December 20, 2018
As it becomes increasingly likely that Trump’s presidency will collapse under the weight of multiple criminal prosecutions, we can expect him to become even more reckless and destructive. Exhibit A was yesterday’s declaration of troop withdrawal by tweet in Syria. Contravening the Pentagon and his own purported military strategy, Trump bizarrely announced, “we have defeated ISIS in Syria, my only reason for being there,” (@realdonaldtrump, Twitter,12/19/18. 9:29 a.m). Trump’s move was consistent with his modus operandi — an impulsive, ill-considered betrayal of our allies that benefits Russia and plunges the region into further chaos, (Source: “Trump Withdraws U.S. Forces from Syria, Declaring ‘We Have Won Against ISIS,’” by Mark Landler, Helene Cooper and Eric Schmitt, The New York Times, 12/19/18).
Senator Bob Corker, who passes for an eminence grise in the Republican conference of doddering, myopic racists, was reduced to tweeting his disapproval when Trump stood him up for a scheduled White House meeting. As several commentators pointed out, when you have spent the last two years completely abdicating your Constitutional responsibility to serve as a check on presidential abuses of power, you can’t cry foul when Trump gets around to screwing up something you profess to care about.
Rattled by seventeen separate investigations into his campaign, foundation, inaugural committee and company, implicated in multiple felonies, watching former confidants turn on him to save their own hides, Trump is flailing, and clearly cares only about currying favor with his Moscow handlers. The longer this treasonous imposter is permitted to exercise presidential powers, the more our standing in the world will be degraded, the more our allies will be betrayed and the more aid and comfort will be given to our enemies. The sooner Trump swaps 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue for a prison cell, the better off the entire world will be.
Yet, as grave as the danger that Trump poses is, we should not divert our attention for a minute from the racist worker bees in his administration who are busily laboring to devise new ways to harm Black and Brown people. Two days ago, Secretary of Education, Betsy DeVos announced plans to rescind Obama-era rules designed to ensure that “minority students were not unfairly disciplined,” (Source: “Trump Officials Plan to Rescind Obama-Era School Discipline Policies,” by Erica L. Green and Katie Benner, The New York Times, 12/17/18). Announced after an inquiry prompted by the Parkland mass shooting, the Department’s conclusion that harsher, disproportionate discipline of students of color will minimize violence in schools, flies in the face of the evidence that school shooters are overwhelmingly aggrieved white men.
Meanwhile, the Customs and Border Patrol’s continued cruelty towards Central American refugees shows no sign of abating. Thanks to Senator Jeff Merkley’s visit to the massive tent city in Tornillo, Texas, we learned that 2700 unaccompanied minors are detained there, along with untold numbers of children who are imprisoned with their families. ICE is lengthening the amount of time immigrants spend in detention by requiring every member of the household of a potential sponsor to be fingerprinted, rather than just the individual sponsor (Source: “Jeff Merkley visits tent city that holds immigrants, calls for contract cancelled,” by Molly Harberger, Oregonlive.com, 12/15/18).
Fresh on the heels of the tragic death of 7 year old Jakelin Caal, we learned that CBP endangered the life of yet another immigrant child. A five month old baby contracted pneumonia after being detained with her mother, without the antibiotics she had been prescribed, in the freezing cold holding cells the migrants call hieleras (iceboxes) for five days. When the mother protested, border officials called her an “invader,” (Source: “Migrant Baby Contracted Pneumonia After Five Days in a ‘Freezing’ Holding Cell,” by Adam K. Raymond, NYMag.com, 12/20/18).
Make no mistake, the steady stream of dehumanizing racist propaganda from the Trump White House and Fox News has created the climate for these tax funded atrocities. It has turned the worst among us into eagerly sadistic,sociopathic functionaries and too many of the rest of us, into people who treat horrifying levels of state sponsored terror with studied indifference. Don’t think for a moment that getting rid of Trump will magically solve our problems. To the contrary, we risk turning a blind eye to the danger lurking in plain sight. Open your eyes.