Some pundits have suggested that what is happening now in Texas will be “Trump’s Katrina.” But, without excusing the racism and the indifference shown by the authorities in that horrific episode, it ought to be pointed out that at least the federal government did not order the flooding of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast. What is happening now is purely gratuitous, a deliberate act of cruelty intended as leverage to build a “beautiful wall.”
[...]
Trump has reached a point where his self-adoring faith in his own instincts has only intensified. He has cast out of his circle nearly everyone who dared to disagree with him, and there are very few figures of substance in the Republican Party or the conservative media who have the spine or the decency to stand up to him with any consistency.
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Ask yourself when you last saw Donald Trump commit an act of genuine kindness. When did he last make a joke that wasn’t at someone else’s expense? He has not only proved ruthless to his enemies, real and perceived, he has also turned on employees, mentors, family members, and loyal aides. Cruelty is the content of his character and the foundation of his politics.
New Yorker
UPDATE:
Most people have moral perimeters that inhibit them from inflicting endless harm, even when they fear no consequences; most people lack the ethical defect that inhibits egotists from admitting error. But Trump is not most people. If common sense points toward retreat, he will press ahead, no matter how many lies he has to tell, or how much collateral damage he has to inflict.
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I don’t mean that the public will embrace child separation, but that the rest of our political system will move on from it, and that the limit of depravity his supporters tolerate will plummet to mortifying depths.
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He became president as a popular vote loser, because the country happened to learn he was a serial sexual abuser weeks before learning that the FBI had reopened the Hillary Clinton email investigation—because news cycles are much shorter than election cycles, and he chose to wait them out, rather then relinquish the GOP nomination.
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[T]he intensity of the opposition to him is unrivaled in modern history, and has propelled Democrats running in deeply conservative precincts into power all across the country.
But Trump himself won’t face voters until 2020, and Republicans as a national party won’t face them until November, and in the meantime, Trump has brazened his way through the traumas he inflicted upon the nation as if they were minor political blips.
He instituted an effective ban on Muslim travel to the U.S., which briefly resulted in the detention of green-card holders and others at airports around the country for no reasons other than their national origins and presumed religion. He fired the FBI director for investigating his campaign. He aligned himself with Nazis marching for white supremacy in Charlottesville, VA, last year, even after one of them killed a counter protester. He oversaw the destruction of an island territory by a biblical hurricane, then took no extraordinary steps to rescue its citizens.
We’re more or less one year on from all of these abominations, and Trump has recovered nearly all of the support they and other politically damaging decisions caused him to bleed.
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If he weathers a policy of torturing children without being forced, finally, to back down, just imagine the world of possible horrors that will open up to him.
Crooked
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