A Vesuvius of Mendacity

George Will in his column published on June 24th, 2018 in the Washington Post refers to the President as a ” Vesuvius of mendacity” a well-chosen phrase. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand in an interview with Politico on June 19th asserts that President Trump’s policies “come from the darkness” and are “evil…in the biblical sense.” In another part of the interview she refers to the Trump administration as pursuing “the devil’s schemes.” Among the many policies of President Trump and his administration that deserve to be characterized as corrupt, evil, misguided and catastrophically damaging to America and the world community is the current “zero tolerance” policy of processing migrants and refugees at our southern border. These immigrants, many of whom are fleeing violent persecution and death threats at this time and therefore properly called refugees, not migrants, are coming to our border—just as our founding President, George Washington, anticipated when in 1783 he welcomed to America “the oppressed and persecuted of all Nations and religions.” But instead of at least receiving permission for their application for asylum to be seriously considered by the appropriate US authority, they are kept away from the legal entryway, summarily thrown into jail and their children—some of them toddlers—taken from them, in many case literally ripped from their mother’s arms, and scattered into holding pens all over the United States with few records kept as to who went where. And some of these children are too young to even know the names of their parents. This is a policy which might have occurred to Adolph Hitler. Trump’s executive order that parents and children can be detained together, thus far, has done little to reunite parents with their children that have been separated from them.

Attorney General Sessions has in part justified this policy on the basis of Saint Paul’s letter to the Romans, Chapter 13, in which the Apostle urges everyone to be “subject to the governing authorities”—the same passage used by the Nazis to justify their actions. Elsewhere, in Matthew 19:14, Jesus urges that people Suffer little children … to come unto me” and also elsewhere in the New Testament [Matthew 18:6], as Michael Gerson notes in his column of June 19th, Jesus is quoted as saying “Whoever receives one such child in my name receives me; but whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to stumble, it would be better for him to have a heavy millstone hung around his neck, and to be drowned in the depths of the sea.”

Gerson points out that the Bible, like a gun, is a dangerous thing in the hands of a bigot. Joe Scarborough in his column of June 21st says that the “president is a brutish political boss who has cheapened conservatism, sullied the office of the presidency, and called into question the very character of a country once seen as the envy of the world. That so many Republicans still support this depraved man and his malignant movement could be the most damning element of this tragic American tale.” Senator Gillibrand declares that what we have with the Trump presidency is an issue of right versus wrong. It is wrong for us to stand by silently. It is wrong for us to do nothing. “This is what the darkness looks like. We have to stand up against it.” George Will urges that we vote against the GOP in November. “…to vote against his [the president’s] party’s cowering congressional caucuses is to affirm the nation’ honor while quarantining him.”

John Hancock foresaw part of the problem currently facing America. In his Boston Massacre Oration in 1774 he said: “That people who pay a greater respect to a wealthy villain than to an honest, upright man in poverty, almost deserve to be enslaved, they plainly show that wealth, however it may be acquired, is, in their esteem, to be preferred to virtue….Surely you never will suffer this country to become a den of thieves.” Surely we never will. But the American people today face a more complicated problem that that. Yes this president has made this White House and some of the other government agencies, such as the Commerce Department and the Environmental Protection Agency, a den of thieves. But, beyond that, he seems conflicted between: wishing to destroy this country pursuant to the desires of his boss Vladimir Putin—his G-7 performance is an example of this type of thinking—and converting this country into a modern version of Nazi Germany (perhaps his predilection—it has been widely reported that his first wife has said that he kept a copy of Hitler’s speeches by his bedside) the “zero tolerance” on the border is an example of that type of thinking.

The only truly effective answer to this sad and dangerous situation is action by the people:

“In a free and Republican government, you cannot restrain the voice of the multitude” George Washington, 1778;

“Every government degenerates when trusted to the rulers of the people alone. The people themselves therefore are its only safe depositories.” Thomas Jefferson, 1784;

“The people are the only legitimate fountain of power, and it is from them that the constitutional charter, under which the several branches of government hold their power, is derived.” James Madison, 1788;

“There is but one element of government, and that is THE PEOPLE. From this element springs all governments.” John Adams, 1814.

So the American people would do well to heed the advice of George Will!

John Jay