to cite just one example, invading peoples’ homes without a search warrant signed by a judge, which happens to be a blatant violation of the Fourth Amendment.

Finally, the Post EB accepts Todd Homan’s claim that

Since the surge began in Minnesota, Homan says agents have apprehended 14 people who had been convicted of homicide, 139 with assault convictions, 87 sex offenders and 28 gang members. It isn’t clear how many of these criminals were handed over by law enforcement or captured in the streets, but even one released murderer is one too many.

So, by Homan’s own admission, it’s not clear what is happening in Minneapolis, but the lack of clarity justifies the complete disregard of the Constitution and the law of the state. Homan admits he has no reliable data, but that doesn’t matter to the Trump administration. They claim the right to deport, without further process, anyone that “belongs to a gang” or has been convicted of assault, regardless of what the relevant state or federal law provides for penalties in such cases.

The Post EB has become little more than another mouthpiece for the Trump administration.

In response to the EB’s posted position, I undertook, like many other readers, to respond with a comment. I wrote:

I don’t think I have ever read a more incoherent analysis of the issues related to the so-called immigration enforcement policies being executed by ICE on behalf of the racists in the White House and DHS. The Post should just close up and leave reporting and analysis to whatever follows.

To which the Post’s algorithm instantly responded: “Your comment is likely to be rejected. Please review our Community Guidelines and edit it.”

Since my comment was no more hostile than many that had already been accepted for publication, I chose not to engage in what was likely to be a futile back-and-forth editing of my views until they were robbed of the point and the sting. Clearly, Bezos’ version of the Post does not tolerate much criticism.

Which brings me to my ultimate point related to “convergence” and found, in this case, in the poetry of Mary Oliver. I have had several volumes of her poetry on my “keep” shelf but was not aware of this one until my step-daughter gave me a compilation volume of Oliver’s work that included this masterpiece from the Red Bird collection of 2008:

Of The Empire

We will be known as a culture that feared death
and adored power, that tried to vanquish insecurity
for the few and cared little for the penury of the
many. We will be known as a culture that taught
and rewarded the amassing of things, that spoke
little if at all about the quality of life for
people (other people), for dogs, for rivers. All
the world, in our eyes, they will say, was a
commodity. And they will say that this structure
was held together politically, which it was, and
they will say also that our politics was no more
than an apparatus to accommodate the feelings of
the heart, and that the heart, in those days,
was small, and hard, and full of meanness.

–Mary Oliver, Red Bird (2008)

2008 – she knew already….