Absolute zero
Absolute zero is the coldest temperature that can exist in the universe. It is equivalent to -459.67 F. (-273.15 C.). The Trump administration’s immigration policy, which it describes as “zero tolerance,” is a policy of absolute zero. Absolute zero observance of U.S. and international law. Absolute zero compassion for people fleeing for their lives. Absolute zero respect for truth and transparency. Absolute zero correspondence with universally-held values and for professed American values. Absolute zero regard for caging children and forcibly separating them from their parents, causing indelible psychological trauma to still-developing brains. Absolute zero heart, intelligence, decency.
Cold. So cold that it has generated an unprecedentedly broad, overwhelming, white-hot reaction among communities of color and not of color; from Amnesty International and the UN Human Rights Council; from the American Bar Association and states’ attorneys general; from Laura Bush to Kamala Harris; from Pope Francis to ministers, priests and rabbis of every faith tradition.
The reaction has been so powerful that it even made the famously stubborn Donald Trump pause and take a very short step back. Trump in this instance has shown his signature combination of pig-headedness and cruelty. The president reminds me of how a famous Cuban poet described one of the bloodier tyrants of the Cuban Republican era (1902-1959.) An ass with claws.
The bigger picture that can get lost in focusing on Trump’s minuscule tactical retreat is that the administration’s principal reaction has been to double down on the policy and the rhetoric while playing the victim whenever an irate citizen confronts one of Trump’s top tools. Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the number one apologist for the president’s unconscionable immigration policies, was asked to leave a Red Hen Virginia restaurant and later whined about it on Twitter. Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen was heckled at a DC Mexican restaurant. The most ardent enemy of immigrants in the Trump administration, Stephen Miller, was called a fascist to his face in another Mexican eating establishment in the capital.
What is it with these people and Mexican food? Who do they think brought Mexican food to the United States? Who do they think is cooking it, serving it to them and washing the dishes? What kind of welcome did they expect to get when they work for a man who kicked off his presidential campaign with a diatribe against Mexican immigrants consisting in describing them as criminals, rapists and drug dealers?
The implementers and defenders of Trump’s policy of walling out people from “shithole” countries with a series of physical barriers and a widespread reign of terror targeted at immigrants are not entitled to a quiet dinner on the town, away from the madding crowd. Republicans, who for decades laid the groundwork for this horror but before Trump were afraid to bring it to full fruition, are raising holy hell. Republicans in Congress are asking for the resignation of California Representative Maxine Waters, who called Americans to get in the faces of Trump’s enablers.
Dream on. Allow me to laugh out loud. Waters is tempered-steel tough. The people who have had enough of racism and the rest of the malodorous Trump package are not exactly quaking in their boots or backing down. They are ramping up. Protesters gathered around Secretary Nielsen’s home to express their revulsion. How is it, Ms. Nielsen, to feel fear and wrath in your own home? How does it feel, Ms. Huckabee Sanders, to have the Secret Service escort you to your home?
The decision to give Huckabee Sanders Secret Service protection looks like one more ploy by the Trump administration to cast itself as a victim. No one is calling for violence against any of Trump’s tools. What Waters and others, including myself, are encouraging is direct action to bring the full weight of moral judgment against those devoid of conscience who richly deserve it.
“I am in Birmingham because injustice is here,” Martin Luther King wrote from an Alabama jail cell. We must be present wherever the proud perpetrators of the current crusade of injustice against immigrants want to kick off their shoes and be at peace. Present but never with a raised fist much less a loaded gun. Present instead with a much more powerful weapon: our total, unrelenting, radical moral indignation.
