By Brigitte L. Nacos
When you try to keep up with a president who manages to lie in his public statements several times within less than one hour—as he did last Friday during a question-and-answer session with the press, you learn rather quickly there is nothing coming from Mr. Trump’s mouth that can surprise you.
More troubling is that some seventeen months into the Trump presidency there is nothing he, his inner circle, his administration, and his cheerleaders in the Congress can do that is particularly surprising.
We expect nothing else. We are no longer shocked. And most of us watch in silence--even though many resent Mr. Trump and his attacks on America’s constitutional foundations.
That’s what happens, when autocrats, dictators, fascists tighten their grip of control on the people, not just their fans.
Mr. Trump does not hide his authoritarian end-game. As he himself stated last week, he does not merely admire North Korea’s despotic leader Kim Jong Un for his complete control of his people. Instead, he wants to be America’s Dear Leader with us ("my people, he said) giving the same attention to him when he speaks (meaning required over-the-top applause in North Korea) as North Koreans do to their leader.
Never mind that in the last 24 hours or so a few Republicans have voiced mild displeasure over the forced separation of desperate asylum seeking families at our Southern borders.
While no longer surprised by anything said and done by this presidents and his supporting cast, I now know that I can still be shocked. I am deeply shocked about the so-called zero tolerance border policy set and enforced by the president and his administration.
I am shocked as I look at the images of babies and toddlers and young children and teenagers forcibly taken away from their mothers and fathers.
I am shocked as I look at cages holding mothers and fathers apart from their equally caged children (Of course, I shouldn’t be surprised since the president himself has dehumanized black and brown people in his rhetorical outbursts—always the prelude to dehumanizing actions).
I am shocked as I see the pictures of detention facilities for now orphaned boys and girls and the start of establishing tent cities for children in areas where super high temperatures are the norm.
I agree with Maureen Dowd who wrote in her last column on this American disgrace that the Statue of Liberty is crying.
I am crying, too.
Is there no end to this madness? Is there no voice loud and powerful enough to bring America back onto the right path?
I think of the great moment in U.S. history, when one courageous man stood up to U.S. Senator Joseph McCarthy and his witch hunt of an allegedly Communist dominated deep state: Joseph Welch, chief counsel and defender of the U.S. Army under attack by McCarthy, told the Senator in one crucial hearing, “At long last, have you left no sense of decency?”
This was a turning point. The beginning of the end of McCarthyism!
The time has come to ask the same question of the U.S. president (and Trumpism).
Have you left no sense of decency, Mr. Trump?
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