Babies without their mothers…toddlers covered in filth…adolescents huddled together scared half to death…children of all ages sleeping on concrete floors with a light thermal cover to keep them warm.
This is the United States of America where we are still witnessing our own government brutalizing immigrant children. How long will this go on before we rise up and declare that enough is enough?
Donald Trump is not only a disgrace to America. He is a disgrace to humanity.
He even lies about what he is doing, not man enough to own his own actions. He’s a little boy pointing his finger at President Obama or Congressional Democrats.
So let’s be clear about the real issue here. Donald Trump is treating immigrant children like they are animals.
Even prisoners of war are entitled to humane treatment under the Geneva Conventions.
My God, what has happened to us!
My God, DON’T forgive them because they know exactly what they are doing.
I’ve said it before and I will say it again.
I hope with every fiber of my being that when Trump is out of office he and every official (especially Stephen Miller) involved in these crimes against humanity will be indicted by the International Criminal Court.
That is precisely how Ben Ferencz, an American attorney and the last surviving Prosecutor of the Nuremberg Trials, describes what Trump is doing:
“Forcing desperate young parents to surrender custody of their weeping children because they were unable to comply with restrictive immigration rules is a disgrace to our great country. Such cruelty should be condemned as a crime against humanity.” (his own tweet – June 20, 2019)
But Trump is not alone. The people supporting him share guilt with him for these crimes against humanity.
They are his “base” to whom he is doing what he is doing because he believes they like it. Well, as far as I’m concerned his base can go to hell. That’s where they belong, right beside him.
Their support for him is their way of saying they don’t give a damn about what is happening to these children.
What kind of people are they?
Trump is an evil man who does not have a moral bone in his body. The people who support him have to be just like him.
There is a point where anything good a person might do is overshadowed by the many horrible things they have done.
Trump reached that point a long time ago, yet his “base” is still with him.
Frankly, they belong in the same category of all the Germans who supported Hitler in the mid 1930s.
What makes our situation worse is the long term damage Trump’s moral depravity will do to our country. Writer Umair Haque described “crimes against humanity” this way:
“The idea is that some crimes are so terrible that they don’t just violate another person’s rights, possessions, belongings. They are a deeper kind of theft. A truer kind of violence. They steal away the deepest thing that we can be said to have. Our humanity. All of ours — victim, perpetrator, bystander, unwilling participant.”
Think about that for a moment. What he is saying is that Trump et al. are committing crimes against all of us, not just the children, and in the process robbing us of our own humanity, damaging our collective soul, destroying the moral center that makes us human.
This is why what we are witnessing is not just one more bad thing Trump is doing. Our very humanity as a people is being assaulted.
Yes, we can throw him out in 2020, a moral imperative as far as I’m concerned, but his legacy will be the stain of immorality he imprinted not simply on our reputation as a nation, but on the character of all of us as a people.
Impeachment talk is appropriately being focused on the crimes Trump committed that are explained in the Mueller Report.
But if the crimes against humanity we are watching Trump commit in brutalizing immigrant children are not grounds for impeachment, nothing is.
I have no doubt the founders would be horrified at Trump’s actions. They would also be appalled at the people who still support him.
If the vast majority of us are not enraged by him and them, we are not worthy heirs of the great dream they had for our country.
They had their moment in history and established something beautiful.
This is our moment in history in which we are faced with preserving what they started or letting Trump and his supporters turn “America, the Beautiful into “America, the Ugly.”
linnposts.com 
Amen.
Amen and Amen, except for partisan evangelicals who don’t know what to say “Amen” to.
Rollie, Miller is as evil as Trump.
It’s like we are in an alternative universe. I never thought I’d see the day when our government would mirror that of pre-WWII Germany.
And, thank you, Jan, for singling out Stephen Miller. He’s Trumps alter ego… despicable.
You have written down every thought I have about Trump and everything I’ve been saying. Voting him out of office will not erase the damage he has done to our democracy or the stain he is painting across our entire country and culture.
Bob, I think everyone who has a conscience and any sense feels the wy we do.
I have never seen my dear friend and man of faith so enraged that he would say, “My God, DON’T forgive them because they know exactly what they are doing.” I think Jan believes that God is ultimately a JUST God!!
Jan’s disgust toward Donald Trump is stated here in words as strong as a pastor and theologian can make them, enumerating the reasons Trump should be tried as a war criminal — “a disgrace to humanity.”
Children as young as four, separated from parents, getting no regular showers, no regular nutritional meals, no soap, not even a goddam toothbrush!! Trump and McConnell and others are despicable — and I’m glad Jan emphasized that Americans who still support Trump are complicit in his crimes……..
Bill Blackwell
You’re right, Bill. I am outraged. This is the third version of this blog. The first two would have been “R” rated so I toned them down. But not enough, I am glad, to hide my anger and frustration at Trump, and especially his supporters. They deserve as much condemnation as he does. This is the most inhumane action ever done in this nation’s name, and we all should be ashamed. Trump doesn’t only deserve impeachment. He deserves jail.
I share your outrage, Jan. Nothing Obama or Clinton did, or are accused of doing, comes close to the evils of child abuse that this administration is responsible for. Crimes against humanity, indeed!!
Wilbur, it IS child abuse, willful acts of harm against children. That anyone would defend Trump is unconscionable.
well said Jan, I do hope all involved with this outrageous policy are prosecuted by international courts and vilified for the rest of their lives.
Joy and I would fly to Washington to see Trump taken away in handcuffs. I’m sure y’all would drive up to join us.
Am I correct in thinking the legal process is already in motion to bring justice to Trump? I know it’s a long and arduous process.
Mary, I assume you are thinking about what is going on with the House Democrats is working, but whether justice will be served is an open question. Much of it will depend on how fast the courts act, and ultimately what the Supreme Court decides. We can hope for the best.
Last September, I visited the site of Neuengamme concentration camp, in the eastern suburbs of Hamburg. Among the exhibits is a map showing the locations of the various camps in the whole diabolical system, and as I looked at it, I thought of pictures I’d seen of people who’ve been infected by smallpox, and how the scars never go away. For many years after 1945, there were those who denied all knowledge of what had been going on in Neuengamme and other such places.
It’s thanks to the Internet and the media associated with it that, even in faraway Britain, none of us can deny all that will have happened to the innocent victims of Trump and his henchmen in the years to come.
Nigel, I hope the world will never forget what Trump did once he is gone (which cannot come too soon). We surely won’t here in the U.S. It is still surreal to he is President, nightmare, actually. It’s good to know you and others know what the real story of what is going on here and that most Americans are ashamed of him.
Allow me to clarify my lines. I likened the legacy left by the Nazi state to the scars left by smallpox, as their trace never completely vanishes even after Hitler’s death more than 7 decades ago. Thanks to the internet, we’re all witnesses.
Thanks, Nigel. You are right. The scars demagogues leave are permanent.
Jeremiah Wright comes closest to saying what the country deserves to hear right now: “God damn America!”
Craig, the country never understood what Wright was saying when he first said it, in part because the Obamas threw him under the bus. He ws contrasting “bless” with “damn,” not as profanity, but as a condemnation. Right wingers won the day, Obama caved, and the point was lost. Now that we are brutalizing babies and children, committing crimes agaist humanity, I wonder if his words can be heard for the truth they speak now. Let’s hope so.
There really was a dire situation at the border, needing funding for beds, toothbrshes, diapers, etc. DEMOCRATS DENIED REALITY AND DID NOT VOTE FUNDING TO RECTIFY the situation . . . until last Thursday, when, in reality, the call went out for additional funding months ago. On children: Cayotes have been “recycling” children to enable adults to “rent a kid” to one adult after another to be able to claim asylum. THOUSANDS of people, more than can be accommodated, have been entering, with not enough workers here to get everything done. And you have admitted in this article that you have gone batshit crazy about this immigration/children topic. Dems blew their opportunities to help for MONTHS!! The nation will not forget that when election time comes. You seem to have lost any balance in this article. Maybe time to take a vacation, get some perspective, learn to relax..
There is no balance to lose. The inhumane policies and actions of the Trump administration are to blame for the crisis at our southern border. To believe otherwise is to have your head up your ass!
Thank you for confirming my charge that Trump followers are as morally corrupt as he is. Brutalizing children is a hell of lot more than “a dire situation.” It is a crime against humanity, period.
Erv Fuller, Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ “Zero-Tolerance” policy of April 2018 caused this mess. Deflection when facts are against you indicates a wrong-headed argument. You find yourself in a hole, stop digging.