Monday 30 January 2017
Like most of you, I spend a good portion of
this weekend watching the news in utter disbelief as the apparent leader of the
free world dismantled 200 years of American tradition as compassionate
humanitarians and ideologues of liberty, then in horror as he nonchalantly
shrugged aside the authority of the judiciary system that is supposed to keep
him in check, all while his Republican party colleagues and supporters smiled
and clapped as if nothing at all out of the ordinary had happened.
I could give you the same speech that
you’ve heard from every pundit and foreign leader on TV: that this is
discriminatory, that it flies in the face of everything that America, and
indeed western democracy stands for, that it’s callous and accomplishes
nothing. But this is all obvious, and more to the point it has already been
said throughout the election when Trump warned us that he was going to do this
exact thing. But there’s a difference between opposing something because it
goes against your principles or your ideology, and seeing it actually in
practice. For me the turning point came late Sunday night.
I was watching the CNN coverage of the
situation at America’s airports, JFK, Dallas, Logan. They were showing video
footage of the various detainees from Trump’s “undesirable” countries being
released from custody after hours of being held and questioned. At first my
feeling was that the camera crew should leave them alone, after a long
stressful ordeal I’m sure a camera in their face is the last thing they want.
But once I saw these people I realized how important it is to see the faces of
the people this affects, to see the human impact of this nightmare.
Then I saw something that broke me. A video
of a young child being carried out of the airport by his mother. Young, five
years old at most maybe younger. Not crying or anything, just staring blankly,
shocked and despondent after hours of being held by armed men while his parents
were taken away and kept separately, helpless to do anything. This kid
had just been heading home. His mother was singing “happy birthday” as she
carried him out. Is this what Trump meant when he said he wanted to make America great again?
And then I went on the social network
Reddit to look at the discussion threads to see what people were saying about
all this. I found comments mocking "salty liberals" and “whiny losers who lost" (Actual quotes).
Imagine the juxtaposition; this young
infant, innocent, detained for several hours for no reason aside from having
parents born in a Muslim nation, traumatized and terrified, he and his parents
treated like terrorists and criminals despite having committed no crime. On
this young child’s birthday. Then the
vile excuses for human excrement laughing their heads off at this video baying
“haha take that, liberals!”
I mean fuck.
So sure, Republicans you go ahead and
implement your insane white supremacist policies, and Democrats you keep
fighting to restore American ideals. We’re used to that. But what kind of
irredeemable sociopath takes such delight in the suffering of innocents, and
innocent children no less? What unfathomable waste of oxygen is so hopelessly
and remorselessly detached from human empathy that they gloat and gleefully
cheer this five year old’s terror as if they had just won some game of
football?
It is time to acknowledge the type of
people that we are up against here. That a certain segment of this country have
simply accepted the dehumanization of others. This is not simply politics
anymore, this is hyper-partisanship taken to a frightening and dangerous
extreme. It is no longer acceptable to simply laugh off comparisons to the
humanitarian crises of the past.
It is also time to acknowledge the people
who have brought us to this moment, enabled and encouraged the hatred. It is no
longer acceptable for the Republican Party leadership, for the Speaker of the
People’s House, and each of our duly elected representatives, to simply stand
by and let this happen for the sake of party politics.
This is not normal. There must be
consequences. It is the duty of every sane and compassionate human being,
American or otherwise, to remember what is happening, to remember the baying
thugs who supported this administration, to remember the politicians who let it
happen out of cynical self-interest.
This Muslim ban was announced (incredibly)
on holocaust memorial day, a day on which we tell each other that we must never
forget. This ban will be thrown
out in the courts, Trump’s vile regime will come to an end, and when all this
insanity is consigned to the ash-heap of history we must ensure that we never
forget those who were responsible. It is the duty of all good people to ensure
that everyone who has supported this administration and its actions carries the
shame of it with them. History is watching America, history is watching Theresa
May, history is watching Republican Party. None of you will be remembered
kindly.
