The following is presented as part of The Columbian’s Opinion content, which offers a point of view in order to provoke thought and debate of civic issues. Opinions represent the viewpoint of the author. Unsigned editorials represent the consensus opinion of The Columbian’s editorial board, which operates independently of the news department.
As the shambolic Trump presidency caroms and lurches into Year Three, a shameful governing philosophy has emerged: cruelty for cruelty’s sake.
Let us take stock:
Roughly one-quarter of the federal government has been closed for a month, in the longest shutdown in U.S. history. An estimated 800,000 employees are either furloughed or being forced to work without pay, not to mention untold contract workers who are also idled. Prospects for a near-term solution to the impasse between President Trump and Congress range all the way from dim to dimmer.
Imagine going a month without a paycheck. Imagine lining up the bills and deciding which get paid and which don’t — mortgage, electricity, heating. Imagine having to commute to work at an “essential” government job and trying to scrape together enough money for gas.
All of these hardships, and many more, are being inflicted on hard-working public servants for no earthly reason. From the beginning, Democrats have taken a reasonable position: Keep the government open, and let’s have a debate and a negotiation about border security. Trump agreed — until far-right pundits accused him of abandoning his border wall, which everyone knows will never be built.
So Trump made federal workers — and other citizens who depend on government services — into sacrificial lambs whose blood is an offering to the Trumpist base.
Meanwhile, we learned last week that the sadistic policy of separating would-be immigrants from their children has been far more extensive than anyone suspected.
There was bipartisan uproar earlier last year when it was disclosed that more than 2,000 children had been effectively kidnapped by our government, in a mean and cynical attempt to deter undocumented migrants and asylum-seekers. Now, the inspector general of the Department of Health and Human Services reports that the family separations actually began in 2017 and that “thousands” more children were taken from their parents.
So haphazard and uncaring was this outrageous policy that there exists no full accounting of who these children are, where they are or whether they were ever reunited with their families.
Trump claims his imaginary wall is needed to address a “humanitarian crisis” at the border. The crisis is real, but it is of Trump’s own deliberate creation. Given the administration’s combination of malice and incompetence, it is safe to assume that some of the children who we snatched away will never see their parents again.
Trump cruelly gives the cold shoulder to those around the world who advocate respect for human rights. Perhaps he thinks this is how his base wants him to act.
Whatever the reason, he does not even pay lip service to the struggle for freedom, dignity and due process in countries like Russia, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and the Philippines. Public pressure from a U.S. president can save the lives of activists and journalists who heroically labor to hold autocratic governments accountable. Cold silence from a U.S. president can be fatal.
Such gratuitous cruelty is really this administration’s only consistent policy. Trump tried his best, for example, to destroy the Affordable Care Act, not because he had a better idea but apparently because he can’t abide anything with President Obama’s name on it. He failed, but in the process weakened Obamacare enough to make it less effective and more expensive.
Why would Trump injure innocent consumers? Why hurt stockholders of companies led by chief executives he does not like? Why seek to deny desperately needed help to Puerto Rico, where some politicians have been critical of Trump?
Why? Because he can.
Above all else, Trump is a bully. Like all schoolyard tyrants, he tries to project great strength in order to mask internal weakness. But remember the one universal truth about bullies: The bigger they are, the harder they fall.
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