by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls
The long predicted moment of truth is now at hand. We’ve been outraged over this or that Trump policy over the last year or so, but this is it. If we can’t get Trump to end the brutal, obscene policy of tearing children from their families at the border, then all is lost.
The scary thing is, I honestly don’t know what the endgame of this one is. Even if we manage to stop this policy, it could be the Trump Administration testing the weaknesses of the existing American system of government. If it’s not this, it’ll be something else. But this is a pretty intense crisis. You can give us any number of different options about how to address this specific crisis, but something has to be done.
We are with a potentially dark and unknown endgame because MAGA people’s first reaction to explaining what’s going on is now a sense of compassion or even outrage. It’s the usual bullshit rhetorical shadowboxing at best and at worst complete silence. We’re fast approaching the moment when silence is your answer. If you’re so much of a proverbial Good German that when forced to make a simple ethical decision about the fate of children, for Christ’s sake, your first reaction is to defend Trump not show concern, then the United States as I’ve known it my entire life is in grave danger indeed.
In other words, the pot is now boiling. Traditional freedom-loving Americans are the frog and it’s boiling. Either we finally notice the heat surrounding us and jump out, or we don’t and we are done for. I wish I could give you some quick and easy fix on this matter, but given that this is a policy not a law, one that could easily be ended by Trump, there’s a real chance the bad guys will win this one and we’ll lurch towards an American “Fourth Reich” if you will.
Trumplandia is what I’ve been calling it, but Fourth Reich is a more accurate description of what’s going on. If Trump ignores — or worse attacks her on Twitter — Laura Bush after her admonishment in the Washington Post, there’s a good chance that given how fucked up the system is right now that this is the moment when the United States formally slips into a new era. If we can’t get Trump to finally, finally have some sense of shame on this matter and the entire system simply waits for us to grow tired of this outrage, then I don’t know what to say.
The next few days will be telling. If Trump hunkers down for a pitched battle on this issue out of personal pique then I honestly don’t know what is going to happen. He has so much power over the Republican Party at this point — and they effectively control the entire government — that in real terms there’s nothing that distinguishes him from dictator or at least an authoritarian ruler like Russia’s Putin.
If Trump wins, if he does manage to found Trumplandia or the Fourth Reich, or whatever you wish to call it, the next steps could be pretty historically startling. It wouldn’t take too much for Trump to pick up the notion of a new Constitutional Convention as a pet project. Under the guise of passing a balanced budget amendment, this new Constitutional Convention could pass something akin to the Nazis Enabling Acts.
Basic freedoms American have come to take for granted such as freedom of speech, will be thrown to the wayside in an unprecedented manner do to systemic apathy on the part of the American people, if nothing else. We’ll wake up and our worse nightmares of what life under Trump might be will be realized and it will be, very much, too late. This doesn’t even begin to address the long-term damage to civil liberties inflicted upon us in a more subtle manner by the numerous young, insanely conservative judges the Trump Administration is cramming on to the Federal bench. ‘
I wish I could tell you everything is going to be ok, that I’m just being a drama queen and things are going to snap back into place after Trump leaves office, for whatever reason. But I simply can’t give you those assurances. If we as the governed can’t summon up the energy to show our displeasure on this separation policy immediately not only has the pot begun to boil, we’ve resigned ourselves to our inevitable fate.
Shelton Bumgarner is a writer and photographer living in Richmond, Va. He may be reached at migukin (at) gmail (dot) com.
