Degenerates

     I'm going to do something unusual here, just writing from feelings, from impressions.  This essay is the result of hearing for the past two days about America's newly discovered trauma of caring about Central American families, pulled apart by government agents, the children separated, put into detention facilities, given silvery blankets to wrap up in when they sleep, making them look like burritos served at a Mexican fast food joint.
     Trump didn't invent this situation.  America's exported drug war stirred things up in El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras, during the Obama administration.  Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's pivotal role in the 2009 coup in Honduras that put into power an authoritarian U.S.-friendly typical bastard has something to do with why Honduras is fucked up, and she knows it.
     Clinton has been speechifying against Trump's policies of separating families at the border, although in fact, a bipartisan consensus led to that policy coming into being in 2005.  The detention facility infrastructure used currently was constructed during the justly nicknamed Deporter-in-Chief Obama's time in office.  Hillary Clinton said that anyone who has ever held a child in their hands must be heartbroken by these images coming from down South.  In 2015, she told Christiane Amanpour of CNN in an interview that children coming from Latin America with or without their parents should be "given medical care and then get sent back."
     Sent back to cities where gangs rule, drug war chaos permeates societies horrifically manipulated by U.S. foreign policy.  The mere fact that refugees from these countries are coming to the U.S. is an indication of American Karma, and Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are two of the key causes.
     The Democratic Party leadership for decades has spoken, in politer language than Trump's blunt phrasings, of "sending a message" to Mexico and Latin America, regarding illegal immigration.  Donald Trump follows in their footsteps--since he doesn't bother to disguise his brutality, the family separation practice carried out by the bipartisan-supported SS-like governmental organization, ICE, is now, in much of corporate news media, associated with his administration, even though persecuting brown, black, and red people is as old as Europeans in the Americas.
     Meaning well, I guess, Mrs. Trump flew to McAllen, Texas, a border city with a detention center (child prison).  Did she get a tour of the depressing rooms?  I don't know, but I suspect everything looked and sounded really nice for her.  Stephanie Grisham, Melania's spokeswoman, said, according to a CNN article, "She [Mrs. Trump] wants to see what's real."
     Living in the White House with Donald Trump and Ivanka, I can understand that she would want to get a glimpse of reality now and then.  Melania, boarding her plane for Texas, wore a "Zara" (who cares, CNN?) jacket with the following words written on the back in graffiti-like lettering: "I really don't care.  Do U?"
     When she got off the plane in Texas she was wearing something else, a tee shirt saying, "Which Way 2 the Slave Auction?"
     I made the last part up, but it's a sign of the times that the first part is true.  It could be that Melania, a Slovenian, had trouble deciphering the graffiti-like English lettering, because how could she wear such words on her back when she's about to embark on a journey the purpose of which is to demonstrate that she cares about desperate children?
     I prefer the idea that she wore it because she really doesn't give a shit, anymore than she cares about Palestinians getting crippled in their thousands by Israeli snipers, or the genocide in the making in Yemen that the United States (and her husband) supports.
     A photo op to go to a border town in place of her husband, though, must've seemed like an important thing to do.  According to President Trump, his daughter Ivanka is concerned about what's going on at the border, too, but she also participated in a provocative embassy ceremony in Jerusalem while mass murder and mayhem were going on not far away, including the killing of a Palestinian baby.  A baby is a child.  A child is someone who can be held and treasured, as Clinton pointed out, but can also be used as a political pawn by everyone from Rachel Maddow, who got choked up on air (a performance, real or not, that will increase her Russiagate-sagging ratings) to Democratic politicians who pretend that this ongoing border strategy just came out of nowhere when Trump became president.
     A degenerate, when a noun, means "an immoral or corrupt person."
     Turn on corporate news media and you will see them in practically every broadcasted moment.
     "Unruly" children in these child prisons, those who express a need to get away and be reunited with their parents (you know, crazy talk) are sometimes given psychotropic drugs to make them easier to handle.  They have no say in the matter, it's forcible needle rape.  If you've ever been injected with a drug against your will, as I have, you know how horrible and degrading that moment feels.  I doubt that Trump's dipshit wife witnessed this practice while in McAllen, or was even informed about it.
     From the CNN article: "The children are 'usually distraught' when they arrive, [Melania] Trump was told by officials [who incidentally have a vested interest in not seeming like monsters], but 'when they see the environment, they start relaxing.'"
     Yes, this is America, 2018, sixteen years into the Forever War.  Americans are not better human beings since September 11, 2001, we are worse.
     The authors of this CNN article add, telegraphing what they're told by the officials: "Basic needs are taken care of--showers, clothing, food, medical care."
     Not mentioned is their most obvious need: the direct presence of their loving mothers.
     Think about it: they get showers, clothing, food, medical care.  Inmates in German concentration camps in the 1930s and 1940s got the same.  These authors, Kate Bennett and Betsy Klein, have lost their ability, if they ever had it, to convey heart in their writing.  While they make sure to add the detail of how much Melania Trump's offensive jacket costs and which fashion designer made it, they lack the ability to analyze their own thoughts and words.  How can a serious writer put down "showers, clothing, food, medical care," without pointing out that these children, refugees from countries disrupted by our racist drug war, are not deserving of imprisonment, or even of being paraded in front of a politician's wife to show that yes, everything actually is fine, it's kind of a tough situation but after a day or so they calm down.
     And how do they calm down?  Psychiatric wards have put into practice for many decades techniques of sapping the life energy out of patients, and according to the non-CNN reports Kate Bennett and Betsy Klein don't mention, at least some of these kids are drugged.
     It's our evil, let's own it.

                                                                            Vic Neptune