June 25, 2019 tRUMP's Concentration Camps, American Depravity, Orange Twitler.

It is time to call them what they are: Concentration Camps. Oh the tRUMPists will wail, yet another reference to Hitler and the Holocaust. Perhaps. But it worth remembering that decades before the horrors of Auschwitz it was the United States that set up concentrations camps in Cuba during the Spanish-American conflict, as the Brits did during the Boer War.

The memory of the detention of Japanese-American citizens during the Second World War still haunts us although, in perhaps a more than a bit of government propaganda, Pathe newsreels showed tidy rows of houses, much like a Marine barracks behind fenced enclosures. No one accused the government of separating children from parents and guardians, or denying them basic hygiene.

As despicable as were those historical events, they did not—according to near universal observation—involve packing human beings into standing-room-only enclosures, denying basic facilities for hygiene, or seizing children from the arms of their parents. This is Nazi stuff. This are acts worthy only of the Third Reich or Pol Pot's Cambodian experiments in cruelty. The United States has fallen to a new low in the never ending quest of the Conservative movement to plumb the depths of American depravity.

Charles Blow reported today in The New York Times that “last week, an attorney for the Trump administration argued before an incredulous panel of judges on the Ninth Circuit that toothbrushes, soap and appropriate sleeping arrangements were not necessary for the government to meet it's requirement to keep migrant children in 'safe and sanitary' conditions.

“As one of the judges asked the attorney:

“Are you arguing seriously that you do not read the agreement requiring you do something other than what I described: Cold all night long. Lights on all night long. Sleep on the concrete floor and you get an aluminum blanket?

“Stop and think about that”, wrote Blow, “not only do these children in question not have beds, they are not even turning off the lights so they can go to sleep. Sleep deprivation is a form of torture, plain and simple.” (1)

Blow put the term Concentration Camps in quotations. He shouldn't have. There is no need for qualification. This is not hyperbole, it is accomplished fact.

One must always be careful not to engage in headlong comparisons between this third-rate Mussolini and the genuine article. But it is not a disparagement of those who suffered and died at the hands of Hitler and his henchmen to make this comparison. Let's be clear: these are not death camps—at least not yet. But they are, by any historically objective definition, concentration camps.

Chris Matthews, of MSNBC, is one of those who recoil at the comparison, citing the term as “extremely charged” and preferring to use the phrase “detention camps” instead. (2) I disagree.

There are pronounced elements of cruelty involved here. Packing human beings into small confined spaces, denying basic human hygiene—many have not had a shower in over a month. Even going so far as to turn away civic groups who came to the border stations with soap, toothbrushes, toothpaste and other supplies. Ripping infants and children from the arms of their parents and guardians with no intention of re-uniting them. No! This administration exhibits the hallmarks of sadism so prevalent in authoritarian and totalitarian regimes. Our Caesar Disgustus does these things not simply because he can and has gotten away with it, but because he likes it. It is not hard to imagine the orange Twitler alone in the White House with his cheeseburger masturbating to tales of wailing children and sobbing and distraught parents being separated at the border. I.C.E. No doubt sends him videos.

Charles Blow summed it up as well as anyone writing:

“Folks, we can use any form of fuzzy language we want, but the United States under Donald Trump is currently engaged in an unconscionable act. He promised to crack down on immigrants and yet under him immigrants seeking asylum have surged. And he is meeting the surge with indescribable cruelty.

“Donald Trump is running concentration camps on the border. The question remains: What are we going to do about it?” (3)

An' Br'er Putin, he jus' laugh and laugh

Impeach and Imprison.

___________

1. Blow, Charles M. “Trump's 'Concentration Camps', The New York Times. Monday, June 24, 2019. Page A25.
2. Ibid
3. Ibid