Trump abuses his power to help the cause of bigotry - By Michael Gerson
By Michael Gerson Opinion writer August 28 at 7:45 PM
Repetition is the enemy of maintaining proper distinctions. It is a short road from being serially outraged to being slightly bored to being completely inured.
Thus many are likely to find the pardon of former Arizona county sheriff Joe Arpaio to be just another .?.?. something. Just another public feeding of President Trump’s base; or just an additional shiny distraction from real issues; or just one more cause for head-shaking and shoulder-shrugging; or just further evidence of the tawdry political company kept by the president of the United States.
This would be a mistake. This presidential action is not “just” anything. Following his expression of sympathy for the “very fine people” attending a white- supremacist rally in Charlottesville — who were, he said, defending “our history and heritage” — Trump must have known his next move would be highly symbolic, either as a retreat from prejudice or as its affirmation. What followed with the Arpaio pardon constitutes the most forthright racist incitement of the Trump era.
Trump has called Arpaio a “great American patriot,” employing a definition of patriotism that includes extreme ethnic profiling, terror raids, and cruel and unusual punishment. A definition of patriotism that covers using internment camps in extreme heat, parading women and juvenile offenders for the cameras in chain gangs, and degrading inmates in creative acts of bullying. This is not patriotism; it is the abuse of power in the cause of bigotry.
Others have commented on the legal precedent of effectively pardoning someone for abusing the constitutional rights of an ethnic minority. Done in a manner that employs the pardon power as a reward for political loyalty. Resulting from a process that evidently did not involve the normal review and recommendation of the Justice Department’s pardon attorney. Was White House Counsel Donald McGahn — a reputed libertarian — involved in this permission for swaggering government oppression? Better question: Why did he not resign in protest? And how about Gary Cohn, who famously almost resigned over events in Charlottesville, demanding that the president “must do better”? Does he think the Arpaio pardon is doing better?
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https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/trump-abuses-his-power-in-the-cause-of-bigotry/2017/08/28/1f473e3c-8c22-11e7-84c0-02cc069f2c37_story.html
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