December 9, 2019
The past week has been a sobering portrait of a nation in crisis. For the fourth time in history, we are in the process of impeaching an American president and we have understandably been consumed by the drama. In rapid succession last week, the House Intelligence Committee issued its report, the House Speaker announced that the House would be drafting formal articles of impeachment and Trump announced that he would not appear at the Judiciary Committee hearings or participate in the process, (Source: “White House rejects House Judiciary’s invitation to participate in the impeachment hearings,” by Rebecca Shabad, NBCNews.com, 12/6/19). From the outset, Trump and his chorus of enablers have treated the impeachment inquiry like a circus and attacked its legitimacy, because they know there is no legitimate defense for the mountain of malfeasance it has uncovered.
Yet, as disturbing as this entire spectacle has been, it is far from the starkest evidence that many of those in power have abandoned any pretense that this is a nation of laws, not men, or that all Americans have an equal right to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”
Consider the viewpoints expressed in a pair of speeches from the nation’s top law enforcement officer, William Barr. First, in a speech at Notre Dame, Barr asserted that the “traditional Judeo-Christian moral system” was under attack from “modern secularists,” (Source: “‘A threat to democracy’: William Barr’s speech on religious freedom alarms liberals,” by Philip Shenon, TheGuardian.com, 10/20/19). Then, just last week, in a speech to law enforcement officers that should send a chill down the spine of everyone who believes in civil liberties, Barr issued this veiled threat: “the American people… have to start showing, more than they do, the respect and support that law enforcement deserves. And if communities don’t give that support and respect, they might find themselves without the police protection they need,” (Source: “Bill Barr’s remarks about police protection are what black voters were afraid of with Trump,” by Eugene Scott, The Washington Post, 12/5/19).
These dog whistles are clear. Despite his avuncular appearance, Barr is a dangerous ideologue who ascribes to a radical right wing Catholic theology. He trafficks in the bellicose language of incitement and appears to reject the very notion of modernity in which Black people have the right not to be brutalized by the police, women have bodily autonomy and LGBTQ people are free to live and love openly.
Yet, we don’t need to look at speech transcripts to see how widespread these attitudes are in our government. The harrowing story broken by ProPublica last week is proof that the rot goes way below the surface. ProPublica revealed that Carlos Gregorio Hernandez Vasquez, a 16 year old Guatemalan migrant, was quarantined and left to die in a concrete cell in a Border Patrol facility in Weslaco, Texas, from completely preventable complications from the flu, (Source: “Inside the Cell Where A Sick 16 Year Old Boy Died in Border Patrol Care,” by Robert Moore and Susan Schmidt and Maryam Jameel, ProPublica.org, 12/5/19). As his teacher stated, Border Patrol gave Carlos less care and attention than you would give an animal.
Those of us who seek false comfort in the notion that this state sponsored cruelty is a recent phenomenon need to take a long hard look at last week’s front page story in The New York Times detailing the torture methods employed by the C.I.A. on Abu Zubaydah and about 100 other prisoners in various black sites around the world. In a series of graphic sketches, Zubaydah detailed the gruesome torture inflicted upon him in our name. He was waterboarded 83 times; confined in a dark box with a bucket for a seat; and chained naked to cell bars and forced to stand for hours on end, (Source: “What the C.I.A.’s Torture Program Looked Like to the Tortured,” by Carol Rosenberg, The New York Times, 12/5/19). The most disturbing aspect of Rosenberg’s article are the quotes from Assistant Attorney General, John Bybee, noting Zubaydah’s “flexibility” or of the psychologist hired by the CIA stating that smashing the prisoner’s head against the wall was meant to be “discombobulating.” Seeing in black and white how casually those in our government can justify the most dehumanizing and violent cruelty is chilling indeed.
The fact is that this level of depravity isn’t limited to Trump’s inner circle and it isn’t new. It has always been there, if we were willing to look. The question is, now that we know, what are we going to do about it?