Tag Archives: Donald Trump

family separation repost XII – NEW DEVELOPMENTS

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editorials – family separation

See attached downloadable Word document (above).

 

Since my last repost a few weeks ago, there have been significant new developments.

First of all, on October 5, 2020, The New York Times published a story that revealed the deception and deliberateness underlying the Trump administration’s family separation policy from its inception (first in secret): “

‘We Need to Take Away Children,’ No Matter How Young, Justice Dept. Officials Said: Top department officials were “a driving force” behind President Trump’s child separation policy, a draft investigation report said.”

That story has been reposted here.

Then, on October 20, NBC News broke the story that 545 separated children can’t be found and that the administration never kept track of them and is not even looking for them now, but has “outsourced” the job of trying to find parents of missing children to the American Civil Liberties Union and other private agencies. This story and a slew of others that followed are posted here — along with a story of how Trump handled these disclosures during his second debate with Joe Biden (by trying to blame family separation on President Obama and Vice President Biden and making claims that, essentially no harm was done by the family separation policy, while showing no concern or empathy for the trams parents and children undoubtedly experienced) . Recent editorials written in response to such disclosures have also been posted here — along with several news stories covering relatively recent developments.

Finally, I overlooked a number of news stories and editorials going back as far as June 2018 and have posted them here.

 

–Roger W. Smith

   October 2020

Sharpiegate and Orwell

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Democracies used to collapse suddenly, with tanks rolling noisily toward the presidential palace. In the 21st century, however, the process is usually subtler.

Authoritarianism is on the march across much of the world, but its advance tends to be relatively quiet and gradual, so that it’s hard to point to a single moment and say, this is the day democracy ended. You just wake up one morning and realize that it’s gone. …

And the events of the past week have demonstrated how this can happen right here in America.

At first Sharpiegate, Donald Trump’s inability to admit that he misstated a weather projection by claiming that Alabama was at risk from Hurricane Dorian, was kind of funny, even though it was also scary — it’s not reassuring when the president of the United States can’t face reality. But it stopped being any kind of joke on Friday, when the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration issued a statement falsely backing up Trump’s claim that it had warned about an Alabama threat.

Why is this frightening? Because it shows that even the leadership of NOAA, which should be the most technical and apolitical of agencies, is now so subservient to Trump that it’s willing not just to overrule its own experts but to lie, simply to avoid a bit of presidential embarrassment.

Think about it: If even weather forecasters are expected to be apologists for Dear Leader, the corruption of our institutions is truly complete.

— “How Democracy Dies, American-Style: Sharpies, auto emissions and the weaponization of policy,” op-ed, By Paul Krugman, The New York Times, September 9, 2019

 

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Winston dialled ‘back numbers’ on the telescreen and called for the appropriate issues of ‘The Times’, which slid out of the pneumatic tube after only a few minutes’ delay. The messages he had received referred to articles or news items which for one reason or another it was thought necessary to alter, or, as the official phrase had it, to rectify. For example, it appeared from ‘The Times’ of the seventeenth of March that Big Brother, in his speech of the previous day, had predicted that the South Indian front would remain quiet but that a Eurasian offensive would shortly be launched in North Africa. As it happened, the Eurasian Higher Command had launched its offensive in South India and left North Africa alone. It was therefore necessary to rewrite a paragraph of Big Brother’s speech, in such a way as to make him predict the thing that had actually happened. Or again, ‘The Times’ of the nineteenth of December had published the official forecasts of the output of various classes of consumption goods in the fourth quarter of 1983, which was also the sixth quarter of the Ninth Three-Year Plan. Today’s issue contained a statement of the actual output, from which it appeared that the forecasts were in every instance grossly wrong. Winston’s job was to rectify the original figures by making them agree with the later ones. As for the third message, it referred to a very simple error which could be set right in a couple of minutes. As short a time ago as February, the Ministry of Plenty had issued a promise (a ‘categorical pledge’ were the official words) that there would be no reduction of the chocolate ration during 1984. Actually, as Winston was aware, the chocolate ration was to be reduced from thirty grammes to twenty at the end of the present week. All that was needed was to substitute for the original promise a warning that it would probably be necessary to reduce the ration at some time in April.

As soon as Winston had dealt with each of the messages, he clipped his speakwritten corrections to the appropriate copy of ‘The Times’ and pushed them into the pneumatic tube. Then, with a movement which was as nearly as possible unconscious, he crumpled up the original message and any notes that he himself had made, and dropped them into the memory hole to be devoured by the flames.

— George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four

 

–posted by Roger W. Smith

  September 2019

“expressing outrage” … admirable or to be frowned upon?

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I received an email from a relative last week. It was, on the surface at least, well meaning, but it could also be construed as condescending.

Re your email expressing outrage with Trump and incarcerated kids, at least he caved (although harm already done can’t be undone).

Without crawling under a rock, I try to avoid at least some of this aggravation. …

No doubt your frequent visits to Carnegie Hall and related forays into classical music (not to mention long walks) are therapeutic. You, like me, might try to avoid or at least minimize all the stuff that aggravates.

 

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I replied to my relative as follows.

I am mostly apolitical and have tried over the past couple of years not to be consumed with hatred of Trump.

The news about the incarceration of immigrant kids has really gotten to me, however. I can’t bear to contemplate it.

Also, immigration has long been an issue I have cared about and blogged about.

I won’t change.

You are right that “harm already done can’t be undone.” I read that the administration has said nothing about the children who have already been separated from their parents and that no steps are underway to reunite them.

I feel that this is an egregious violation of human rights that will not be forgotten and can’t be remedied, it seems. I mean the whole anti-immigrant policy, the characterization and treatment of immigrants as vermin, and worst of all, the separation of parents and children.

 

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Some people profess hatred and scorn for Donald Trump and his supporters, the “deplorables.” They are in the liberal vanguard and can be counted upon to support left of center politicians. When those politicians support policies merely for political expediency — such as Hillary Clinton (one of their favorites, arch enemy of the “deplorables”) voting for the Iraq War — they look the other way. Doctrinaire liberalism and political orthodoxy trump independent thinking, which might, they fear, make them appear ideologically “incorrect” and cause them to lose friends or to be looked down upon by them.

These people want nothing to do with the “deplorables” and isolate themselves in mostly white, upper middle class neighborhoods where they won’t have to rub elbows with the proletariat (George Orwell’s proles).

 

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When an outrage is seen such as the Trump administration’s hard line policies towards immigrants — PEOPLE like you and I (and we are descended, like all Americans, from immigrants) — Washington Post columnist Michael Gerson (a conservative) calls it, with dead on accuracy, “state-sponsored cruelty” — my relatives and their liberal friends are strangely silent.

They hate Donald Trump and Trump apologists such as Sarah Huckabee Sanders and Kellyanne Conway. They march in parades where placards with a crude caricature of Trump reading “The only asshole is in the White House” are held aloft.

Trump to them represents the antithesis of their enlightened beliefs and values. They are eager to make the distinction manifest — that they are exemplars of values that distinguish the “best people” from ignorant and unrefined people.

But concern for actual people, especially sweaty aliens from the impoverished lower classes arriving in rafts and/or on foot at the Texas border, does not engage their sympathies or excite their imagination. And, while religion may be given lip service, an impassioned appeal to fundamental Christian tenets such as charity also does not move them; it may more often than not be an embarrassment to them and perhaps remind my auditors (heaven forbid) of the religious right.

Hence the advice to me from a relative to not get too worked up over the separation of immigrant children from their parents.

What such people care about is being on the “correct” side of political debates. They are essentially cold-blooded conformists to liberal ideology. Card carrying liberals who can be counted upon for support of ordained policies and positions.

They don’t care all that much about living, breathing, suffering people. The plight of lower class immigrants does not engage them emotionally. Of course, they do care about the welfare of their own families (and the maintenance of their own public institutions and communities), but that’s another matter. As long as they are safe in their suburban enclaves, they are not going to lose that much sleep over a few thousand “losers” and their children locked up in cages.

Caring deeply about man’s inhumanity to certain groups and persons can actually embarrass them. They would prefer that their relatives don’t call attention to themselves by expressing moral outrage, without checking with them first.

A historical parallel comes to mind. Many people felt at the time that abolitionists in their strident denunciations of slavery and insistence on immediate abolition were fanatics who should have restrained themselves. The parallel may not be exact in the present instance, but why am I being advised to “get a grip” on myself and exercise “restraint” when it comes to my distress and anger, indeed horror, over the consequences of the Trump administration’s anti-immigrant policies? This from Trump haters. Haters, but I question the depth and sincerity of their compassion.

 

— Roger W. Smith

  June 2018

washing their hands

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When Pilate saw that he could prevail nothing, but that rather a tumult was made, he took water, and washed his hands before the multitude, saying, I am innocent of the blood of this just person: see ye to it.

— Matthew 27:24, King James Version

 

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REP. JEFF DENHAM (R-CALIF)

“We are fixing family separation within this bill and have made changes to keep children with at least one of their parents.”

 

HOGAN GIDLEY

“Sadly, Democrats openly oppose simple fixes to federal law that would stop the illegal migrant crisis and end the magnet for unlawful migration,” said White House spokesman Hogan Gidley.

 

JOHN F. KELLY

“A big name of the game is deterrence,” Mr. Kelly, [then the homeland security secretary] now the chief of staff, told NPR in May. “The children will be taken care of — put into foster care or whatever — but the big point is they elected to come illegally into the United States, and this is a technique that no one hopes will be used extensively or for very long.”

 

MARK MEADOWS

“Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.), one of Trump’s closest allies in Congress, questioned Sunday whether some of the adult migrants who show up at the border with children are really their parents, citing human-trafficking concerns.”

 

STEPHEN MILLER [senior policy adviser to President Trump]

“No nation can have the policy that whole classes of people are immune from immigration law or enforcement. It was a simple decision by the administration to have a zero tolerance policy for illegal entry, period. The message is that no one is exempt from immigration law.”

 

KIRSTJEN NIELSEN

“My decision has been that anyone who breaks the law will be prosecuted,” Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen said in Senate testimony earlier this month. “If you’re a parent, or you’re a single person, or you happen to have a family, if you cross between the ports of entry, we will refer you for prosecution. You’ve broken U.S. law.”

 

MARCO RUBIO

“We have to understand a lot of these people that are crossing children are being trafficked here. They are being brought here by criminal groups that help guide them and often take advantage of them and brutalize them on the path toward the United States, and the ability to cross that border is a magnet that is drawing this behavior.”

 

SARAH HUCKABEE SANDERS

“Our administration has had the same position since we started on Day 1 that we were going to enforce the law,” Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the White House press secretary, said on Thursday. “We’re a country of law and order, and we’re enforcing the law and protecting our borders.”

 

JEFF SESSIONS

“Having children does not give you immunity from arrest and prosecution. I would cite you to the Apostle Paul and his clear and wise command in Romans 13 to obey the laws of the government. Because God has ordained them for the purpose of order.”

 

JEFF SESSIONS

“Orderly and lawful processes are good in themselves. Consistent and fair application of the law is in itself a good and moral thing, and that protects the weak and protects the lawful.”

“If people don’t want to be separated from their children, they should not bring them with them. We’ve got to get this message out. You’re not given immunity.”

“If you don’t want your child separated, then don’t bring them across the border illegally. It’s not our fault that somebody does that.”

 

DONALD J. TRUMP

“Put pressure on the Democrats to end the horrible law that separates children from there [sic] parents once they cross the Border into the U.S.,” Trump tweeted Saturday. “Catch and Release, Lottery and Chain must also go with it and we MUST continue building the WALL! DEMOCRATS ARE PROTECTING MS-13 THUGS.”

 

DONALD J. TRUMP

“Democrats can fix their forced family breakup at the Border by working with Republicans on new legislation, for a change!”

 

KENNETH WOLFE

“HHS is legally required to provide care and shelter for all unaccompanied alien children referred by DHS, and works in close coordination with DHS on the security and safety of the children and community,” [HRS spokesman Kenneth] Wolfe said in a statement.

“The side effect of zero tolerance is that fewer people will come up illegally, and fewer minors would be put in danger,” said a third senior administration official. “What is more dangerous to a minor, the 4,000-mile journey to America or the short-term detention of their parents?”

“The president has told folks that in lieu of the laws being fixed, he wants to use the enforcement mechanisms that we have,” a White House official said. “The thinking in the building is to force people to the table.”

 

— posted by Roger W. Smith

   June 16, 2018

“I feel really great.”

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“I feel really great,” Mr. Trump said. “It’s going to be a great discussion and, I think, tremendous success. I think it’s going to be really successful, and I think we will have a terrific relationship. I have no doubt.”

 

Donald Trump: windbag. One in a long line of them.

I was talking recently to someone I met in a Manhattan diner whose native language is not English. I said to her that it was a blustery day and asked if she knew what it meant. She said she didn’t.

It means very windy, I explained. One of those great words in our language for expressing a precise shade of meaning — it was indeed a blustery day.

I went on to explain, which amused my interlocutor, that blustery can also be used with the connotation of a kind of talk. The dictionary definition is as follows:

Bluster (noun): loud, aggressive, or indignant talk with little effect.

And, used as a verb: to talk in such a manner.

 

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Famous blusterers of yore (including fictional characters):

Branch Rickey, the legendary General Manager of the Brooklyn Dodgers. As Fritz Knapp related in his book Jackie Robinson and Branch Rickey: Nobility, Rickey’s office was known to sportswriters (was so called by them) as “the cave of winds” because “he was so fond of pontificating on baseball and life.”

George Shinn, the mayor in The Music Man. Played unforgettably by the actor Paul Ford.

Phineas T. Bluster. A puppet character on the children’s television program Howdy Doody, which was required viewing for my friends and me in the 1950’s. Phineas T. Bluster, side-whiskers and all, the orator who never stopped his bluster, was one of my favorite characters.

Can you think of others? Shouldn’t be hard to.

 

— Roger W. Smith

    June 2018

prevarication; institutionalized cruelty

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Two news stories caught my eye this morning.

 

“This way madness lies”

by Dana Milbank

Washington Post

January 16, 2018

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/this-way-madness-lies/2018/01/16/0b627fe2-fb0a-11e7-a46b-a3614530bd87_story.html?utm_term=.3b24634fb0e1

 

and

 

“Michigan Father Deported After Living in U.S. for 30 Years”

By Christina Caron

New York Times

January 16, 2018

Christina Caron Michigan father deported

 

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Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank is a good and perceptive writer. He states:

I knew that Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, when she appeared before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday, would deny that Trump said what the whole world knows he said: that he wants immigrants from Norway rather than from “shithole” countries in Africa.

Nielsen … was now under oath, and she wiggled every which way to excuse Trump without perjuring herself: “I did not hear that word used. … I don’t dispute that the president was using tough language.”

[Senator Patrick] Leahy moved on to Trump’s wish for more Norwegian immigrants. “Norway is a predominantly white country, isn’t it?” he asked, rhetorically.

“I actually do not know that, sir,” Nielsen replied. “But I imagine that is the case.”

Kirstjen Nielsen doesn’t know Norwegians are white?

Milbank goes on to say:

Now the federal government is hurtling toward a shutdown, entirely because of the president’s whim. Democrats and Republicans presented him last week with exactly the bipartisan deal he said he would sign — protecting the immigrant “dreamers” while also providing funding for his border security “wall” [italics added] — but Trump unexpectedly exploded with his racist attack and vulgar word.

That’s what brought to mind the second article, in The New York Times, and the whole topic of Trump’s wall.

 

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Here’s what I would like to know.

Why is a “bipartisan deal” under consideration to provide funding for Trump’s wall? Have Democrats lost their spines or minds?

We don’t need it! As I explained in a previous post:

 

“Walt Whitman, immigration policy, and Donald Trump’s wall; or, the Berlin Wall redux”

https://rogersgleanings.com/2017/01/25/roger-w-smith-walt-whitman-immigration-policy-and-donald-trumps-wall/

 

It’s not in any sense just a matter of the wall being unnecessary or too expensive, or an eyesore. Or whatever. It’s bad policy and it smacks of Iron Curtain style statism verging on totalitarianism.

The Times article concerns Jorge Garcia, an immigrant from Mexico who has been living in the United States for a period of slightly less than thirty years. The basic facts: he is married to an American citizen; he and his wife have two children; he has no known criminal record and was employed (until a day or two ago) as a landscaper; he has cooperated over the years with immigration authorities. You can read the rest of the sad story and about the bureaucratic quagmire he got caught in over technicalities.

On Monday, immigration agents put Garcia on a flight to Mexico, with his wife and 15-year-old daughter (both in tears) and his 12-year-old son standing by and looking on. “We’re devastated. We’re sad, we’re depressed,” his wife, Cindy Garcia, said.

 

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Here’s what I think, and I know I’m right.

Ours is a country of immigrants. We are all descended from immigrants. God knows how they got here and what they underwent (both emigrating and in making a life in The New Land).

To pursue and harry immigrants (regardless of their immigration status in the eyes of the law, which is at best imperfect) who are law abiding and hardworking and have done no harm – in fact, the opposite — is cruel and, in fact, unjust. It belies and betrays our foundational and civic principles. If the purpose is to prevent terrorists and malefactors from entering our country, what is the point behind expelling immigrants such as Mr. Garcia and “dreamers”?

You know what actions such as this particular one remind me of? When slaves, who were considered property, were sold away and separated from their families — spouse, parents, or children – by being sold to a different master.

We have so much to gain from immigrants, as I see every day in New York. If they were allowed to come, economic and other factors, such as possible overcrowding, allocation of social services, etc. would take care of themselves, naturally. Things reach their own level and will adjust themselves without government intervention. They always have.

 

— Roger W. Smith

   January 17, 2018

 

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addendum:

A quote from William Blake comes to mind: “He who would do good to another must do it in Minute Particulars. General Good is the plea of the scoundrel, hypocrite, and flatterer. … .”

— William Blake, “Jerusalem”

 

Looking at this from another angle — or from several — what Blake is saying is, don’t try to ameliorate the human condition by instituting policies designed to achieve this or to rectify some perceived flaw, say, in the law or policy, but pay attention to the effect of actions taken upon individuals. How does an initiative towards improving the human condition (or preventing adverse consequences, so deemed) affect them?

Or, better yet, don’t even think about generalities; think about the effect upon actual living, breathing people. If you’re harming them, it’s a certainty that you are doing no general or larger good.

 

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addendum:

My friend from high school days Jan Brady posted the following on Facebook on January 18:

QUOTE: “All of those in violation of the immigration laws may be subject to immigration arrest, detention and, if found removable by final order, removal from the United States,” [Khaalid] Walls [a spokesman for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement] said in a statement.”

Where is the rationale?

I’ve lost sight of the “Why”. What greater good is gained by this action?

philosophy class

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Sarah Huckabee Sanders, in a press conference on November 17, 2017, asked about why President Trump tweeted ridiculing and criticizing Al “Frankenstein”

(but had no comment about Roy Moore)

was asked to elaborate on this in view of the fact that more than a dozen women have accused Trump of groping.

Sanders: “Senator Franken has admitted wrongdoing and the president hasn’t. I think that’s a very clear distinction.”

Sound reasoning?

What would Socrates say? … I. F. Stone (a worshipper of Socrates)?

Where did Sanders go to school? What was her major?

Does it matter?

 

– Roger W. Smith

  November 18, 2017

 

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Addendum: Press Secretary Sanders, asked in December to comment re allegations by women that Donald Trump made inappropriate, unwanted sexual advances over the years, to wit:

such charges were made before the 2016 election; Trump denied them

Trump was elected … ergo: the American people believed the charges were false

Trump denies the charges; therefore, they are false

(Donald Trump is a man. Trump is mortal. Therefore, all men are mortal. … Don’t ask me to get this syllogism straight.)

Walt Whitman, immigration policy, and Donald Trump’s wall; or, the Berlin Wall redux

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In response to:

“Supreme Court Tie Blocks Obama Immigration Plan,” The New York Times, June 23, 2016

‘Supreme Court tie blocks Obama immigration plan’ – NY Times

 

I offer the following brief comments of my own as well as pertinent quotations from Walt Whitman and about him.

The controversy over immigration has been going on for a long time.

 

— Roger W. Smith

 

 

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In response to great waves of immigration that occurred between 1880 and 1920, the so-called Brahmins had become ever more insistent about a particular perspective on American culture, asserting that the real, pure, or true Americans were Anglo-Saxons. The great migrations coincided with the founding of such groups as the Society of Mayflower Descendants and the Sons and Daughters of the American Revolution. The migrations also coincided with the efforts of publishers who commissioned numerous professors (almost all from New England) to write literary histories for high school and college use with the hope of unifying the heterogeneous American people under the “aegis of New England” by fashioning a national history anchored in that region. Nina Baym has noted that “conservative New England leaders knew all too well that the nation was an artifice and that no single national character undergirded it. And they insisted passionately . . . [on] instilling in all citizens those traits that they thought necessary for the future: self-reliance, self-control, and acceptance of hierarchy.

[Walt] Whitman, less radical in the 1850s in the face of the slavery crisis than many Boston intellectuals, had become by the 1880s increasingly associated with the teeming masses, the immigrants, the downtrodden of all types. Meanwhile some of the same Boston intellectuals who had led the charge for the emancipation of blacks had come to be associated with propriety, exclusiveness, and backsliding on racial issues. [It seems my New England ancestors had such prejudices.]

— Kenneth M. Price, To Walt Whitman, America, pg. 31

 

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It is a shame that what I consider to be enlightened attitudes do not prevail today. We do not seem to have reached, or advanced beyond, the point reached by Whitman in the evolution of his views.

Whitman, who got his start as a journalist, editorialized against all immigration restriction, insisting that America must embrace immigrants of all backgrounds.

 

— Roger W. Smith, June 2016

 

 

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The following are excerpts from Whitman’s poems and from remarks of Whitman that were recorded by his “Boswell,” Horace Traubel.

 

 

the perpetual coming of immigrants … the free commerce … the fluid movement of the population
— Walt Whitman, Preface to Leaves of Grass

 

 

‘’See, in my poems immigrants continually coming and landing,

— Walt Whitman, “Starting From Paumanok”; Leaves of Grass

 

 

The man’s body is sacred, and the woman’s body is sacred,
No matter who it is, it is sacred;
Is it a slave? Is it one of the dull-faced immigrants
just landed on the wharf?
Each belongs here or anywhere just as much as the well-off–just as much as you,
Each has his or her place in the procession.

— Walt Whitman, “I Sing the Body Electric,” Leaves of Grass

 

 

 

[Thomas B.] Harned broached the subject of the restriction of immigration, and happening to say, “most people believe in it–it’s very unpopular now-a-days not to believe in it,” W[hitman]. exclaimed contemptuously: “All, did you say, Tom–or almost all? Well, here’s one who spits it all out, contract labor, pauper labor, or anything else, notwithstanding.” Harned said: “I did not say I believe in restriction–I said most people do.” W. went on vehemently: “Well for you, Tom, that you do not say it. I have no fears of America–not the slightest. America is for one thing only–and if not for that for what? America must welcome all–Chinese, Irish, German, pauper or not, criminal or not–all, all, without exceptions: become an asylum for all who choose to come. We may have drifted away from this principle temporarily but time will bring us back. The tide may rise and rise again and still again and again after that, but at last there is an ebb–the low water comes at last. Think of it–think of it: how little of the land of the United States is cultivated–how much of it is still utterly untilled. When you go West you sometimes travel whole days at lightning speed across vast spaces where not an acre is plowed, not a tree is touched, not a sign of a house is anywhere detected. America is not for special types, for the caste, but for the great mass of people–the vast, surging, hopeful, army of workers. Dare we deny them a home–close the doors in their face–take possession of all and fence it in and then sit down satisfied with our system–convinced that we have solved our problem? I for my part refuse to connect America with such a failure–such a tragedy, for tragedy it would be.” W. spoke with the greatest energy. It is a subject that always warms him up. “You see,” he said finally, “that the immigrant, too, like the writer, comes up against the canons, and has to last them out.”

— Horace Traubel, With Walt Whitman in Camden, vol. II, pg. 34 (entry for Tuesday, July 24, 1888)

 

 

[Whitman] said: “I believe in the higher patriotism–not, my country whether or no, God bless it and damn the rest!–no, not that–but my country, to be kept big, to grow bigger, to lead the procession, not in conquest, however, but in inspiration. If the procession, not in conquest, however, but in inspiration.

— Horace Traubel, With Walt Whitman in Camden, vol. II, pg. 94 (entry for Sunday, August 5, 1888)

 

 

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For what it’s worth, I am thoroughly in agreement with Whitman.

We Americans, all of us, are the descendants of immigrants. They have brought so much in terms of cultural richness, ingenuity, initiative, and plain hard work to this nation. THEY are who and what make this country great.

I am completely opposed to Donald Trump’s Know Nothing stance. He wants to set us back a century in terms of attitudes towards immigrants. He wants to build a wall at the Mexican border! It’s the Berlin Wall redux.

Note — it’s ironic, is it not? — what Walt Whitman said emphatically (as quoted above) 128 years ago, when similar sentiments were being propagated:

“Dare we … close the doors in their [immigrants’] face–take possession of all and fence it in [italics added]?”

In Berlin on June 12, 1987, President Ronald Reagan made the famous speech in which he said: “Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate. Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!” The demolition of the wall began three years later.

Now Trump wants to build one of his own.

 

 

— Roger W. Smith,

      June 2016

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See also:

 

“Up Against the Wall” (editorial), The New York Times, April, 2017

‘Up Against the Wall’ – NY Times 4-8-2017

A very penetrating analysis of what’s wrong with Trump’s proposal to build a wall at our Southern border.

 

Plus:

 

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/scotus-immigration-ruling-puts-millions-deportation-limbo-article-1.2685908

 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2016/06/24/how-the-supreme-courts-deadlock-will-change-immigration-politics/

 

 

the sacking of Billy Bush

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Who is Billy Bush?

The nephew of former President George H. W. Bush.

The cousin of former President George W. Bush.

A former anchor of Access Hollywood, a weekly television program, and the former host of a nationally syndicated talk and music radio show.

Most recently, until just a few days ago, he was a co-host of the third hour of NBC’s Today show.

I had never heard –- before a couple of weeks ago, that is – of Billy Bush. I had no idea who he was and had never seen him on television.

 

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On October 17, 2016, NBC News fired Bush.

Why?

As is well known, he was caught on tape in a vulgar conversation about women with Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump before an Access Hollywood appearance. The story was broken on October 8, 2016 in the Washington Post, which gained access to the tape.

It seems that practically everyone has seen the tape, which is three minutes and six seconds long and is on YouTube.

On the tape, Bush is heard laughing as Trump talks about his fame enabling him to grope and try to have sex with women not his wife.

Bush said later that he was “embarrassed and ashamed” by what was caught on tape.

 

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A few thoughts of my own, for what they’re worth.

I would be embarrassed myself if I were caught taking part in such a conversation and it were made public.

I did not find the conversation interesting or edifying. Bush appears foolish and callow on the videotape.

He is heard laughing — appreciatively, at least on the surface — at Donald Trump’s lewd remarks.

He has little to say himself except for:

commenting with two or three words on a sexy woman’s appearance saying that she looks “hot as shit”;

when Trump says ‘when you’re a star … you can do anything,” Bush answers, “whatever you want”;

he makes an admiring comment about a woman’s legs.

For this, he has been fired?

This is a serious offense?

 

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How would I react if someone made Trump like disclosures to me?

I might react with disapproval, although I doubt I would vent it. If this were the case, I would probably clam up and be stone faced.

I might laugh a bit nervously and try to show I am “one of the boys.”

I don’t know.

Who cares?

The point I would like to make is that our society has gone bonkers when it comes to public morality. For the offense of laughing at lewd remarks about hitting upon women, one gets fired from one’s job?

I don’t care personally about Billy Bush. I am not interested in his career.

But I do feel that his “punishment” is ridiculous.

 

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It has been and still is the case in repressive, totalitarian societies that freedom of expression is not permitted. So, that if, say, you insulted Stalin in the USSR, you might have been denounced and executed.

Similarly, I would not recommend, if one lives in North Korea or happens to visit there, making fun of a poster of Kim Jong-un, the supreme leader of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

Laughing or showing disrespect in such totalitarian states can be sufficient to get you a long sentence in prison at hard labor, at the minimum.

Laughing at the lewd remarks of Donald Trump in today’s repressive cultural milieu can cause you to lose your job.

 

— Roger W. Smith

   October 2016

unfit to become president?

Leave a reply

 

Here goes.

I want to make a point or two now, while the topic is totally dominating the news and, it seems, is the main topic of practically every conversation.

I have no doubt that few readers of this post will agree with me and that will most will say, “he’s totally wrong.”

But I hate it when people profess moral outrage over things they probably do themselves in the ordinary course of events — or, one should say, in a lifetime. I hate it when people act morally superior or hypocritical.

Few will be inclined to feel the way I do. But I have found, from my own experience, that when everyone thinks one way, it’s usually not right or true — in fact, it’s often the opposite. This seems to happen particularly when everyone is up in arms about a scandal, one that has led to across the board outrage and condemnation.

 

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I tend to be apolitical, but I consider myself to be a liberal. I disapprove strongly of many, if not most, of Donald Trump’s policy positions.

Everyone knows by now that Trump was recorded on an audio tape several years ago making crude sexual comments about a particular woman, and women in general, characterizing them as sexual objects whom he thought would be easy conquests; and that now the audio tape has been made public.

Supposedly, this is the supreme gotcha moment, which everyone — the legions of Trump haters, that is — has been waiting for. The smoking gun that proves for once and for all what has already become a forgone conclusion: that Donald Trump is a misogynist and philanderer who demeans women.

What everyone already knew has been proven. He can’t deny it. It’s like trapping a bear.

 

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Bill Clinton was caught in extremely embarrassing situations with women, some of whom he appears to have treated as sex objects without forming any other sort of relationship with them. I suspect if more of Clinton’s private talk happened to be taped (which it shouldn’t be), it would not all be ennobling or admirable.

Taping is not right. Exposing others’ private lives and secrets is not right. That’s what’s wrong here, not what Donald Trump said to his friend.

People have a right to privacy.

Most of us would be in the same boat if subjected to the same scrutiny as Trump, including myself. There would be things we have said and done which, if made public, would embarrass us beyond belief. Does this prove that you or I is a despicable, immoral person? Not really. Practically everyone has been guilty of private behavior that they would not be proud of.

Scads of men of my own acquaintance have made demeaning and “sexist” remarks; used foul, abusive language; insulted others verbally; boasted about sexual exploits. It goes on all the time. And people now are pretending to be shocked?

I have seen it in my own family and personal circle from people who were highly educated, cultured, and well brought up. I have done it myself.

 

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“I was sickened by what I heard today [Friday, October 7],” House Speaker Paul Ryan said when the story broke.

Really? Sickened? I would say that Ryan is hyper sensitive. And, I am surprised that he has never been exposed to such talk before, which is to say at least heard it, somewhere, either in personal conversations or in the media. He must lead a very sheltered life.

Maybe he needs some Pepto-Bismol to soothe his stomach. But I don’t know. Sickened? He seems to be having a hard time dealing with the Trump revelations. Perhaps he should see a doctor.

“This is horrific,” said Christina Reynolds, a spokeswoman for Hillary Clinton. “We cannot allow this man to become president.”

Ms. Reynolds is paid to make such statements. Who does she think should become president? Hillary Clinton, of course. The wife of Bill Clinton, who — it’s as plain as day — is a serial womanizer who often made crude advances to woman he was attracted to. Did Hillary think that this should have prevented Bill from becoming president? I would aver that Bill Clinton’s behavior with women was actually worse than Trump’s.

 

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The bad thing about all of this – the worst – is it’s just plain unfair to judge anyone’s fitness for practically anything based on what they have said in their private moments when they were at their worst. Because we all have had such moments, have said or done things that we would be mortified to see made public.

It’s actually a distraction from the campaign.

I don’t care who it is: Donald Trump, Prince Charles, or the guy next door. It’s cruel, wrong, and unfair to record people’s private conversations and spy on their private lives. It will often not be to their credit, but this does not prove that they are bad or unfit for public service, because — if we are going to apply such standards — no one will qualify. If such standards – which are really impossible to meet – are to be applied, grim faced and sternly, to Trump, then, in fairness, we will have to reevaluate the characters and fitness for public or private jobs of practically everyone based on this type of scrutiny. Few would pass. And, many people we admire, including those closest to us, would not come off well either.

 

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My father was a well educated, well spoken, and cultured man. He served in the Army during World War II. I am sure he heard his share of curses and ribald stories. He may have told them himself. As a professional musician, he worked in clubs with other musicians who would swap dirty jokes. Does this make me respect my father less or blanch at his character? Absolutely not. If anything, it makes him seem human.

 

— Roger W. Smith

  October 9, 2016

 

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Addendum:

My older son, Henry W. Smith, emailed me about this post. His comments included the following:

I agree that some people are judging Trump hypocritically; however, if he didn’t make a lot of misogynist comments, it wouldn’t give people verbal ammunition against him.

What’s unfortunate, to me, is the nature of how it was captured.

Also, not everybody talks that way.

I thought his remarks were very perceptive and that they identified possibly weak points in my argument.

My son’s comment that “not everybody talks that way” caused me to do some more thinking about this.

I said above that “[s]cads of men of my own acquaintance have made demeaning and ‘sexist’ remarks; used foul, abusive language; insulted others verbally; boasted about sexual exploits. It goes on all the time.”

Actually, I have not heard sexual banter or “locker room talk” often. Most men seem to be more restrained and discreet. I have often encountered crude language, vulgarity, talk about women who are considered “hot,” and, occasionally, more frank sexual talk. But, “boasting about sexual exploits” or conquests? Very infrequently.

What I have seen is people saying things — with sexual content or of another nature — that they would they would not want recorded or quoted.

I do think, as my son agreed, that the main issue with regard to the Trump revelations was invasion of privacy, which I believe is wrong. And, I am not shocked by what Donald Trump said.

See also:

“Men Say Trump’s Remarks on Sex and Women Are Beyond the Pale,” The New York Times, October 8, 2016

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/09/us/politics/men-say-trumps-remarks-on-sex-and-women-are-beyond-the-pale.html?emc=eta1&_r=0

The content of the article is consistent with the assessment that men do not ordinarily engage in such talk.

— Roger W. Smith

 

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Addendum:

Note that I said above:

Taping is not right. Exposing others’ private lives and secrets is not right. That’s what’s wrong here, not what Donald Trump said to his friend.

People have a right to privacy.

A relative wrote back to me, via email, that this was different, because it was an interview (of Trump).

It was not an interview.

What my relative is doing is something that Trump haters and PC types like to do when making accusations. Use facts selectively and twist them to support their allegations.

What Trump said does not invalidate my point.