Disagreeing Fundamentally, Morally

THE WORLD his long since become painfully familiar with the pathological dishonesty, the cruelty, and the twisted reasoning of Donald Trump and the millions of Americans who approve of his behavior by supporting him. More disconcerting than Trump's words and actions is the widespread support they engender among people who would otherwise have been thought to be at least morally decent, if not politically correct. Anyone who dismisses the well documented brutality and cruelty with which people are being treated in what are essentially concentration camps on the American border with mexico by dismissively reminding us that the people being detained are in the country illegally does not have a political policy disagreement with people of good character, but instead has a fundamental moral disagreement. The lame argument that previous administrations, especially the Obama administration, pursued the same policies of family separation and detainment is, quite simply, a lie, and a reprehensible attempt to justify and tacitly support pure evil. Under Obama, there was never a policy of kidnapping children from their parents, and to either lose them, or send them to foster homes, never to see their parents again. Trump supporters act as if by lying about what Obama did, they can justify or excuse what Trump is doing. The obvious antidote to this perverted thinking is that Obama is no longer president, and no matter what he did, Trump is president now, we are dealing with issues in the present, and Trump is under no circumstances constrained to emulate Obama's policies. Obama is irrelevant to the present situation. Even had Obama behaved like trump is behaving now, which he by no means did, one does not justify bad behavior by pointing to someone else's bad behavior, one does not justify cruelty by pointing to past cruelty. Trump's cruelty towards asylum seekers, who are not for the most part entering the country illegally but instead are seeking asylum legally, in accordance with American and international law, is nothing other than a direct manifestation of the racist, xenophobic, anti-immigration attitudes of Trump, his administration, and his conservative, evangelical Christian gangster like supporters.The conservative movement, the Republican party, and the evangelical christian community, by supporting rather than condemning the behavior of the Trump administration and its policies towards not only asylum seekers but human beings and the natural world in general, have clearly revealed their moral bankruptcy, and the fundamental evil of their twisted ideology. Few if anyone favors completely open borders. Even the staunchest pro immigration people - and we are all either immigrants or descendants of immigrants, as has been repeatedly pointed out - are in favor of an organized approach to immigration, and agree that every nation has not only the right but an obligation to its own people to monitor an defend its own national borders. The American border should and must be monitored and defended. the most logical way to do this would be to install a military presence, a massive massive, at all points along all borders. What else is any military designed to do, but to defend a nation's borders? But the military can be a welcoming force, rather than a violent one. The American army and national guard could provide the type of comprehensive, systematic organization required to identify and meet the immediate needs of everyone who approaches the border of the United States. the military is perfectly capable of treating people fairly, humanely, compassionately, while organizing them and preparing them for either entry into the country, or other arrangements. Today the reprobate president tweeted that if the migrants do not like the conditions under which they are living, they should stay home. Problem solved. If the United States under Trump is unable or unwilling to provide decent treatment for people desperate for basic assistance, the best alternative would be to simply close the detention-concentration camps, and to turn them all the asylum seekers loose to enter the country and fend for themselves. That would, if nothing else, exonerate Trump and his supporters of the crime of torture, of which they are currently most assuredly guilty. it would do nothing, however, to improve their moral character.