Donald Trump, the refugee ban, and the triumph of cruelty

[babylonsister]

Donald Trump, the refugee ban, and the triumph of cruelty
Trump's immigration crackdown is an exercise in government cruelty.
Updated by Dylan Matthews@[e-mail] Jan 28, 2017, 5:00pm EST



On Friday, Donald Trump made the most plainly indefensible promise of his presidential campaign a reality. He suspended all refugee admissions to the US for 120 days, even as millions of displaced people from Syria, Iraq, Myanmar, and elsewhere are risking their lives to flee murderous governments and hellish warzones.

He barred all entry to the US for natives of seven Muslim countries, a ban so wide in scope that it prevents as many as 500,000 green-card holders from either leaving America, or coming back if they’re now abroad. These are people who have made America their permanent home, now subjected to travel restrictions of a kind last experienced in America by Japanese-Americans during World War II.

To try to make sense of what was happening, I found myself turning to the writing of another refugee, who, fleeing war and near-certain death, made her way to America some seven decades ago. Judith Shklar was born to a Jewish family in Riga, Latvia, in 1928. In 1939, with the twin threats of Nazi and Soviet invasion mounting, the family made its way to Sweden. After the Nazi occupation of Norway raised fears that Sweden could meet the same fate, they fled again to the Soviet Union, trekked from Moscow to Vladivostok, and eventually made it to Seattle.

Upon arrival in America, they were "immediately arrested and detained as illegal aliens," Shklar's biographer Andreas Hess writes. A rabbi happened to find them in a detainment camp, along with mostly Chinese immigrants, and was able to convince authorities that these "decent" Jews did not belong with the likes of the Chinese. The family was released, ultimately settling in Montreal.

Shklar would return to America as an adult, as a professor at Harvard and one of the most influential political theorists of the late 20th century. Some political philosophers like to theorize about what goods governments should try to promote, the things that are best in life like freedom and happiness and dignity that should be maximized. Shklar devoted her life to considering the bads government should avoid and fight. She sought to identify a summum malum, an ultimate evil, "which all of us know and would avoid if only we could." And she identified that ultimate evil as cruelty.

That, I think, is what is uniquely repulsive about Trump’s travel restrictions and refugee ban. It’s not just that they’re dumb, or wrong-headed, or unjustified. They’re cruel.


more...

http://www.vox.com/2017/1/28/14425354/donald-trump-cruelty

[Solly Mack]

1. K&R

[dawg]

2. Not just cruelty. The Dick Cheney Administration was cruel.

This is cruel *and* stupid. It plays into the hands of our real enemies, like ISIS, as well as our global rivals, China and Russia.

China, in particular, is being given a golden opportunity to expand its influence in the world.

[spanone]

3. K&R...