American Values in the Trump Era

I saw a Facebook post over the weekend, containing the line "What the fuck happened, America?" The post's author didn't specifically state what it was written in response to, but it's not hard to guess.  Over the weekend, the story broke that the Trump administration had directed Customs and Border Patrol to specifically begin splitting up families that cross into America's southern border.  The children are housed in Spartan detention camps, while the parents are presumably deported.

Read that again.  The Trump administration ordered CBP to split up families who cross into the United States from the south.  CBP went right along with it, without hesitation.  And many of his followers rationalized what the administration was doing.  Some even cheered.

"What the fuck happened," indeed.

This policy (it is absolutely NOT a law, and don't believe otherwise) is intentionally cruel and appalling; and if you're not shocked by it, you need to recalibrate your moral compass.  But the truth is, it didn't just come out of nowhere - in more ways than one.  First, the United States government has been party to other inhumane practices, both large and small throughout its history.  You probably know of some of the bigger ones: slavery, the Tuskeegee Experiments, interning Japanese-American citizens in WWII, and the Trail of Tears, to name a few.  As for the smaller ones, the ones that immediately come to mind tend to be more recent.  Camp X-Ray, rendition, and "enhanced interrogation" (AKA torture) desensitized us to the government treating non-Americans cruelly.  The TSA enacted increasingly invasive and unnecessary security measures while providing no mechanisms for recourse or accountability for abuses of authority, and many people shrugged their shoulders and accepted its infringements on all of our rights.  Ditto with the NSA and its bulk data collection.  We largely ignored the Pentagon's 1033 Program, which supplied surplus military hardware to police forces across the nation; and just as the old saying about "when all you have is a hammer..." goes, those police units began adopting more aggressive attitudes and tactics.

The CBP's separation of families is a convergence of all the things I just described: the TSA's lack of accountability, police forces' aggressive posture, and Camp X-Ray's barbaric treatment of non-Americans.  And we - American citizens - kind of let it happen by abandoning our civic responsibilities.  The more often we turned a blind eye, or halfheartedly protested, the more these practices became entrenched.  Acceptable.  Widespread.

But that's only part of it.  Another huge factor, as I'm sure you can guess, is President Trump.  The Trump administration's policy of separating families should not be a surprise, if you paid attention to what Trump said and who he surrounded himself with on the campaign trail.  Remember when Trump referred to Mexican immigrants as criminals and rapists? That was almost three years ago to the day.  Trump has never bothered to hide his hatred for Latino immigrants or his racism, and now he's pushing policy in line with his attitudes.


As much as Trump is at the center of this, it's not just about him, though.  The family separation policy may have been in the planning for a while, but it was only rolled out recently.  Did you notice how quickly CBP fell in line, though? I don't see many people talking about that, except tangentially.  I've seen a few articles about how indifferent, even cruel, the CBP officers have acted toward the detained children, but AFAIK nobody has asked how they got that way.  Institutional cultures don't shift so radically in such a short time, which means that the CBP behavior we're seeing has been there for a while, just below the surface.  Trump's policies may have drawn that cruelty out, but it didn't create it from scratch.  Regardless, curbing the CBP excesses will be one of many problems this country faces after Trump leaves office.

I often claim that Trump unleashed this country's ugly side.  All the racism, the misogyny, the anti-intellectualism, the corruption and the lying, the obnoxious boasting, and the "burn it all down" style of governing - it didn't originate with Trump.  Like the CBP agents, there were a lot of shitbags who Trump has emboldened.  They will still be here after Trump is gone, and they won't go quietly. The fallout from the Trump administration will shape politics for decades.

Because this is about a lot more than the family separation policy.  It's about Trump's entire worldview, something that informs everything he thinks, says, and does.  Think back to Trump's comments about immigrants being criminals and rapists, and how those comments relate to this current family separation policy.  Now think about other things Trump said during his campaign.  Remember all of his racist and misogynist dog whistles? Remember when he said he'd only acknowledge the election results if he won? Or how he popularized a slogan calling for a political rival to be jailed - and still uses it at rallies and speeches?

Does this mean I think we're on the march toward genocide or a dictatorship? That Trump's going to seize control of the government and declare himself emperor or something, or that we'll be herding immigrants, Muslims, and who knows who else into camps? I honestly don't know, but I'm giving both non-zero possibilities at this point.  I may very well be overreacting, and there's certainly a significant chance I'm wrong.  However, there have been a lot of indicators that Trump wants to do so.  He's installed family members in key posts, centralized the decision-making process, made targeting minorities and other protected classes a common theme of his policies, and fawned over more than one totalitarian despot.  At the same time, the institutional checks meant to keep a president from seizing power are weakened.  The GOP-controlled congress won't stand up to him, because of either cowardice or opportunism - I can't figure out which; and the Democrats suck as an opposition party, because they won't come up with a coherent platform.

They need to, quickly; and they need to fight to win with everything they've got. (Everything legal, of course.) Because if the Trump administration is separating immigrant families today, what will it be doing tomorrow? Will it move on to some other group next after it's done with immigrants, Muslims, or transgender people? As I already said, I don't know.  Nobody can predict the future.  But that's why it's important to smack down any authoritarian policies early, because by the time people are getting marched to the gas chambers, it's too late.

This isn't a debate about policy any more, it's about morality.  Right and wrong.  Trump, the members of his administration, his Republican enablers in Congress, and his supporters - they're all embracing a very immoral and un-American set of values.  History will someday judge them as villains - IF the rest of us do something about it.  Vote, protest, call your elected reps.  Do what you can to render the Party of Trump ineffective as a political movement.  There should be no place for their ideas and policies in American society.

Because history will judge you too.

Fabricated Memos and Credibility Problems

The much-hyped Nunes memo became public a few days ago, and I've been noticing a very interesting reaction to it in various corners of the internet; specifically, a lot of people are buying into it, lock, stock, and barrel.  Now, the memo is obviously a steaming poo pile, but here's the thing: there are a lot of people who believe the memo to be true have a plausible argument for that belief.  I don't mean the hardcore Trump supporters; at this point Trump could tell them he can walk through walls and they'd believe him.  The people I'm thinking of are the ones who have been holding a long-standing suspicion of the government.  All the government.  Because the truth is, there is plenty of good cause for suspicion.

The assorted government agencies tasked with protecting America and its citizens - from TSA to the FBI to the DEA to NSA to CIA - have a credibility problem of their own making.  It's not enough to say they all dropped the ball at one time or another, because "dropping the ball" implies that they failed because of something like bad luck or an innocent mistake.  That's not the case at all.  The credibility problem stems from the fact that these agencies misused their authority in a variety of unsavory ways.  Two successive presidents and countless members of Congress told us we had to accept infringements to our Constitutional rights to combat an amorphous terrorist threat.  The Director of National Intelligence perjured himself.  Police forces began to resemble military units and no-knock SWAT raids became more common.  An intelligence failure allowed an al-Qaida bomber onto a US-bound flight from Ghana through the Netherlands.  And those are only a handful of post-9/11 examples.  Do some digging, and there are many other historical ones: COINTELPRO, Watergate, the McCarthy hearings, the Pentagon Papers, the Tonkin Gulf Incident, and countless coups and covert wars. And all the documentation gets hidden behind a "TOP SECRET/NOFORN" label, nobody gets punished, and nothing changes.  Given these organizations' history of past transgressions, it's natural to be skeptical of the FBI.

So does that mean the Nunes memo is correct? No, absolutely not.  First, consider the source: Nunes, Trump, the GOP leadership.  They've all discredited themselves long before this memo became public.  Nunes was already caught trying to cheat on Trump's behalf once; and Trump's accusations fall short when you factor in that two individuals have already pleaded guilty for crimes pertaining to the Russia investigation, that there is a documented paper trail between Trump campaign officials and representatives of the Russian government, and, of course, there was a meeting at Trump Tower in June of 2016.  And those are just the things we all know about.  Add to that Trump and many of his cronies are well-known serial liars and conspiracy-theory peddlers.  Finally, remember that as president, Trump has the authority and the resources to expose any illegal spying if he chooses.  He can declassify NSA intercepts that targeted him, if they exist; he can order the Department of Justice to review the FISA warrants for impropriety.  Occam's Razor says the simplest explanation is more likely to be true.  Ask yourself: is it more likely that the investigation is legitimate and substantive or that the FBI is playing a central role in a broad "deep state" conspiracy against the small group of people in Trump's orbit?

Because that's what this is being packaged as: a deep, sinister conspiracy.  The people pushing this idea performed a very subtle sleight-of-hand, one that's easy to overlook if you're not paying attention.  They shifted the narrative from a claim that the government (in particular, the NSA) is collecting all Americans' communications (true) to an accusation that the government mobilized the resources of the entire intelligence/law enforcement community against the Trump clan in an unlawful attempt to neutralize it (horseshit.)  We're witnessing the birth of a conspiracy theory on par with "9/11 was an inside job" right before our eyes.  This "echo chamber" groupthink would normally be an object of ridicule, except that similar conspiracy theories have already driven people on the extreme fringes to violence not long ago.  That's not something to take lightly.

If we could trust our institutions, there wouldn't be an issue; but our politicians and political appointees have squandered that trust for decades.  Now we're reaping the bitter fruits of that wastefulness.  The agencies, and their civilian overseers, have misused and abused their authority so badly, that now many people reflexively think they're lying and choose to believe con artists like Nunes and Trump instead.  They're the spies who cried wolf, and just like the old fable goes, we're ignoring them at the very time when we should be believing them.

There needs to be serious reform once Trump is no longer president.  He's only the byproduct of some deeper issues, and we need system-wide reform.  He's a complete shit-show, so maybe he'll be the impetus that motivates the people in Washington to finally implement some long-overdue reforms.