[Preface: since I wrote the comments below, Trump has, by executive order, changed the zero-tolerance anti-immigration policy to end—supposedly—the separation of parents from children. Done not on humanitarian grounds, but because of bad optics. But the optics won’t improve much any time soon, since the administration has no answer to the question of how to reunite the families already separated—records of who belongs with whom, and where they are, have evidently not been systematically kept. The prospect exists of some children never being reunited with their parents. There is also no answer as to how they are going to house the thousands of families who are not being separated. Callousness and inattention to human rights have become hallmarks of the Trump government, and now we can add incompetence to that list.]
Fear here, there, and everywhere
Donald Trump has fear working for him on both sides of the Mexican border: he galvanizes his base with fear of immigrant hoodlums, and scares refugees with the prospect of separating children from parents, and sending asylum-seekers back to the horrors from which they fled
The U.S. “will not be a migrant camp,” asserted the President in defense of the zero-tolerance policy that has resulted in more than 2,400 children, many of them toddlers and some infants, being separated from their parents, beginning in April. He added he would not let migrants “infest” America.
He has also instilled enough political fear in Republicans running for office—fear of losing the Trump base—that many are standing by silently, even though they know the implementation of Trump’s “zero-tolerance” policy is inhumane, cruel, and morally indefensible.
Trump is also attempting to bully Democrats with the charge that they are responsible for the policy of separating children from parents. Who’s buying that? Certainly no Democrats.
It’s not clear whether Trump uses fear as a deliberate tool of his governing method, or whether it emerges out of raw instinct. That’s the difference between thinking, “If I scare them I can get what I want,” (rational) and “I want to hurt them and will if I can” (the gut). My guess is the I want to hurt them instinct comes first, and then is followed by the reasoned, now that I’ve scared them I can get something out of it.
This is the conundrum that Trump watchers constantly pose to themselves: does he consciously know what he’s doing, or is it that he just can’t help himself? If he expected the Democrats to come running to the bargaining table as a result of his trying to fob responsibility off on them, it argues for the latter—he couldn’t help himself, since the charge was so transparently specious that no one with an ounce of political savvy could fail to see through it.
Trump fears:
One thing we do know about Trump is that he has two principal fears (along with many fears that arise as side-effects):
(1) The truth (concerning all matters about which he lies, which are legion), and what will follow from its exposure
(2) Vladimir Putin.
His fear of Putin—if not fear, then deference on an astronomical scale—is based upon something about which we can only speculate, but whatever it is, has a very sharp edge. We suspect that it is connected with fear #1 (the truth). But maybe, just maybe, it is as simple as boundless admiration for an autocrat who can have people jailed, tortured, and murdered at his pleasure. (It’s similar to being a real estate mogul with a criminal mob at beck and call.)
That is the kind of leader Trump would like to be, although he is hampered by two severe constraints: the American system of government, and the fact that he’s neither as smart nor as devious as Putin.
The most disturbing element of fear may be the fear that dwells within Trump himself—who knows what he will do next to fortify his tough-guy armor?