Land of the Free (From Shame) and Home of the Vain

On Donald Trump signing an executive order to bar families from being separated at the border.

Oh, you mean The President of the United States, arguably the most powerful man in the world, could have fixed this all along?!?!?!  Or, even, ahem, prevented this from happening in the first place?  No shit. You don’t say.  In those first 100 days he was signing big, showy executive orders like his tiny hands were on fire.

So a few things: first, boy is this guy a slave to his image. Yikes. But I guess we should count our blessings with Trump. He can be swayed by appealing to his baser instincts, namely vanity. So at least that’s something.

But in a rather piquant irony, this certainly leaves those creeps who were justifying or defending the position of separating families at the border, flapping nakedly in the wind. Which if we can find any humor in this repugnant policy, it would most likely be found somewhere in there. When their head honcho of hate changes course to brush the crumbs off his sullied image, I wonder if they will double down on their antipathy or turn tail and dutifully follow their egomaniacal leader to save face.  Decisions, decisions.

Sorry folks but Trump cares more about his status than he cares about any of you. Which on a rare day, when all the cylinders align just right on this enigmatic lock, something decent can actually be opened.

Two friends posts on Facebook in response to some of their Facebook friends being for the policy of separating families at the border as a severe deterrent. 

Friend 1: All of you trying to justify this evil need to listen to these children crying. If you still feel the same,  you are truly horrid. PLEASE DEFRIEND ME. I've never felt so disgusted by you.

Author Response: Right on.  There is no justification for this level of cruelty and malice. Those kids and little babies didn’t do anything wrong. No innocent human being deserves that trauma. (And there are many developmental psychological studies on this very issue to prove it does cause severe trauma.) Anyone trying to justify this is a God damned animal.  

Just when I think this can’t sink any lower, some ghoul in the Trump administration says hold my beer...

Friend 2: I’ve seen so many people posting "serves them right" comments and ridiculous shit like that.  Makes me fucking sick!

Author Response: That is sick, really. I hadn’t seen that, but suspected it.  I had posed these questions with a handful of specific people in mind.  But to say children deserve that trauma because of their parents’ actions is unconscionable. 

At what point are petty differences put aside for the greater good? I mean this is grotesque. How could peoples’ values be so radically different? Is there no common decency that binds the human race?  At what juncture do we give in and declare we are a global society? Capitalism already preaches that sermon every minute and dollar spent.

And to the Banana Republic for Which it Stands...(With Liberty and Justice for Some)

     Is this what you Trump voters had in mind when you voted for this megalomaniacal moron? If so, congratulations, you’re getting just what you wanted, non-white humans being treated like animals; round up, sorted, and herded like cattle set for the slaughterhouse.  Not to worry, the unskilled Guatemalan laborer isn’t going to be moving into your corner office anytime soon, not even to empty your trash. 

      Little babies, and children being torn from their parents and put into cages. That’s fucking lovely. Older kids having to take care of younger kids, who are strangers to them.  They’re showing more humanity than this so-called first-world nation.

      When former First Lady and soft-spoken, conservative Texan, Laura Bush comes out of retirement to denounce this practice as “cruel and immoral” and liken it to Japanese Americans being kept in internment camps during WWII, you’ve got yourself a real moral conundrum.  Even Melania Trump has issued a statement deriding the practice.  Who knew she would be the modern-day Eleanor Roosevelt?

      No cameras allowed when journalists toured the facility in Texas, government issued video of the place, and Jeff Sessions citing the Bible for reasons why these atrocities can be committed with clean consciences. For fucks sake! This has devolved into a banana republic faster than I cynically thought. Oh, and who pushed for this ridiculous zero-tolerance policy? None other than Stephen “prematurely balding and everyone is going to pay for it” Miller. He’s the Josef Goebbels of the Trump administration, only without the sense of humor and good looks.

      But what is the loftier moral question here, all derision aside? Should children be made to pay for the so-called crimes of their parents?  These are innocent kids who are being irreparably scarred by this heinous process. What kind of monstrous existence must these refugees be fleeing if these inhumane “detention centers” (more like human puppy mills), are the lesser of two evils? How fucked up is that? Because according to the statistics, the number of immigrants trying to cross the border is not slowing, so they are coming knowing this is what waits for them.

      Further, how would any of us feel if we had to have our children pay for our high crimes and misdemeanors? Every time we drove having too much to drink, took an illicit drug; hell, every time we jaywalked they were met with another lash.  What about our sins? How about every time we told a lie, took a little extra for ourselves, or strayed from our marital vows, they got a little electrical shock or were berated until they cried.  Would we stop the vices and habits that make us human? 

Probably not.

      These are people running from terrible situations of violence, poverty, and famine. They can’t all be criminals, you know, just by law of averages. But it seems rather piquantly ironic that this administration has no trouble abusing children to the point of irreparable harm, where they are more likely to turn crime or vice, in this creepy self-fulfilling prophecy/human experiment.  It seems to me, that the Trump administration is setting out to create the situations they are supposedly purporting to prevent by sowing these seeds of discontent.

     I have to wonder if Trump voters feel at all responsible for his policies?  Ones he proudly touted from the podium during the campaign. I wonder if they have fitful sleep, or think about their children being ripped away from them for crossing imaginary lines?  Were the tax breaks for the rich worth all this? Do they just not care? Or can’t they see it? Do they truly believe that every uncomfortable, disconcerting, or terrible thing said about Trump and his administration is just “fake news”? In an extreme and twisted group cognitive dissonance, manifesting itself to save face?  Or that he is somehow beyond reproach, like the fat, toupeed second-coming of Christ?

     Human rights abuses are the worst crime a country, government, or regime can commit.  This is far beyond bilking money from naive rubes enrolled in Trump University, or selling cheap ties made in “Gina” while decrying the loss of manufacturing jobs here in the U.S.  This is even several rungs below waging trade wars, propping up white supremacy, sexually assaulting women, or palling around with ruthless dictators to feel like a big man. This is really a bloodstain on our history. And real human beings, many of them children, are literally suffering at the hands of these heartless victors. Is this what you truly desired when you chanted “Make America Great Again!”?