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).