Can You Be Strong without Being Heartless?

It’s all about the “pictures.” Kids being torn apart from their parents are “bad visuals” as Donald Trump confided to his GOP comrades at a recent White House meeting. The Trump administration’s “zero tolerance” border policy – arresting illegal border crossers under criminal statutes – mandates that any minor children accompanying such criminally charged adults be separated and housed under federal supervision. Mostly, that means internment camps for these children, mats on the floor, little or no activities for these youngsters, and basic food and medical care. Toddlers in tears. Some move into foster care, but almost 2,000 of such separated children were lost in the system. Even the few “tender age” (under thirteen) facilities offer rather cold care.

Prime ministers and other top government leaders (UK, France, Canada, Germany, Mexico, the Pope, U.N. Secretary General, etc.) uniformly condemned this policy that results in such separation of kids from their families. Comparison to Nazi internment practices, while unfairly extreme, were everywhere. Child psychologists also uniformly condemned this practice, suggesting that many of these young children could be permanently and irretrievably damaged (including susceptibility to diseases and disorders) as a result.

The political optics, not the harsh treatment of little children, seem to have defined a Republican reaction. GOP leaders suggested that these “bad pictures” could negatively impact mid-term election results. However, even as Melania Trump and Laura Bush strongly objected to this separation of children from their parents, Trump seemed to double down. Despite the fact that Trump and his Attorney General ordered the new policy, Trump blamed the Democrats for it all. His base rallied to his support. “We have to stop crying over these kids,” said one heartless and hypocritical evangelical on CNN.

What’s more, Trump seemed particularly distressed that border-crossers had any “due process” rights before immigration judges. “‘I don’t want judges. I want border security,’ Trump said in an extraordinary attack on the long-standing immigration courts system. ‘We have to have a real border. Not judges. Thousands and thousands of judges they want to hire. Who are these people?’” Los Angeles Times, June 20^th. Once again, our Constitution and statutes were getting in the way of Trump’s wishes. Scary, huh. A tad autocratic? How do American’s fee about this issue.

“According to a Quinnipiac University survey released on Monday [6/18], 66 percent of American voters oppose the ‘zero tolerance’ policy, enacted in April, that has resulted in more than 2,000 children being separated from their families. Just 27 percent of the survey respondents approve… But the majority of Republicans [55%] support it.” Yahoo.com. Still the election optics continued to terrify the GOP leadership. They pressed the President for a corrective executive order, despite Trump’s claim he had no power to do so.

“Faced with the president’s resistance to act, however, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell told reporters at the Capitol that Senate Republicans would devise ‘a plan that keeps families together.’…The plan seems likely to accomplish that by detaining families as a whole, not by allowing them to be free pending a deportation hearing, as was typically the case until last month.

“McConnell’s deputy, Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), said the Senate could act ‘in a matter of days, hopefully this week.’ More than a dozen Senate Republicans signed a letter to Atty. Gen. Jeff Sessions urging him to suspend family separations until a legislative fix can be signed into law.

“‘I don’t think anyone has the patience to let him hold children hostage for a wall,’ one senior Republican aide in the Senate said. ‘He can get that funding the old-fashioned way, through a budget request.’

“It remained unclear, however, whether House Republicans would go along. And Senate Democrats, believing they have the upper hand politically, are resisting giving Republicans help to fix the issue… ‘Legislation is not the way to go here, when it’s so easy for the president to sign it,’ Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) told reporters.” Los Angeles Times, June 20^th.

During a self-congratulatory press conference at the White House Wednesday (6/20) morning – a gathering of GOP congress-people and cabinet officers (only one woman there) presided by Trump – Trump was beginning to be ready to sign an executive order that would keep families together.

After excoriating both the George W Bush and Barack Obama presidencies on their weak immigration stance, again blaming the Democrats for the entire problem and attacking the press for disseminating fake news, the President made it very clear that he would not show any weakness in his determination to secure the border, even preferring to be perceived as “heartless” as opposed to “weak.” Still, the pressure from Republicans mounted.

Notwithstanding Donald Trump’s blatantly false assertion that his “hands were tied” and that only “Congress alone” could ameliorate this separation of children from their parents issue, finally Trump partially relented to sign an executive order (subject to court review and intending to serve as a stop-gap measure pending Congressional action) allowing families to be detained together (“zero tolerance” continues). Trump blinked and contradicted everything he had stated on the issue. But nothing proposed in Congress had any semblance of sufficient support to get a bill passed. But wait, there’s more.

America’s growing reputation as a heartless plutocracy under the leadership of a wannabe autocrat seems to be solidifying. Another example? Even as the United Nations has found Israel’s particular use of lethal force unjustified and excessive against rock and bottle-throwing Gazans whose frustration with living in a jobless and decimated landscape with limited access to food, water, and even electricity has exploded in frustration, the United States “has pulled out of the United Nations Human Rights Council, calling it a ‘cesspool of political bias.’

“Nikki Haley, the US envoy to the UN, said it was a ‘hypocritical’ body that ‘makes a mockery of human rights.’… Formed in 2006, the Geneva-based council has faced criticism in the past for allowing member countries with questionable human rights records… But activists said the US move could hurt efforts to monitor and address human rights abuses around the world.

“Announcing the decision to quit the council, Ms Haley described the council as a ‘hypocritical and self-serving organisation’ that displayed ‘unending hostility towards Israel.’” BBC.com, June 20^th. But except for the United States and a very, very small coterie of other nations (like Guatemala), Israel remains a global outcast for its West Bank settlements, treatment of local Arabs and its disproportionate use of force against those Arabs even for relatively minor issues.

We are declaring unilateral tariffs, which will undoubtedly be resolved (hopefully before a major recession is triggered), Trump is finding ways to cut medical benefits from those who need them most, our president cannot give up insulting world leaders and anyone who disagrees with his increasingly flawed perspective, and our policies are globally seen as inhumane and focused only on empowering the elite at the expense of everyone else. Trump’s base loves every extreme Trumpian moment as we reach levels of polarization unseen since the Civil War. We have the most negative global image in our nation’s entire history, our influence is plunging and our credibility vaporizing.

I’m Peter Dekom, and I am beginning to believe that restoring this nation to the democracy our Founding Fathers intended just may no longer be possible.