Don't Mistake Complicity for Courage
It may no longer be front-page news, but the Trump administration is still locking kids in cages. Nearly 500 of them, according to court papers filed late last week. Twenty-two are younger than five years old. The deadline to return these children to their families passed more than a month ago, and the Washington Post reported that two-thirds of them have parents who have already been deported. On Thursday, the administration announced plans to withdraw from the Flores consent decree, which would essentially pave the way for immigrant children to be detained indefinitely with their families in concentration camps.
It is a good thing, then, we have anonymous administration officials to tell us that President Trump is a bad person.
The New York Times published an op-ed Wednesday afternoon authored by a “senior official in the Trump administration.” It is poorly written, so it is easy to see why the person would want to go unnamed. The official reason given for granting anonymity was the writer didn’t want to get fired. That desire to remain in President Trump’s employ, is an honorable thing, you see, since she or he is helping save the nation and indeed the world by thwarting the unfettered whims of the megalomaniac now sitting in the Oval Office. Since this person claims to be working insidiously within the White House to undermine the president’s agenda, the headline generously brands this Trump official as “part of the Resistance.”
The writer eschews that label, however. “To be clear,” Anonymous writes, “ours is not the popular ‘resistance’ of the left. We want the administration to succeed and think that many of its policies have already made America safer and more prosperous.” Later, she or he lauds the “bright spots” of this first term, including “effective deregulation, historic tax reform, a more robust military and more.” I put that in quotes because those characterizations are propaganda. Why would someone willing to risk their own future and the ire of this dangerous president be rooting for him to succeed?
This is a fundamental dilemma many have been wrestling with since Trump was elected. If you want to have the government operate efficiently, as many good Democrats do, what does that look like when people like Stephen Miller, Betsy DeVos and Ben Carson are involved? We need a White House that works, but a Trump government that is successful is one that empowers ethnonationalism, speeds up climate change and subjugates minorities and the poor. This White House has produced some genuine horrors, and Anonymous saying that these “successes have come despite — not because of — the president’s leadership style” is cold comfort to those who will suffer the worst consequences from this administration. This op-ed writer reads like a typical Republican, seeking to guard the conservative spoils of this soiled presidency while issuing Very Strong Language lamenting the president’s reckless behavior.
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/nyt-oped-trump-719936/
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