I grew up in a country ruled by a [military] dictator for the first 23 years of my life. The constitution, on paper, was a pretty liberal piece of legislation. But in practice the only thing that mattered was the so-called “orden superior” or “order from above”. And human rights violations were the order of the day, unless you had connections all the way to the very top. In 1989 that dictator was toppled by a military coup. This is the second longest dictatorship in America, after Fidel Castro. And during the following four years of [military] dictatorship a new democratic constitution was adopted. The special election right after the coup gave a nearly 90% electoral result to the “dictator”. But the new constitution made it very clear that any person who had occupied the office of president was NOT eligible to be elected to that position ever again.

Even today, over 30 years later, the constitutional guaranty of “innocent until proven guilty” is very often a nice fiction. Especially in cases of child care, custody and abuse. The unfortunate reality is, that the majority of social workers and judicial employees (including district attorneys and judges) consider the father as always guilty until proven innocent and the mother as always innocent until proven guilty by an overwhelming preponderance of in-flagranti evidence.

Case in point. I spent almost ten years embroiled in almost two dozen lawsuits related to the care of my daughters after our marriage finally shattered. At one point I counted fifteen simultaneous lawsuits all related to the issue of custody. I have had judges, public defenders and court clerks tell me, that even though the law as written was on my side and in my favor, they were receiving direct orders from several members of the supreme court to rule against me. Even though I did win a few battles, in the end I lost the war and I also lost my daughters.

So when I see what is currently happening in the United States of America, I am getting genuinely worried. Because I recognize the signs that are eerily similar to what I lived through in the 1980s. And when the “law of the land” (as reported by attorneys and lawyers from within the USA) is written by partisan judges with lifetime terms and no accountability to the citizens in direct opposition to the written constitution and laws passed by congress, that has all the hallmarks of a dictatorship.

And when people say “that can not happen, because I am protected by the first amendment”, I just have to shake my head at the naivety. Call me sarcastic or even alarmist, but having lived through dictatorship I can clearly see the signs of what is coming. And I feel sorry for all the trans and gender queer people in the USA.

And it might really be a good idea to, at the very least, establish a mirror site that is hosted outside of North America.