United States: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

It was late and Pat was alone at home. She had never liked that. Because in the Sonoran Desert, at night, as the saguaro look like an army of shadows against Arizona’s mountains, night comes alive, it rustles, whistles, sings, glides, yowls. The desert comes back to life. That night, it knocked on the door. There were two men. Dirty. Suspicious-looking. They wanted water. She gave them some. They left. After that, she attached a pipe to the outside of her house. In case someone wanted water. Because, she adds, even if one is scared, one does not refuse basic necessities to someone who needs them. She is right: when fear replaces empathy, society drowns.

However, as conspiracy theories, misinformation and hateful propositions proliferate, as the polarization of public discourse is fed by politicians running for election and reelection, influential public figures out to conquer various groups and radicals looking for public recognition, it has become difficult to dissociate Al Capone from Eliot Ness. And in a world that is far from the one inhabited by Gary Cooper in “High Noon,” there are essential boundaries – decency, honesty, integrity – that are eclipsed when the one wearing the sheriff’s star is on the bandit’s side.

The Good

Ever since Scott Warren was arrested in January 2018, 88 bodies have been found in a zone that stretches from the Mexican border to the town of Ajo, Arizona. These tragedies are the result of a conscious and deliberate policy begun under the Clinton administration. In 1994, Border Patrol’s strategic plan (available online) was, incidentally, unequivocal: by reinforcing border security in urban zones and by increasing the number of security checkpoints, migratory traffic would be redirected toward dangerous zones and the risk of death would end up dissuading people from crossing.

But the number of deaths in the desert has gone up along with the number of migrants, because this attempt at dissuasion has not worked. Furthermore, insecurity, climate change, economic damage and the current president’s anti-immigration policies that act as an accelerant in the hands of a pyromaniac add to the flow of migrants.

But this desert is so dangerous that organizations like No More Deaths, which Warren volunteered for, leave containers of water along paths used by migrants – an act that the authorities who arrested Warren, as well as the prosecutor handling his case, used to charge him with a crime (a mistrial was declared on June 11). But at the time of this writing, the dehydrated body of a 7-year-old girl has just been found on the border, in the corridor where Warren used to put water. A little girl. Dead. Of thirst. Because public policies sent her there.

Scott resembles Pia Klemp, captain of the ship Sea Watch-3, which rescued migrants in the Mediterranean, who is now being tried in Italy. Like a just an assassin, he is full of humanity.

The Bad

In a country where there is no legal obligation to assist others and not assisting a person in danger is not a crime, No More Deaths’ humanitarian gestures carry little weight when up against national security. It is not, incidentally, reprehensible for the Minutemen’s militia (according to Shane Bauer in Mother Jones, late 2016) or border patrol (according to Francisco Cantú in his 2018 book “The Line Becomes a River”) to destroy the containers of water – even if doing so condemns other humans to a certain death.

Should we be surprised that, in the days following the presidential inauguration, branches of the administration became, from the beginning, the instruments of a brutal policy, using violence to amplify dissuasion, interpreting preexisting norms in their harshest form … to the point where The Atlantic magazine ran the headline, “How Trump Radicalized ICE” in September 2018? Should we be surprised by certain symbolic choices, such as the choice of Fort Sill for the coming incarceration of 1200 unaccompanied minors? It was on this base in Oklahoma that the Apache leader Geronimo died after having been detained there with 400 other Apache natives at the end of the 19th century; it was also here that 350 Japanese Americans were detained during World War II. Indeed, the system has always been brutal, and that brutality extends to Latinos, Native Americans and African Americans. But the complete erosion of guardrails amplifies that brutality.

The Ugly

Jimmy Carter recently told Thomas Hartmann that the United States is “an oligarchy with unlimited political bribery,” at all levels of government and on both sides of the political chessboard. Especially since the Supreme Court, with its decision in the Citizens United case, opened the gates of electoral corruption. But that is not all.

The current president’s ignorance of what constitutes the national interest or the common good, is rapidly eroding the base of the political system. The most convincing example is the American president’s response when asked what he would do if a foreign agent were to give him information about a political opponent. He said he would remain calm and not call the FBI. However, the chairman of the Federal Election Commission, Ellen Weintraub, has said loudly and clearly that this response is not legal and that its illegality is nothing new. The reason for that, which courts have reaffirmed numerous times (see, for example, the decision in the case of Bluman v. FEC), is to ensure that no elected official ever represents any interest other than those of the United States. But nothing seems to rattle the president. Not proven facts, not the rule of law, not inquiries into his campaign and his inaugural committee, not the existence of suspicious donations from Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and China, not investigations for alleged violations of electoral and campaign finance law, nor the financial benefits that he presumably enjoys unfairly.

Without the ability to clearly distinguish among the good, the bad and the ugly, it is easy to understand why empathy erodes. And fear dominates. My friend Pat was right, we will drown.