CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY: LOCK HIM UP!

 JAZZMAN CHRONICLES:  RADICAL SOLUTIONS FOR RADICAL TIMES.

CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY:  LOCK HIM UP!

By Jack Random

It is not enough that President Donald J. Trump eviscerated the Environmental Protection Agency and all safeguards against the effects of global climate change at the most critical time in human history; it is not enough that he appointed a bible thumping white supremacist attorney general to carry out the demolition of voting rights, civil rights and protections against police bias and abuse of power; it is not enough that he has tipped the balance on the Supreme Court to guarantee systemic injustice for generations to come, he must also upend the most basic sense of being human by separating children from their mothers and fathers and incarcerating them for the crime of holding to their parents’ side as they set foot on the land of the free and the just. 

The president has crossed the line that separates ignorance, intolerance, discrimination, brutality and indifference from crimes against humanity.  How can this man look at those kids in cages and live with himself?  How can his wife and family continue to pretend that it’s only politics as usual?  How can members of congress stand in line for their daily pat on the head from the White House?  There comes a time when your mere presence is collusion. 

There are many presidents who have done horrible things in our tortured history.  Our founders were of course Indian killers before they turned their attention to the creation of a new nation conceived in liberty, justice and guided by the principles of democracy.  We methodically stole a continent and for a time attempted to enact a policy of genocide. 

As a nation we allowed the scourge of slavery to persist so long that its effects are still palpable in every facet of our daily lives today.  As a nation we have gone to war under false pretenses so many times – Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq included – that we can only defend our policy as the prerogative of the powerful. 

A president has ordered the incarceration of American citizens for their racial and cultural heritage.  A president has sanctioned the torture and indefinite detention of our enemies without due process of law.  A president has approved the segregation of schools and communities while allowing systemic discrimination to persist.  A president has ordered the carpet-bombing of a civilian population in a faraway land. 

Presidents have done these things and more but always they have been in response to some perceived threat or historical mandate.  Always there has been some rationalization.  The nation has suffered under some collective delusion or irrational fear.  Early Americans believed and invested in Manifest Destiny – a notion that God intended Caucasian Europeans to claim the continent.  Franklin Roosevelt’s demented detention of Japanese Americans was born of a commonly held fear that Japanese Americans would rise up in defense of their emperor.  Andrew Jackson defied the Supreme Court and evacuated the Cherokee from their homeland on the Trail of Tears because his people – the white people – needed more and more land. 

On and on, if not the moral high ground, presidents have held to some practical or moral justification for their actions.  What is Trump’s justification for this action?  Was there really a massive wave of migration to the southern border?  Was the nation in crisis?  Were our institutions incapable of responding to the situation without breaking down?  Was this the only action Trump could have taken? 

No.  I submit that a policy of zero tolerance and the separation of children from their parents was something this president simply wanted to do.  There was and is a crisis but it is not at the border; it is a thousand miles to the south where the governments, the armed forces and the police are corrupt and incapable of confronting the criminal gangs that are ripping their countries apart.  The crisis is in Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras where thugs take what they want, demand whatever pleases them and kill whoever stands in their way.  The migrants are refugees from unimaginable violence and they’ll keep coming because what they’re fleeing is infinitely more horrible than anything Donald Trump can devise.  They seek asylum not only in the United States of America but also in the United States of Mexico and Mexico has shown a great deal more compassion than we have. 

The problems of Central America and indeed Mexico are as complex as they are severe.  Whenever criminal elements become more powerful than the government democracy cannot survive.  Solutions are equally difficult especially considering the role our government has historically played in Latin American politics.  We have supported dictators, taken the wrong side in civil wars, upheld despots and overthrown lawfully elected governments.  We have empowered corporations to invade their territories and steal their resources.  The CIA has a particularly horrific record of human and civil rights abuse below the Mexican border. 

Our record is so deplorable that no honest and democratic government would trust us to intervene in their affairs.  And yet, absent a regional power led by our government, there is little we can do to stem the tide of violence.  What we can do, however, is help those who are fleeing. 

Let’s be honest about what’s happening in the region.  It would hardly be impossible to determine who among them are honest refugees and who is something else.  In terms of our nation, there are not that many Central American refugees.  We can take them in.  We can assimilate them into our population.  We can help them to become functional and contributing citizens.  In the best of our culture and traditions, we have always done so. 

Trump doesn’t care about these people.  He doesn’t care about what they are fleeing or what they will bring to our nation.  He doesn’t care that they are the victims of gang violence and brutality.  He cares about the conflict.  He needs an enemy – especially one than cannot fight back.  He desperately needs to be the man, the heartless brute, the biggest and the baddest bully on the block.  He wants to make his own laws.  He wants to hold these children up to the cameras and demand that his adversaries build him a wall.  Trump is like the muscle man that says to his victim:  “This is your fault!  You did this!” 

He does it because he wants to do it.  It is who he is.  This is a man who has no regrets because he never engages in self-reflection.  He has never been wrong and never will be – not even when he rips a child from her mother’s arms. 

There are very few crimes that a president cannot get away with and this is not one of them but there are judgments greater than the rule of law.  For crimes against humanity, there was a time that Richard Nixon’s Secretary of State Henry Kissinger could not travel abroad without fear of being detained and tried before an international tribunal.  How sweet and poetic that deliverance would be. 

Jazz. 

“There Is No Way We Can Turn Back.”  Why Central American Refugees will Keep Coming to America Despite Trump’s Crackdown.  By Ioan Grillo/Tenosique.  Time Magazine, June 21, 2018. 

“Criminalizing Victims: The Fate of Honduran Refugees” by Michael Slager.  Counterpunch, May 18, 2018. 

“Family Separations:  Trump’s Executive Order Does Not Hide This Historical Pattern of Cruelty” by Jimmy Centeno, Don T. Deere and Frederick B. Mills.  Counterpunch, June 27, 2018. 

JACK RANDOM IS THE AUTHOR OF THE JAZZMAN CHRONICLES AND THE CHESS SERIES:  PAWNS TO PLAYERS – THE STAIRWAY SCANDAL, A MATCH FOR THE WHITE HOUSE AND THE PUTIN GAMBIT (CROW DOG PRESS).