I was talking to an acquaintance this week and when, inevitably, we got around to politics he told me he could no longer read or listen to the news.
He was still signing petitions and making phone calls, but he just couldn’t stand the relentless flow of bad news. This isn’t the first time I’ve heard this lament and I certainly could relate.
I think that the intention of this president and his administration is to deluge us with shocking policy changes and repeals, nasty tweets, tariff threats, reality shows with heinous dictators, accusations of witch hunts, threats of pardons and firings, and more. Eventually, a person just wants to hide under the covers and not come out.
But we must stay vigilant no matter how hard that may be, because underneath it all runs a river of cruelty and that, I think, is the point of it all, that and hatred for the “other.”
Webster’s dictionary says that someone or something is cruel if it is “disposed to inflict pain and suffering: devoid of humane feelings” and “unrelieved by leniency.”
That about covers the administration’s new “zero-tolerance” immigration policy that calls for the arrest, prosecution and indefinite incarceration of anyone crossing our southern border without documentation, including those with children. But this policy included separating those children, even infants, from their parents and if that doesn’t qualify as inflicting pain and suffering, then I don’t know what does.
Jeff Sessions, the attorney general, defends these actions by citing a Bible passage saying that he and we must “obey the laws of the government because God has ordained the government for his purposes.” I must be confused, because I thought the government was ordained by the “people” for their purposes.
For days, the president and his administration told us that they were not responsible for separating children from their parents, and that he was prevented from fixing this even with an executive order. The fault, he claimed, was with Democrats for not changing existing laws (there are no such laws).
But once the political pressure reached an untenable peak, the president completely reversed himself and proceeded to sign an executive order ending these cruel separations.
Is that the same executive order that he said could not fix the problem, the very problem that his administration created in the first place? Looks to me like he was caught in a lie.
His order says that children will no longer be separated from their families, rather they’ll be indefinitely incarcerated with them. This is not much of a solution since, aside from the moral issues involved, this arrangement will be in violation of a 1997 court decree that requires their release after 20 days. And what happens then? That’s a good question without a good answer.
What the order leaves out entirely is how the more than 2,300 children who already have been taken from their parents and stored in facilities across the country will be reunited with their families. It appears now that planning for reunification was left out when this administration came up with the policy of separations, leaving thousands of parents unable to find their children.
As with most things about this president, chaos reigns, only this time we’re talking about thousands of lost children.
Which brings me to Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals and the 800,000 or so undocumented young people now living in limbo who were brought to this country as children by their parents. It was this president who ended DACA, the Obama-era program that allowed these young people to remain in this country, the only country they’ve ever known, free from the fear of deportation, free to work, to attend school, to contribute to society.
The DACA crisis really is something that President Donald Trump could easily fix, all by himself, simply by restoring the program he ended. But he will not.
It should be clear to anyone paying attention that the president creates these cruel, real human crises only to then lie about their cause. The reality is that he is using human suffering to “cut a deal” with members of Congress to get his much-promised border wall and stricter laws on legal immigration.
To use children in this way is cruelty beyond belief, and I can only wonder if this president and his party have any humane feelings at all.
The list of cruelties is not only restricted to the treatment of immigrants, there’s also the unrelenting drive to take health care coverage from as many people as possible. Trump and his party were unable to repeal the Affordable Care Act last summer, but since then they have picked off bits and pieces, hoping to force it to die without another repeal effort.
But why, I ask? Why take health coverage away from people? And where is the promised, wonderful replacement health care system? Nowhere in sight, that’s where.
It is cruelty indeed to let people suffer and die because they lack the resources to get the care they need. The ACAwasn’t perfect, but it gave affordable coverage to tens of millions of people, improving their lives. And isn’t that what government should be doing?
Just recently, Sessions announced that the Justice Department will no longer enforce the part of the ACA that required insurance companies to cover people with preexisting conditions. So now those millions, approximately one in four Americans, with such conditions will face much higher premiums or be shut out of buying insurance altogether.
The list of cruelties is long, but let me end with the proposed “Budget for A Brighter American Future” which was recently unveiled by the House Budget Committee with the goal of balancing the federal budget. It seems that House Republicans are suddenly concerned with the country’s debt, strangely enough, since just a few months ago they added about $1 trillion to it with their completely unnecessary and one-sided tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy.
And how do they plan to get to this “brighter American future?” You guessed it, by making cuts to Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security that will leave millions of Americans poorer and less healthy. I’m sure you remember how the president repeatedly promised that he would never harm these programs, so we can rest assured that this budget proposal will never be approved.
Oh wait, did I just say that?
Karen Gardner, of Haydenville, a retired computer programmer, is a bird watcher, nature photographer and ukulele player. She can be reached at opinion@gazettenet.com.