If separating children from their parents is an appropriate deterrent to first-time misdemeanor border crossings as Donald Trump and Jeff Sessions claim even now, then perhaps in the interest of law and order it is a penalty that should be more widely applied.
Texting or talking on your phone while driving? Doing 45 in a 25 mph zone? Take the kids. Ship them to a foster home or detention center 2,000 miles away. A penalty that intentionally inflicts great pain would certainly also send a strong message to people who drive distracted or too fast.
It’s odd — that nostalgia for a time when the law was an instrument of terror and brutality, the keeper of order. It is a nostalgia our Constitution does not share. President Donald Trump and son-in-law, Jared Kushner’s good friend, the Saudi crown prince, plans to execute at least one woman for offenses perceived to be crimes against Saudi manhood and has likely had a critical, U.S. resident Saudi journalist murdered inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, Turkey.
Americans who lament the 300-year drift of western civilization away from cruel and unusual punishment should consider relocating to Saudi Arabia.
Trump’s favorite Texas talk radio host, webcaster and conspiracy theory slinger Alex Jones does not waver from his vile contention that the Sandy Hook elementary school massacre in Connecticut in 2012 was a hoax perpetrated by anti-gun groups to gain support for anti-Second Amendment laws.
While Jones acquires fame and significant wealth, his half-wit followers have sent death threats to the parents of children who were killed in that attack. One moron who fed on Jones’ brain barf was sent to prison in 2017 for stalking and harassing a dead child’s parents.
Trump must be given full credit on this account. He has done a great job of at last normalizing and bringing into the mainstream the long ignored Charles Manson voters.
Many Republican and evangelical Christian conservatives say they personally dislike Trump but because he delivers tax cuts and socially conservative judicial appointments that suit their agenda they tolerate his amorality, his nation shattering divisiveness, his rationality shattering conspiracy theories, his whiny casting of blame on everyone else for his own failures, his blatant racism and sexism and his ceaseless lying.
Isn’t that the same grand hypocrisy as elements of the Catholic Church that tolerated and covered up clerical sex abuse? Both have made the Faustian bargain to place the preservation of their power and the promotion of their doctrine ahead of any greater political or moral responsibility
Sixty-four years ago CBS newsman Edward R. Murrow said of Sen. Joseph McCarthy and McCarthyism, “We will not walk in fear, one of another. We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason. ... “
Far from “ Making America Great Again,” Donald Trump’s daily assault on objective facts and democratic values, the wellsprings of what truly is great about America, will have exactly the opposite effect. Today Ed Murrow might add, “Nor will we be driven by lies into an age of despotism and decline.”
Marty Ansley
Cinebar
