anexplanationofunfortunateevents:
As
you’re trying to process the daily firehose of Trump on your
various feeds, you have to remember that Trump is an abuser.I’m
not talking about how it’s morally important to remember
that fact, although it is. I’m saying the current rush of news makes more sense when you remember some recognizable
patterns in the way abusers think and act:
- Abusers
like to hurt people and they do not like to experience consequences
for it. They know how to choose victims who are more vulnerable than
they are.- They
often enable others who share their enjoyment of cruelty.- They
lie, manipulate, and gaslight others. This helps them get away with
misconduct, but it’s also a power trip that they enjoy for its own
sake.- When
they are threatened or injured, they lash out wildly in order to
externalize their feelings of weakness.Those
patterns provide a useful framework to make sense of what seem to be
the two dominant news stories of the last couple of weeks.
- The Trump regime is inflicting a humanitarian crisis at
our southern border and against law-abiding immigrants around the
country. Trump explicitly campaigned promising to be sadistic toward
immigrants, and has indeed empowered the ugliest tendencies of
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) since taking over the
government. Last month, Attorney General Sessions
announced that the government would start purposefully tearing apart
families at the border. White House Chief of Staff John Kelly
argued that people who are desperate enough to flee
to America without documentation can and should be deterred if only
America is cruel enough to them. Trump himself has kept this story in the news by publicly amplifying
his dehumanizing rhetoric about immigrants.- There’s been an increasing volume of news stories related to the Trump-Russia
investigation. People close to Trump’s lawyer and campaign manager appear to have flipped on them. Details confirming what we already
suspected about obstruction of justice by Trump himself have come out. Special Prosecutor Mueller’s office is ready to sentence key witnesses. They don’t usually do that until they’ve gotten everything they
need from the witnesses, so this suggests they’re about to make
some big move. Trump has responded with increasingly panicked
conspiracy theories aimed at discrediting the FBI and issuing bizarre pardons
which look like further obstruction of justice.These
stories are both happening and they are independently important. But they are also important in context with each other.The
root cause of this new immigration policy is Trump, who has always
been a bully and a racist. But he didn’t get worse this week out of
nowhere. He’s intensified his attacks on vulnerable immigrants because he is scared and he wants to kick people who can’t fight
back. (It’s worth noticing that Sessions is also in the Russia stuff
up to his eyeballs and is on Trump’s shit list for his failure
to cover it up sufficiently.)Additionally,
Trump gets some short-term tactical benefits from it.
Spewing the racist venom his base loves intensifies their devotion to
him at a politically dangerous time for him. Saying and doing evil
shit also helps him overload and wear down the rest of us. The press
reports on it because it is actually important that children are
being abused in our names, which leaves less time and attention for
the potentially damaging stuff turning up in the investigations.He’s
hurting people because he likes it and because, for the moment, he
feels like it’s helping him. He’s doing this because he’s an
abuser. He’s lying frantically because he’s an abuser. These
stories fit into the same framework.That
synchronicity of “cruelty to immigrants” and “Russian attacks
on democracies” isn’t some Trump-specific coincidence. The propaganda campaigns crafted or supported by Russian intelligence
regularly stoke and weaponize anti-immigrant xenophobia. Hostility to
immigrants was a big part of the Brexit campaign, which Russian
intelligence supported. Marine Le Pen, a French pro-Putin presidential candidate, campaigned on closing France to immigrants. The Russian media and foreign minister pushed lies about Muslim
immigrants in Germany in an attempt to hurt German Chancellor Angela
Merkel. The Russian military indiscriminately bombs Syrian civilians in order to create more refugees it can use to destabilize Europe. The Kremlin worked so hard to get Trump where he is specifically
so he can do exactly what he’s doing.Lastly, understanding these stories together is a small way to deny Trump something he wants. His abuse of vulnerable
people is his attempt to look and feel strong because he feels
defensive and weak about the Russia investigations. He indulges in
lawlessness by proxy with ICE because he feels good cops breathing
down his neck. His desperate tantrums should be understood for what
they are. That means acknowledging the real pain he is causing and remembering that he is lashing out in craven
terror because his bad actions are catching up to him.WHAT
YOU CAN DO:If
you have the time, there will be demonstrations over the next couple
of weeks in support of immigrant families. If you have the resources, you can donate.Groups like United We Dream or We Belong Together have some suggestions about how you can get involved.
Doing
what you can to support vulnerable immigrants is worth doing because they’re
human beings who deserve to be treated with dignity and compassion.
It is also a concrete, if indirect, way to stand up to the
abuser-in-chief and his illegitimate regime. What these fucking
people want is for us to give up on each other and let them decide
who is human and what is American. Fuck them.
Hearseeno 