By David K. Shipler
Making America Cruel Again: Part 1 of an occasional series
It was
sadly appropriate for Attorney General Jeff Sessions to use a biblical verse
once cited by some slave owners to justify cruelty to other human beings who were
considered less than human: by Sessions about separating children from parents
who enter the US illegally and “infest” the country (President Trump’s word,
reducing them to insects and rodents), and by planters about returning fugitive
slaves to their rightful place in bondage. It was the law, after all. Romans
13:1.
Not that
ripping weeping children from their parents’ arms is slavery—although slavers
did so when profit and efficiency dictated. And not that the US is perpetrating
“genocide” or acting like Nazis, as some critics have said, reaching for the
most dreadful terms to harness their disgust and shame at the behavior of their
beloved country.
But the outrages being perpetrated
on the Mexican border signify the resurrection of practices and hatreds that might
have seemed long buried in history if you were one of those citizens who
believed America was destined to become better and better: more welcoming of
difference, more just, more decent, more humane. How naïve of those of us who
fostered such faith in their beloved country.
Nasty attitudes and impulses from
the worst dimensions of America’s past are resurfacing as if they had merely
hibernated waiting for the oxygen and sunlight of demagoguery to nurture them
back into thorny bloom. And our past is replete with unsavory precedents:
slavery, of course, and racist law in the form of Jim Crow; Native American
families torn apart as authorities tried to stamp out tribal culture; citizens
of Japanese descent interned during World War II; explicit anti-Semitism and white
supremacy.
We have not yet succumbed to the
most damaging elements of our historical psyche, but we are getting there. We
have already lost something precious—and so quickly! Through the strange, sick
man we elected our president, we cozy up to dictatorships and feud with
pluralistic democracies, we care nothing for human rights either at home or
abroad, we no longer stand tall in the world for liberty. We are no beacon,
except to hate-mongers and autocrats. We are at risk of becoming an ash heap of
slogans and lies, nursing grudges and generating lonely antagonisms.
There is no empathy in Trump that has been
visible, and none apparent in all of the cringe-producing steps by him and his
accomplices. The impression is given that empathy is a synonym for weakness,
that it stands in juxtaposition to self-interest. That is not always the case,
however. The two do not inevitably form a dichotomy, and it’s easy to see where
empathy and self-interest overlap.
Take the forced separation of
children from parents whom the Justice Department now chooses to charge
criminally with illegal entry. (Contrary to what Trump has said, the law does
not require that criminal charges be brought; the statute permits such action,
but most illegal aliens have routinely been processed by the administrative immigration
system, which can detain whole families together pending deportation or release
them and summon them later to appear in immigration court.)
Psychiatrists, pediatricians and others
who have studied the brain’s response to stress paint a devastating picture of
trauma in children who are forcibly separated from their parents. “Their heart
rate goes up,” wrote William Wan in a Washington Post report on experts’
findings. “Their body releases a flood of stress hormones such as cortisol and
adrenaline. Those stress hormones can start killing off dendrites—the little
branches in brain cells that transmit messages. In time, the stress can start
killing off neurons and—especially in young children—wreaking dramatic and
long-term damage, both psychologically and to the physical structure of the
brain.”
The effects can be lifelong. And
children in such situations are more susceptible to the appeal of belonging to
a group other than family—a gang, for example. How it’s in our self interest to
generate more gang members, or do long-term harm to children who might very
well end up staying in the US, is a question you’ll have to ask the White House.
Here, empathy and self-interest coincide.
Further, when the Bush
administration stepped up criminal prosecutions of adults entering illegally,
without minor children, the US Attorneys’ offices in border states were so
overwhelmed that they couldn’t prosecute other crime as vigorously, including
violent crimes. The same problem will surely be created now, even though
federal judges are accepting guilty pleas from dozens of illegal immigrants at
once. If you’re in criminal court, you get a lawyer at government expense; not
so in immigration court. So public defenders, who are usually swamped with
work, will now be inundated to the point where they will not be able to provide
adequate counsel in ordinary criminal cases.
The long-term costs to upstanding
US citizens of short-sighted government policies could make a very long list.
Inadequate health insurance, for example, forces people to use hospital
emergency rooms as clinics, driving up costs for everyone. Inadequate food
stamps and housing subsidies force families into patterns of inadequate
nutrition, which can impair brain development in fetuses and young children.
Cognitive impairment from early childhood leads to learning disabilities,
failure in school, flawed labor skills that damage the economy, and criminal
behavior that victimizes innocent citizens and costs huge amounts for prisons.
Aside from being morally right,
empathy can also serve our self-interest. Is it naïve to believe that the next
time around, enough voters will get it?
It's amazing to me that Republicans in general have little (to no) ability of foresight. All the long-term detriments you list to what are essentially their official policies are obvious to anyone who gives any thought to these issues. But short-sightedness seems to be consistently a major hallmark of Republican thinking. You can also throw on to your list tax cuts that give tax breaks to the wealthy but do little for most Americans while also growing the national deficit/debt as being an excellent example of Republican short-sightedness. Nice gift to their grandchildren, hey what? You'd think that such resolute penny-pinchers as most Republicans are, would have more ability to see the Big Picture - the long term effects of their actions. But apparently they have Willful Blindness - no ability to see beyond their own wallets TODAY. It's quite pathetic and disgusting, isn't it? - and says an awful lot about that party and its supporters. I will say that there appears to be a FEW decent souls in that party - Steve Schmidt and now George Will who both recently announced they no longer consider themselves Republicans. That's TWO - out of millions...! It would be nice if a few more would step up and do the decent thing. Frankly, I don't think it goes with the animal, basically.
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