Maybe there is a beast… maybe it’s only us.
There are few more enduring scenes of the wrenching heartbreak of Holocaust atrocities than children being casually ripped from their parent’s arms by Nazi processors. The images are indelible and form the basis for tortured narratives of both book and film, presented as the clearest and most defining proof of The Reich’s special place at the top of history’s list of cruel sadists, worst of the worst.
That America’s national brand has been steeped in its diversity and hospitality toward the world’s wanderers is simply synergy created by necessity. Such compatibility has only increased with time. The American economy has always depended on immigrants, both documented and undocumented. That’s as true in the 21st century as it was in the 20th. From bringing in harvests to applying fresh linens in hotel rooms to Silicon Valley startups, the quality of US life has been a function of an imperfect immigration system often required to wink at law breaking that serves everybody’s interests…. except right wing opportunists.
At some point, perhaps in the late 90s or so, racists gave up publicly fighting against black equality. Even the worst began to understand Jim Crow was history. White children of the 70s and 80s falling in love and having families with black peers, and a uniform media narrative that racial acceptance was, not only a done deal, but synonymous with essential patriotism, persuaded most but the worst that the gig was up, the deal done; America would move forward under the premise that black and white were one and equal parts. It didn’t mean they had to agree with it; however, it was no longer politically viable to openly agitate against the idea. This surrender roughly coincided with the advent of Fox/AM, and was reflected in an emerging narrative the likes of Rush Limbaugh and Roger Ailes constructed. Dog whistles would have to do, with the principle question shifting from whether black America is or isn’t entitled to an equal share of the pie to whether they were uppity and demanding more than the fair serving they had won.
Regardless, reactionary political guff is always a zero-sum exercise, and if one group’s humanity was being granted a raise, another’s had to be demoted, lest beleaguered white self-esteem suffer even more of a hit. Alas, that’s how bigoted wretchedness works. If the GOP – who had no intention of renouncing the white grievance voter bloc it gladly allowed the Democrats to bequeath it as they instead placed their futures wager on demographics rather than fear of change – was prepared to give lip service to black empowerment, it was also more than ready to retrain its guns on a fresh and easily identifiable menace, a new villain for a new millennia. Always the least imaginative of our species, the reactionary crowd lazily resurrected an old nemesis, the immigrant invader.
And so immigrants became MS-13, a scourge on the nation Democrats enabled for a few votes more. Of course, it wasn’t really all immigrants, just brown-skinned ones, mostly from south of the border, but also Africa. Whatever positive aspects they offered, however otherwise noble their pursuit of the American Dream might have been, moving forward they became a problem worthy of both fear and loathing. Republican hard liners and Fox/AM “personalities,” who increasingly wagged the dog, now had a talking point that delivered, more red meat to distinguish themselves from libs and RINOs. It was an issue that furnished no downside because the constituency they were attacking couldn’t fight back. A bully’s paradise.
When in 2015 the grossest manifestation of that petri dish shrilly announced a Presidential bid few took seriously, it was no surprise he would base his messaging on Fox/AM’s foulest bile. That it instantly gained traction spoke volumes about how far Tea Party sensibilities had descended. Apparently, the GOP leadership was the last to find out, and $110 million got Jeb Bush single digit support before he decided politics wasn’t so great after all. The rest is ruinous history with one of its worst chapters made public last week in the form of an 86-page report authored by the Department of Justice’s Inspector General. Disgrace doesn’t approach an accurate assessment of its shocking revelations.
The report’s findings, based on near 50 interviews of different officials. clarifies family separation at the southern border was a Trump/Sessions enterprise through and through, from start to finish. Although the Department of Homeland Security’s top leadership was in the loop, DOJ drove the program. It was cruelty the Attorney General initially wanted his signature all over, until the backlash it created became a liability. Turns out the misery of innocent kids was not collateral damage but rather the whole point of the fiendish exercise. As Democratic Senator Dick Durban summed things up: children were “targets of a cruel strategy to create a gruesome warning to others seeking refuge in our country that their children would pay a price.”
Moreover, apparently age and vulnerability didn’t matter. Rod Rosenstein, later canonized for taking on the Russia investigation after Sessions recused himself, adamantly declared infants should not protect their mothers from the most vigorous prosecution possible. Whatever it took to get the message across. This is no longer that shining city on a hill; a nasty nihilist is now sheriff and he doesn’t play. No Vacancy! Stay home if you know what’s good for you!
Nobody was caught more unprepared by the “must prosecute” policy than border patrol personnel, who suddenly found themselves under orders to violate the most basic human rights of vulnerable petitioners, many of whom had just completed harrowing journeys to get here. DHS officials and DOJ line prosecutors on the border peppered Sessions with questions – most troubling the absence of measures to reunite families after their cases were disposed – and sought to slow the roll out, but Sessions and Rosenstein weren’t having it. According to the report the department’s “single-minded focus on increasing prosecutions came at the expense of careful and effective implementation of the policy, especially with regard to prosecution of family-unit adults and the resulting child separations.”
Most damning of all is the clear evidence, uncovered by investigators like the Southern Poverty Law Center, that family separations were happening up to a year before Sessions sought to codify it as official policy. After nibbling at the edges of atrocity on the down low, Sessions was clearly emboldened to hit the accelerator and claim credit for what was quickly condemned world wide. From April to June, 2018 more than 3000 children were taken from their parents. The total number of kids ripped from their families under the Trump Administration is close to 4500, too many still unaccounted for.
Sessions’ attempt to solidify the President’s good graces failed spectacularly as Trump scapegoated him for the Mueller investigation after he had the good sense and self-survival instincts to recuse himself. Two years later, seeking to regain his Senate seat, Sessions cut a truly pathetic figure groveling before Alabama voters, who continually took him to task for his apostasy. Trump of course applied plenty of salt to the wound, regularly tweeting derision. Sessions lost decisively to former Auburn football coach Tommy Tuberville, himself incapable of finishing a paragraph that doesn’t praise the Bunker Duffer as heaven sent.
Last week’s report confirms Sessions’ culpability for implementing a program that should land him in a defendant’s dock at The Hague, with Rosenstein there by his side. As always, while lying that he was just following Obama’s lead, Trump has doubled and tripled down on the program’s “effectiveness,” and refuses to say it won’t be resorted to again. Few can be confident a second Trump term won’t resurrect what clearly demonstrated MAGA’s capacity for evil on a scale that, before 2016, it was presumed Americans would support confronting abroad wherever it occurred. Instead, we now all share some complicity for what did happen here: the evil Trump supporters lose not a wink of sleep over. BC
Thank you once again, Bill. Your writing is at the same time highly educational, richly evocative of serious reflection, and compelling to action.
A question: Did you leave out “it” as the final word of the essay?
Thanks Matt. No, I did not mean to use it at the end. I think the sentence reads ok as is. I find that style evocative.