My Father’s Day post
Little darling of mine, I can’t for the life of me
Remember a sadder day, I know they say to let it be
But it just don’t work out that way
—Paul Simon, Mother and Child Reunion
These days I am often too dispirited to post. Currently I have a set of personal calamities to deal with and others are more eloquent on the endless cavalcade of cruelty and corruption than I can be. The realization that soon the courts will be in the hands of Trump appointed judges and that no justice will be found there for the rest of my lifetime; the license the police have been given to kill at will, the estimated death tolls of Pruitt’s EPA policies – the present is not good and the future looks worse. When Trump expounded on the dystopian horrors of the American landscape at his inauguration, I should have understood these remarks to be aspirational. Trump has never accused anyone of anything he hasn’t done himself.
But I wouldn’t want to look back and see that I didn’t at least try to raise my voice against this current set of horrors. A little more than a decade ago, the mismanagement and resulting deaths in New Orleans generated wide and sustained outrage against then president Bush. How we have changed in such a short time! Even on my regular leftwing internet stops, Daily Kos, Talking Points Memo, etc. I look long and hard before I find mention of the updated death tolls in Puerto Rico. Why isn’t this Trump’s Katrina?
If we ever hoped that there would be, at long last, some line the Republican Party wouldn’t cross, we’ve been disabused. Not one Republican Senator has signed on to Feinstein’s bill to keep families seeking asylum together. Susan Collins, widely considered a moderate for reasons that escape me, is sending out the most cowardly possible letter explaining why children must be torn from their parents and imprisoned in compounds. I’m haunted in particular by Jeff Session’s little laugh as he told us God has ordained this. A cartoon villain but the villainy is real.
The LA Times has a story about three Brazilian siblings who believed their parents were dead and weren’t allowed to hug and comfort each other. Consoling these children is apparently forbidden; also forbidden is allowing them to console themselves. Their terror and grief is just a bargaining chip to Trump. Perhaps Susan Collins would like to go to these compounds and see for herself. Though probably she doesn’t want to waste her beautiful mind on it.
I’ve found the party of Trump to be evil many times, even before Trump arrived to steer it. But now we are so far past evil, I can’t even see it in the distance. If the American people don’t stop this and soon, then there is really nothing left worth saving in this country.
