Trump Just Might Be One Of T h e m !

I have been around for a long time, and have followed politics for a long time as well. Like most people, wars I've always found to be especially disturbing--why were people doing such horrible things to one another? I remember the Korean War, but was too young to understand the background of the conflict. I remember the Vietnam war as well, and couldn't forgive Johnson or, later, Nixon, for its (unnecessary! and immoral!) horrors, such as the widespread use of civilian bombing. By now you can imagine my response to the completely unjustified invasion of Iraq, with its hundreds of thousands of casualties, not to mention its trillion-dollar expense. "We are doing Iran's dirty work," I remember telling others at the time; a prediction that has since been proven to be correct.

During times when I was convinced that my country was making bad decisions, I always consoled myself with the following thought: at least this isn't Nazi Germany!

For the first time in my life, however, I am beginning to see similarities with that awful regime and our current one. I am not exaggerating. Our institutions and traditions remain largely intact, along with our glorious system of checks and balances. The public, at least the progressive section of it, is vigorously opposing separation of children from parents at the border. These are good omens. But the fact that this separation took place, not to mention that it is supported by many, is one of many ominous tendencies. I am not saying that we are becoming Nazi Germany; I am saying, however, that the current president's sympathies are much more with fascism than with democracy.

I have always been extremely uneasy about comparing any American regime to Hitler's. We are so much better than that! What is the source of my present misgivings? What lead me to believe that Trump, deep down, might be one of them?

Born one month after the end of World War ll, I was horrified from an early age by the war against fascism, which resulted in the greatest destruction that the world has ever seen. The response of many adults around me was, "We won! We won!" Although I was certainly glad and grateful that the Allies had been victorious, I had difficulty getting beyond the war's wanton destruction--fifty-five million dead, the epicenter of which was the unspeakable crimes of the Holocaust.

My father despised the Germans. I could not accept the belief, however,  that all inhabitants of one country were worse than all inhabitants of another. Since my relationship with my father was conflicted as far back as I can remember, I decided to learn German as an act of defiance, and also as a way to prove my conviction that "all people are the same." I studied German in high school and went on to study German in college as well, after which I spent a year studying German in graduate school before switching to medicine.

Despite having been a busy pediatrician for many years, I did not neglect the German language. To this day, I can read, speak, as well as write in German.

I am still very appreciative of German music and literature; I still believe that Germans as a  whole are no better or worse than members of any other ethnic group. Being able to approach history from a German context, however, deepened my horror about what was perpetrated in Germany's name.

This is a huge subject; I will limit my discussion here to how I came to believe that Trump has marked fascist tendencies.

The Nazis began their debasement of the German language from the very beginning. They coined malevolent memes and used them to foment antisemitism everywhere. I will provide only a few examples.

After The Nuremberg Laws were passed in 1934, a new crime arose, "Rassenschande," "shame against the race." German has the unique ability to form compound eotfd which are much more direct, and in this case, more vicious, than indicated by an English translation; the English translation of "Rassenschande" seems muted and bureaucratic in comparison. The is especially true of an especially horrible compound adjective: "judenrein". When mass deportation of Jews from German cities took place after 1942, cities or towns were declared "judenrein," that is, cleared of Jews, once there were no Jews left.  "Cleared of Jews" however, doesn't cut it: the world literally means "pure of Jews"; the cognate of this Nazi-coined word is "stubenrein," that is, "housebroken." The real meaning of this malevolent word is closer to "purified of filth."  This is the word Nazi newspapers used, while, all over Germany and Austria, people were marching to the strains of "Deutschland erwache, Juda verrecke!"--"Germany, awake, Jewry, croak!" Oh, the horror, the horror! These are but two examples of debased, dehumanized language perfected by the Nazis.

I was well aware, from the beginning of his regime, that Trump was a malignant narcissist in addition to being a liar, a racist, and someone unfit to be the president of the United States. His performance since becoming president has deepened this awareness.

Yes, Trump is a racist. Having been the head of the notorious birther movement for five years prior to his election is a good indication of his racial animus. Even worse, when five teenagers were accused of raping and severely beating a white jogger in Central Park, he ran a full page ad in the New York Post demanding, before a trial took place,  that they receive the death penalty. Even worse--far worse: when, years later, the five no-longer-young men were proven innocent by DNA analysis, Trump recommended that the convictions should not be overturned. How can this be explained other than by a racist animus against Blacks? (There is, of course, much more evidence which illustrates Trump's fondness for America's Original Sin.)

Yes, he is a racist, but this didn't make him a Nazi in my eyes. After all, racism has been a prominent part of the American story from its inception.
What made me come to the conclusion that Trump's racism was worthy of Nazism?

On June 19, 2018, Trump tweeted the following:

Democrats are the problem. They don’t care about crime and want illegal immigrants, no matter how bad they may be, to pour into and infest our Country, like MS-13. They can’t win on their terrible policies, so they view them as potential voters!

My God, I thought to myself: he is one of them! I never thought that I would ever compare a U.S. president  to Nazis. How dare I make such a comparison?

(I would like to make clear at this point that I'm certainly not implying that Trump is an advocate of mass murder; I am asserting, however that Trump would be much more comfortable in a fascist role rather than in a democratic one. And, oh, by the way, if he had been a German businessman in 1933, which side do you think he would have been on?)

I can't imagine that any American in higher office--at least since the Civil Rights Movement--would ever use the word "infest" to refer to human beings. He is implying that these Hispanic refugees are vermin, vectors bringing a plague of crime into the United States. (Never mind a fact that can't be emphasized enough: migrants, both legal and illegal, commit crimes at about half the rate of native-born Americans.)  "Infest" here struck me as coming from the same dark place in the human soul that spoke of "judenrein" seven decades earlier.

In the midst of mounting scandals and egregious behaviors, this tweet was hardly noticed. Its significance, however, has struck me deeply. For me it was the broken window through which I got a glimpse into Trump's soul.

Now Trump's constant stream of lies is beginning to remind me of those of  Josef Goebbels. Now Trump's periodic rallies are beginning to remind me of Nazi rallies. Now Trump's cozying up to dictators and his contempt for democratic allies remind me of that demon himself, who once said in Mein Kampf that the great advantage of fascism is that it brings all leaders down to its level. In this context, his admiration for dictators and disdain for allies makes sense.

The man who has no empathy, the man who is our president, appears to be a fascist at heart:  the majority of American hearts, however, follow the beat of a brighter and better drum.

We must, however, take Trump's threat to democracy seriously. This is not a conservative issue, nor is it a progressive one: it is an issue of justice and of humanity; it is an issue of patriotism.

Please join me in peaceful, vociferous and active opposition to this man who, at his core,  seems to be--horrible to say--not one of us, but one of them.

Sample Letters

Note: I am posting a copy of a letter I sent to my congressman today; with appropriate modifications, I also wrote to both Maryland senators. I am posting this simply to encourage all of you to write your own letters to your congressman and senators. Caged children can't wait; we must act now! Oh,  and by the way, I didn't send the letter to the President. You know and I know it wouldn't have done any good. 

                                                                               4408 Wickford Rd.

                                                       Baltimore, MD 21210-2810

                                                       June 21, 2018

Congressman John Sarbanes

2444 Rayburn HOB

Washington, D.D. 2055

                                         

Dear Congressman John Sarbanes,

I am appalled by the current practice of separating children at the border. As a pediatrician, I am well aware of the fact that children are not little adults. Tearing families apart can and will have lifelong traumatic effects upon children, let there be no doubt about that. 

Give me your tired and poor, and we’ll put them in cages? Lock up those yearning to be free? What are we becoming?

This is not a conservative or liberal issue. No other position is morally tenable—Separating parents from children must stop now!

I know you share this view. My request is that you be much more aggressive about it.  Two thousand children torn away from their parents constitutes a calamity—Even an extra day in  detention can cause great harm.

Using children as hostages in order to obtain funding for a border wall crosses the border to evil from good—fight hard for what’s right, Congressman; fight the Liar with fire!

The torch of Lady Liberty is being dimmed; we’re depending on you and your colleagues to make it shine brightly again.

Please rage, rage, against the dying of the light!

If you have any suggestions on how I can help, please let me know them.

Sincerely,

Thomas Dorsett M.D., M.P.H.

                                                        4408 Wickford Rd.

                                                        Baltimore, MD 21210-2810

President Donald J. Trump

Washington, D.C.

Dear President Trump,

You are America’s Orange Nightmare. Make America great again—resign!

Sincerely,

Thomas Dorsett M.D.

"Don't Take Jesters Into Outer Space"

                                          --Wislawa Szymborska

One day, they'll be laughing on Enceladus.
Clowns on a tightrope from Deimos to Mars!

(Meanwhile, Sunyatta. the black bear, expands.)
Truth is, perfect worlds don't happen--

Truth is, clowns will build space towns
that look like Detroit.

Don't worry, Shakespeare will be translated
into dialects spoken on Titan

where they'll be stored at absolute Kelvin
beneath New New Jersey's methane lakes.

Don't worry, one December 38th, Wislawa
Szymborska will rise from a wormhole

and take us to poems light-years beyond
abandoned tents and motionless flags.

                                      Thomas Dorsett

This poem was first published in the May-June 2018 issue of The Broadkill Reivew.

Commentary

One of my favorite Latin proverbs provides a key to the interpretation of this poem: Caelum non animam mutant qui trans mare current. This maxim comes from the Odes of Horace, which is translated as follows: They change the sky, not their soul, who rush across the sea. In other words, you can't escape yourself with a change of scene--especially if you rush compulsively to that change of scene.  After packing your clothes and hurrying off to a place where you intend to start anew,  you might imagine that your old self has been left behind; once you arrive, however, you will discover that the one unpacking your socks is the same person who packed them.

We humans will take our positive qualities, that is, wisdom and love, along with us once we begin to colonize extraterrestrial worlds; we will, alas! also take along our greeds, hates, and delusions as well.This poem illustrates some of the possible effects of the latter.

What can redeem us? Since I am a poet, I symbolize what is needed by the advent of Wislawa Szymborska, the great Polish poet, who here represents poetry in the broadest sense of that word, namely, the  non-egotistical dedication to life with as little greed, hate, and delusion, as possible. 

I am not naive; I realize that this transformation is almost as unlikely as the The Second Coming.This explains my reference to wormholes and the impossible date of December 38th. With love, however, incredible progress isn't impossible at all: steps toward that transformation are very possible indeed. All of us can make our world and ourselves a little bit better, I have no doubt about that. Commitment to this transformation is what makes us human; it is, I believe, why we are here.

Note: "Sunyatta" is the Buddhist term for "Emptiness"--here symbolizing the relentless expansion of space.

Trump's Obscenity is Far, Far Worse than Samantha Bee's

It’d been a little over a week since Samantha Bee, the popular  comedian, referred to Ivanka Trump with a vulgar slur. Bee was infuriated—rightly so, in my opinion—with the current policy of separating children from their families at the border. The incident seems already to have been largely forgotten; the day after Bee’s commentary, there was a flurry of rage on the airways and on social media, but this soon subsided. Each day seems to have its own scandal in the age of Trump; each day the previous day’s fuss is forgotten. Roth once said that it is difficult to make sense of a culture where “everything goes and nothing matters"—a perfect description of Trumpworld and his enabling media. Like so many examples of conservative rage, classic examples of which are found in Trump’s tweets, the “Bee affair” has been used to deflect attention from the real issues, in this case, the horrific separation of children from their parents, which goes on unabated.  Rage against this deflection informs this article, the hope that things will improve informs it as well. They have to!

Let us first turn our attention to what Bee actually said, along with a few conservative comments tweeted in response.

The Controversy

On May 30, 2018, Samantha Bee said the following on her cable show:

You know, Ivanka, that’s a beautiful photo of you and your child. But let me just say, one mother to another, do something about your dad’s immigration practices, you feckless cunt! He listens to you! Put on something tight and low-cut and tell your father to fucking stop it.

The next day, as one might expect, Fox News and the conservative tweetworld were, well, “shocked.” Here are two examples from prominent conservatives, representative of many:

This is disgusting. How is this acceptable? And how are we expected to take any of these publications seriously if they gleefully repost something like this  at the same time they (rightfully) condemn Roseanne?  You know the saying Love is Love. Well, Hate is Hate.

                                                         --Megyn Kelly

Compare ABC’s reaction to Roseanne Barr’s tweet with TBS’s no- reaction to Samantha Bee and you’ll see a double-standard in action. Three’s no uprising against Bee. Why? Because she is liberal. Because the MSM (mainstream media) protects Obama and his aides, but not Trump. The hypocrisy is sickening.

                                                        
                                                        --Ari Fleisher

What Bee said and Barr wrote are not equivalent. Barr tweeted a racist comment, while Bee used an expletive, however improperly, to defend the vulnerable. That's a very big difference.First, 


Before discussing Trump's policy of separating children from their parents, I would first like to recount our family’s use of expletives, in order to enable the reader to understand better my reaction to this incident.

The Use of Expletives at Our House

It’s not that we have zero tolerance for expletives at our house, it's just that it never occurs to us to use them. I guess it’s a matter of style. My wife, Nirmala, hails from India; we married in 1974, two years after she came to the United States. It is my impression that educated Indians eschew expletives; this is true of all her relatives here and abroad; it also applies to the many people I have met in India. (How do I know when my wife gets angry? Her face turns red. Then she expresses her anger with a rapid barrage of words—without even a darn!)

Following her example, I never heard my son use a curse word. (He is an adult, and we remain close). I must admit that I have used an expletive on very few occasions when I’m very angry at the world, around a dozen times or so in the last forty years. I also admit to being the moody and depressive member of the family. In short, on a scale of 1 to 10 where five represents average expletive usage, I would imagine our family would score very, very much less than 1.

I do admit using the ‘n-word’ on one occasion, in front of my son.  (What I said was the “n-word” not the actual word). We were in the car together; Philip changed the radio to a rap station. I listened to the lyrics. “Phil,: I said, “I don’t like the use of the “n-word” in rap. It's vulgar, and white kids, who listen to a lot of rap are going to repeat it."  “Dad, It’s not ‘n-i-g-g-e-r” but ‘n-i-g-g-a; a term of endearment among blacks--By turning an insult into its very opposite, it is a form of resistance to the racism which blacks face on a daily basis." “I still don’t like it,” I said. It is, of course, not much of a shock for my son to use either term, since he is black. (Background: my wife is Indian, I am of English descent, and our adopted son is black.) It wouldn’t be right for me to use either term, of course, and that’s fine with me, because I don’t.

Just because we don’t use expletives, however, doesn’t mean that we melt when we hear one.We listen to a few cable TV shows, where hosts and guests often pepper their speech with “f—ks” and “sh-ts,” and that's fine with us. For us, it’s more of a matter of not the words you say, but the decency of what is being said. A good example is the dispute, long ago, between Richard Pryor and Bill Cosby. (We never liked Bill Cosby. We thought his attempt to appear so squeaky clean was an attempt to cover up something a good deal less clean inside. We were prescient in this regard, as everyone knows by now).

Cosby was lecturing young black males, advising them to clean up their speech. No more expletives please! Be like his family on the sitcom. He excoriated Richard Pryor for using so many expletives during his performances. Richard Pryor’s response to Cosby “Have  a Coke and shut the fuck up!” A truly brilliant response that couldn’t have been better said any other way! Cosby, the product which advertisers love, vs. Pryor, the comic genius, a product of a difficult life—who do you think won! Nirmala and I laughed and laughed at Pryor's Zen-like retort.

We don’t watch the Samantha Bee show. But if we had seen the episode in question we might not have liked her use of the expletive, but we would have hardly noticed it. Out anger would have been directed, in solidarity with Bee, at Trump. Why?

Trump’s Obscene Immigration Policy

On May 8, 2018, Trump adopted a policy of “zero tolerance” for individuals crossing over the border other than at official sites. At the time of this writing, over 11,000 children, some as young as a one-year-old, have been forcibly separated from their parents, while the parents face prosecution for having crossed the border illegally. Some remain at detention sites, many others have been placed in foster care in various states of the country; communication with parents has been sporadic at best. The designated facilities and foster care system were completely overwhelmed, since there had been no adequate planning to accommodate so many children.

This is an abominable practice; it is obscene. Samantha Bee would have had to string together a nearly infinite number of c-words to approach the obscenity of Trump’s policy. How have the media reacted? They were shocked by Bee’s vulgarity. Never mind the vulgarity and horror of Trump’s immigration policy. Once again, coverage of a core issue was deflected by emphasis on, well, nonsense.

When I listened to Trump officials defending this inhumane policy, I was tempted, if only for a moment, to throw a shoe at the TV. 'The adults have committed a crime, and, when that happens, separation from their children is a frequent consequence'.  Yeah, right.

I am a retired pediatrician. I know well that children are not little adults. Forced separation from their loved ones can cause serious trauma in children, the effects of which can last a lifetime.

There is no justification for this horrendous practice; it is not required by law.The true reason for this practice was expressed by John Kelly, the Homeland Security secretary: the purpose is to deter immigration.

The most important moral law by far is,“Love thy neighbor as thyself.” Hillel’s version is especially apt here: "Don’t do anything to others that you wouldn’t like others to do to you". How would these officials feel if kids in their family were forcibly removed from their mothers in tears? It is said that a country is judged best by how it treats the most vulnerable. The vast majority of these immigrant families have been through a lot. Violence in their native lands has forced them to flee. After a long journey, none would have expected this ungodly treatment.

Morality demands that children never be separated from parents except for reasons of neglect or abuse. This time it’s the U.S. government doing the neglect and abuse!

I am ashamed of my country’s actions in this regard, deeply ashamed. I believe there will be future documentaries dealing with the consequences of this criminal policy. That some lives will be seriously damaged, of this I have no doubt.

What did the one whom I sometimes call “El Orange Pesadilla” have to tweet about this crime against humanity?: “Separating families at the Border is the fault of bad legislation passed by the Democrats. Border Security laws should be changed but the Dems can’t get their act together! Started the Wall.”

How many expletives would Samantha Bee have had to say to approach the obscenity of that quote? Make-America-Prate-Again, indeed.

For the first time in my life I can understand how good Germans must have felt during the Nazi terror. The important difference is that our democratic institutions, although increasingly under siege, are basically still intact. It’s up to us to utilize them and stop this horror now.

What Did That Self-Help Guru Say?

"Simply subtract your age from 65,
and that's how many good years you have left."
That makes mine fewer than minus three!

Once vim is reduced to a negative toddler,
is it O.K. to sit and forget half your French?
It is not. Instead, before I'm minus four,

I shall sing and descant upon love
an a language I as yet don't understand.
Perhaps I'll send him a postcard from Kandahar,

perhaps I'll send him an elephant tusk
made out of marzipan
by a lovely, crazy German living in Irkutsk;

he apparently thinks old age is the time
to stare like a cow while a fly
navigates a bulbous nose. Should I rage?

No, rages are unseemly after minus three;
having outgrown my terrible minus twos,
I'm ready for a raucous minus youth,

and if I find a tarantula in La Descubierta,
I promise I won't send him a fanged memento mori
in a silver candy box, crawling on blue cheese.

                                     
                                               Thomas Dorsett


This poem first appeared in The Broadkill Review, May-June 2018

Notes

An actual self-help guru devised the formula mentioned in the poem, although I forget his name.  Although the protagonist of the poem is a bit younger than I am, we both strongly believe that 65 is not the end of life!