Tag Archives: Donald Trump

family separation repost XII – NEW DEVELOPMENTS

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

morals (in which I anoint myself a philosopher)

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Perhaps a present-day Edmund Burke.

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I was discussing politics with a friend yesterday. Mostly President Trump. (I have had similar recent discussions with my wife.)

I find Trump’s habitual lying hard to comprehend. How could anyone make bald faced lies that are a priori untrue? Such as that President Obama wasn’t born in the United States, that cable news host and former Representative Joe Scarborough is a suspect in murdering an aide, that Joe Biden is a pedophile? And, then, when such statements and unfounded accusations are shown to be false, never retract the statement?

This is not the same as something that politicians routinely do — in a political campaign, say — take something that is partly true or possibly could become so and put a spin on it: e.g., Joe Biden is beholden to the radical left and will carry out their agenda.

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Regarding the cardinal sin of dishonesty, the supposed moral obligation we are under to tell the truth, I started thinking in a general way about morals.

First, that it is wrong to lie.

I was brought up to believe this. That to be caught in a lie was one of the most shameful things possible. That it is incumbent upon oneself to admit error when caught saying something not true, that can be proven to be so, and that, as guiding principle, persisting in a lie or trying to lie one’s way out of a jam, not only will result in one’s being embarrassed, but will make for a worse outcome in the long run.

Then, I thought about the broader topic of morals, of codes of conduct. I myself am sometimes guilty of thinking that they are for puritanical types with no real understanding of human behavior, and that perhaps they do more harm than good.

But, think about it — or, to put it another way, come to think about it — moral codes do work to make society “work,” so to speak — the way rules in an athletic contest do — to ensure a certain degree of “fair play,” “decency,” and harmony in human interactions and social life. (You may be asking yourself, why is this would be philosopher spouting truisms?)

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Then, I thought, we all know that codes of conduct and behavior — morality in general — are more honored in the breach than the observance. Hardly anyone is strictly faithful to them, and most people break them in big or little ways all the time.

But, when I have engaged in dishonesty, I feel guilt and shame inwardly. My parents’ moral percepts are still there within me.

The difference between Trump and most politicians is that there is no frame of “moral reference.” He lies continuously and shamelessly and has no compunction about doing so. I think this shocks most informed people and the journalists who cover him. It is hard to believe that this is really occurring. In this case, with respect to government and public life. The presidency. Presidents have been caught in lies before. But …

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So, then, I thought to myself — and said to my friend — it makes me see that having a moral frame of reference, those values we were brought up with, is not to be taken lightly. They mean something, even if we ourselves are far from perfect.

— Roger W. Smith

September 2020

the bloviator

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bloviate

to talk at length, especially in an inflated or empty way

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Real speech comes, on average, in packets of 10 or so words at a time, rather sloppily juxtaposed. Rapid, spontaneous talk makes more use of parataxis — the stringing of simple clauses together, such as in this segment:

Look, having nuclear — my uncle was a great professor and scientist and engineer, Dr. John Trump at M.I.T.; good genes, very good genes, O.K., very smart, the Wharton School of finance, very good, very smart — you know, if you’re a conservative Republican, if I were a liberal, if, like, okay, if I ran as a liberal Democrat, they would say I’m one of the smartest people anywhere in the world – it’s true! – but when you’re a conservative Republican they try – oh, they do a number – that’s why I always start off: “Went to Wharton, was a good student, went there, went there, did this, built a fortune”– you know I have to give my life credentials all the time, because we’re a little disadvantaged – but you look at the nuclear deal, the thing that really bothers me … (speech by Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, Sun City Hilton Head, South Carolina, July 19, 2016)

In writing, this would likely be rendered using hypotaxis, which entails clearer subordinate clauses. The same sentence would be written as: “My uncle Dr. John Trump, who was a professor at M.I.T., had very good genes, which lent him considerable intelligence.”

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Donald Trump, press conference, September 7, 2020:

The story is a hoax, written by a guy who has got a tremendously bad history. The magazine itself — which I don’t read, but I hear it’s just totally anti-Trump; he’s a big Obama person, he’s a big Clinton person. And he made up the story. It’s a totally made-up story.

In fact, I was very happy to see Zach Fuentes came out and said now he’s — that’s — I think that’s number 15 — and these are people that were there. That’s the 15th person. General Kellogg, everybody that was there knew what happened. And so I was happy to see that Zach came out and said it’s not true. He just came out.

And it’s a disgrace. Who would say a thing like that? Only an animal would say a thing like that. There is nobody that has more respect for not only our military, but for people that gave their lives in the military. There’s nobody — and I think John Kelly knows that. I think he would know that. I think he knows that from me.

But Zach Fuentes, as you know, worked for John. And I think they both know that. But Zach came out, as you know, today or yesterday, last night, and said very strongly that he didn’t hear anything like that. Even John Bolton came out and said that was untrue.

Now, what was true is that we had the worst weather. I think it was as bad a rain as I’ve just about ever seen. And it was a fog you — you literally couldn’t see. I walked out, and I didn’t have — I didn’t need somebody to tell me. I walked out and I said, “There’s no way we can take helicopters in this.” I understand helicopters very well. And they said, “No, sir, that’s been cancelled.”

They would have had to go — Secret Service, I have the whole list — they would have had through a very, very busy section, during the day, of Paris. They would have had to go through the city. The Paris police were asking us, “Please don’t do it,” because they’re not ready. When you do that, you need a lot of time. They take days and days and days to prepare for that.

I wanted to do it very badly. I was willing to sit in the car for two hours, three hours, four hours. I didn’t care. It didn’t matter. And I had nothing else to do. I went there for that; I had nothing else to do. It was ended because of the terrible weather, and nobody was prepared to go through, in terms of Paris, the police, the military, and the Secret Service. And they came out very strongly and said, “Sir, we can’t allow you to make this trip.” If I wanted to: “Sir, we can’t allow you, from a safety standpoint.”

It was a phony story, just like the dirty dossier — the fake, dirty dossier; just like the Russia collusion; just like all of the other phony stories. And there’ll be more phony stories.

But I do appreciate Zach coming out. But Zach now is the 15th person that’s denied it. Zach now, I think, also talked about the weather aspect of it. And he’s probably the 14th or 15th person that blamed it on weather. So that’s enough of that.

— posted by Roger W. Smith

September 8, 2020

Joe Biden is lying.

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When Dr. Christine Blasey Ford made her allegations in 2018 against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, acknowledged sexual predator Donald J. Trump tried to muddy the issue, throw the bloodhounds off track, and defend Kavanaugh – in his (Trump’s) usual shameless manner of engaging in denial and deceit — by saying: Where is the police report? Why didn’t she report the incident to the police?

Ford was fifteen years old at the time. Kavanaugh was seventeen.

She said (during the 2018 controversy over the allegations) that she didn’t want her parents to know that she had attended a house party with older boys. And, at any rate, what fifteen-year-old would have the presence of mind to think — or to know that things could be handled this way — I have to go report this assault to the police? She left the house in sort of a daze.

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I am going to relate a long ago experience of mine, in the interests of illustrating something.

I had a similar experience, with a gay man making a pass at me, when I was in my late teens.

It was summer vacation after my freshman year in college. I went to a concert of classical music by the Boston Pops on the Esplanade in Boston. I loved those concerts. I always went by myself.

At some point, no doubt at intermission, a man who was what I considered to be an adult — anyone thirty or older, if not in their mid- to late-twenties — seemed like an elder to me back then — approached me and asked, “Do you come to these concerts often? Do you like music?”

He was dressed casually, but seemed respectable. He said something at some point about being a professor. I was flattered to be asked about my musical interests and concert-going habits. I was impressed to be talking to a scholar. And, I was always receptive to and interested in anyone who cared to converse with me.

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As I write this, some details come back to me. I believe the concert had just ended, and the crowd was about to disperse.

The “professor” asked me casually if I would care to stop by his apartment in Cambridge for a chat. I found this welcome. I was flattered to be asked, and I associated Cambridge with being the place where intellectuals lived.

At his place, we chatted for about a half hour. The “professor” seemed to be a vibrant conversationalist. I did notice some erotic statuettes on a side table in his living room. I think one was what appeared to be primitive art: an abstract figure of a man and an erect phallus (?). I remember that it was black and was wood or Formica. The figure was of a primitive man.

I wanted to talk to the “professor” about music. He seemed a bit “aggressive” in introducing topics. He made some references, allusions, to sex that I didn’t fully comprehend. He kept making them, intermittently.

I was totally inexperienced sexually at this point in my life. But I had read a couple of erotic novels, had associated and talked with teenagers who had had sexual experience and didn’t like adults to tell them how to behave — smart, rebellious kids. Sex was raised as a topic in some of my church youth group workshops and discussion groups. But I had never had bull sessions, say, with male friends where they recounted sexual exploits in detail.

I felt uneasy with this part of the “professor’s” conversation, but I didn’t want to seem like a prude. So, I laughed uneasily. I tried to convey the impression that I was not uncomfortable with risqué conversation or topics and was used to them being talked about, if not actually experienced in sex.

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There is something else about me that was relevant at the time, and may have been somewhat similar to Blasey-Ford. I tended to be not only shy, but passive. The opposite of assertive.

The “professor” after a while asked me if I would like a back rub. Girls would give boys, including me, back rubs at our church youth group weekend retreats. That was the closest I had ever come to being physically close to a girl.

Being passive, and not wanting to be oppositional, looking up to the “professor,” thinking that perhaps this was something that was usual or normal — and anyway I was probably too rigid or uptight — I consented.

After a few minutes, I started to feel uncomfortable. I stiffened up. Then the “professor” started to reach under my belt and tried to slide his hands down my pants. At that point, I bolted. I made some excuse (I think I said my parents would be worried about me getting home late) and beat a hasty exit from the “professor’s” apartment.

What would Holden Caulfield have done?

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I drove home in our family’s second car (a 1953 Chevy). I felt very anxious, but relieved to have gotten away from the “professor.” I couldn’t get a handle on what had happened.

I was known for honesty and had always felt that honesty was the best policy; somehow, things always came out better that way. I didn’t quite know what to do, but, unlike Blasey-Ford, I told my mother (not going into detail) what had happened, immediately upon arriving home. It seems that I did this to relieve stress. Sort of like telling your shrink something. I thought to myself, I did nothing wrong. What do I have to hide? And, if I had done something immoral, would not my parents see that in that case I would not have told then about it?

I do not recall my mother’s response. I think she said little, because she did not know how to handle this confidence by me or what to say.

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I tried to put the matter out of mind, as one might a bad dream. I didn’t know what to make of it. The next day, I felt better.

But then my mother brought the matter up again. I don’t recall her exact words. But it was something like: Your father and I discussed your experience after the concert. We are sorry you experienced it. (My parents always feigned being advanced when it came to any sex issues — they had a copy of the Kinsey Report on the bookshelf in the living room — but, actually, I know this intuitively, the thought of having to deal with sexual issues or sexual behavior by their children terrified them.) Then, my mother said, if what you said was the truth, then you did nothing wrong.

Somehow, I could tell — intuited — that this experience, mine, had made my parents very anxious. More even than me.

I loved my mother and respected her. But she should NOT have said that. It made me feel bad about myself — or at least how my parents felt about me. They weren’t prepared to necessarily believe me. They were wondering if I had perhaps misbehaved with the “professor,” or had perhaps somehow been party to the event occurring. I never forgot this mixed message: My account of being the victim of a would be sexual predator was heard but was not deemed necessarily credible.

— Roger W. Smith

May 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

vigilante-ism

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re:

“They Spoke Spanish in a Montana Store. Then a Border Agent Asked for Their IDs”

By Matthew Haag

The New York Times

May 21, 2018

NY Times 5-21-2018

This kind of profiling and harassment of the foreign born is inexcusable, incredibly stupid, and unproductive. In a word, it’s deplorable.

What was the agent thinking?

The Times article notes:

An agency spokesman declined to discuss the specific episode but said that the officer’s actions were under review.

“U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents and officers are committed to treating everyone with professionalism, dignity and respect while enforcing the laws of the United States,” a spokesman at Customs and Border Protection said in an email on Monday. “Decisions to question individuals are based on a variety of factors for which Border Patrol agents are well-trained.”

This is reassuring (meant sarcastically).

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I am totally against vigorous anti-immigrant enforcement and President Trump’s know nothing, get tough on immigrants policy. (On May 16, Trump launched into a riff about “people trying to come in” and being deported who are “not people.” “They’re animals,” he said. “It’s the latest in a series of statements stretching over Trump’s entire national political career that carelessly conflate immigration, criminality, and violence,” it was noted in a Vox post.)

As noted in previous posts of mine (see links below), I feel that such a policy is not only uncalled for, not justified by any facts, and mean spirited, but that it goes against our foundational principles as a nation and against fundamental concepts of decency and humanity.

And, I believe that following the opposite policy would ensure that we continue to remain a strong country — that, besides inflicting undue hardship on people, it drains us culturally and spiritually and hurts us economically — that it is neither fair nor humane or advantageous from an economical or practical point of view. (See, for example, reference to Wall Street Journal article below).

To say nothing of the pain it has inflicted upon individuals.

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Regarding over-zealous border patrol actions: Last month, I was detained by airport security officers/screeners while changing planes at the Stockholm airport.

I asked why. Was I under suspicion? You get no answer.

I was detained for about 25 minutes, thoroughly searched, and asked innumerable questions, such as what places had I visited, what hotels had I stayed in and what were the room numbers, had I given anyone else access to my luggage, what companies have I worked for. My passport was taken away and returned to me just before the flight departed. There are two stickers on the back of my passport now, one saying “SECURITY” and the other ‘DELTA SECURITY 7/16.” I am afraid to remove them.

I fit the profile of a _______. Shoe bomber? There was nothing about me or my trip, or my carry on items (a laptop computer and a tote bag with a book or two, my passport, an audiobook, and nothing much else) — my suitcase had already been checked in — that was suspicious.

It was very stressful and helped to ruin my trip.

— Roger W. Smith

May 2018

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“vanity of vanities; all is vanity”

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The news depresses me.

It is too much, far too much, about trivialities presented as matters of grave concern to the nation and body politic.

It is not informative and instructive and is in fact rebarbative. It induces feelings of unpleasantness.

Well, one might say, what do you expect? We are talking about unpleasant realities. A dalliance with a porn star?

I might think it important to know about unpleasant realities such as the My Lai Massacre, waterboarding of Guantanamo Bay detainees, gas attacks on civilians (including children), or the latest shooting by a police officer of a black person. These are the kind of facts and atrocities that should be brought to light in all their horror.

I sometimes, in fact often, “look” with curiosity, perhaps fascination, perhaps with Schadenfreude and/or with a frisson of something like pleasure or titillation — as one might at an accident with people wounded or killed, perhaps lying in the street — at the latest salacious news item. I read the latest revelations, am curious, yet quickly tire of them.

The Trump tormentors are worse than Trump himself.

The fascination with him, the eagerness for his downfall, are the product of misdirected energy, of mass morbidity, of sick minds engaging in an Elmer Gantry style revival meeting where everyone is whipped up to a state of anti-Trump frenzy and moral fervor, with them seeing themselves as the righteous ones.

Hounds yapping at his heels. How his adversaries take pleasure in the hunt, as do others vicariously. It could be you or I who is the hunted one, in a different context.

Trump is not worth the attention. He’s the president. He is entitled to a modicum of respect.

I hope he is not reelected.

No one deserves to be spied upon and to have their private life exposed. No one’s home should be entered by snoops unexpectedly when they are still in bed.

A sinner, a lawbreaker should be able to consult with his or her lawyer (or a priest or anyone else) in confidence.

No one’s computer, cell phone, or private papers should be confiscated.

This includes Trump’s lawyer Michael Cohen and his former campaign manager Paul Manafort.

Of course, they will try to find a statute or law that says they can.

Laws should be enacted and enforced to protect people from harm to their persons. Not to be used as a pretext for entrapment, guilt by association, selective prosecution, or witch hunts.

Trump should be allowed to govern until his term ends.

People should direct their attention elsewhere: to constructive and creative enterprises, to commerce, and to social betterment.

The public has fallen into a morass of warped public moralizing and hypocrisy, which is much worse than Trump’s depravity; and, were there a Truth Commission that could strip all men of their “garments of probity” and show them as they actually are, with their sins made public, the feeding frenzy would never end and hardly anyone would be able to don the mantle of respectability, hardly anyone could remain in public office because of hitherto unknown transgressions against private morality or public decency.

Let’s (but I know no one is listening) have a civilized discussion/debate about the ISSUES.

Donald Trump is a womanizer. I don’t care. So are or were many other prominent, successful men. So are or were men of my acquaintance, many of whom I have admired for other reasons.

Is it good to be a womanizer? On the personal level, it depends on all sorts of factors and may be of great concern, justly so, to persons affected. Donald Trump’s behavior, any man’s, is of legitimate concern to his wife. And those affected by it, including women to whom he behaved improperly. It’s not my concern. If my next door neighbor committed adultery, I might disapprove, but I would leave it to his wife to decide how she wants to deal with it.

Should I myself be caught doing anything I know most people wouldn’t approve of, I would not want it to come to light.

The economy seems to have improved under Trump. I’m not an economist. I actually agree with a few policy initiatives of his administration, but I disagree vehemently for the most part with his views and actions and don’t like his administration. I wish people would (as many are) devote their energies to trying to defeat these policies and elect a new president in 2020.

“Saints” and paragons such as FDR, Eisenhower, JFK, and Martin Luther King, Jr. had affairs. J. Edgar Hoover is considered to have acted deplorably by spying on King with the aim of discrediting him. Thank God we didn’t have to spend day after day or night after night reading about or watching news programs about King’s dalliances and all the sordid details.

— Roger W. Smith

April 2018

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Addendum:

A reader of this blog and I had an email exchange about this post on April 16. The following are excerpts (the reader’s comments are in italics):

Donald Trump started a lot of this media buzz about himself by himself –initiated by him, i.e. going on the Howard Stern Show many times and it is said, feeding dirt about himself to his friends in the tabloid business. Now, decades of these playboy habits and coverage, it is hard to quell — old habits, old image, and all that.

my response:

Yes, Trump — before he was running for president — loved to get attention as a naughty boy and playboy. The image won’t leave him. But, I still don’t like the way things are playing out now. And how about Clinton? A lot of liberals were willing to put up with him and he was a womanizer. Not just someone playing around and having affairs, but having oral sex in the oval office with a White House intern much young than him.

Secondly, both the porn star and Playboy bunny have generated the buzz by going to the tabloids in 2016 — rather than the mainstream media digging up embarrassing dirt on Trump on their own — out of the blue. Think Jennifer Flowers suing Clinton.

my response:

It’s true that they started a lot of this, not the Times or the Washington Post. That’s a good point.

Third, James Comey went on record yesterday, in an interview, stating that Trump is not insane or going into dementia. Comey said Trump follows conversations and understands everything and is above average intelligence. Comey continued that Trump “is not fit to be president’ — on moral grounds (and the women factor is just one small reason).

my response:

We can question Trump’s personal fitness on moral grounds and as a person. But, the voters elected him. Some people used to say Nixon was sort of a madman with a bad personality. You don’t impeach a president or sue him in court for being what some think is a lowlife, jerk, or amoral guy. A president could be removed for disability — can’t perform the functions of his office. Trump is not unfit, even if you don’t like him or think he’s a bad person.

Fourth, like you, I have a sacred regard for the office of president. But, you would be the first person to protest if your government was not doing the moral thing, i.e., ongoing war for years in the Middle East, the dismantling of the EPA and Consumer Affairs.

my response:

I thought George W. Bush was totally wrong to go to war in Iraq. I don’t like what Trump is doing on the environment or other issues that, say, Obama, was the opposite on. Too bad for me. He’s the president. The solution: try to see that he’s not reelected.

Roger's Gleanings

Roger W. Smith's writings: personal essays and reminiscences; views; literature; culture; day to day jottings; people and places.

Tag Archives: Donald Trump

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