Wednesday, April 3, 2019
The Trump and the Pope
Compassion is not weakness, and concern for the unfortunate is not socialism.
— Hubert Horatio Humphrey, A Remark
It’s no one’s fault but it does pose something of a dilemma for citizens trying to impart meaning to current events.
The dilemma presented itself shortly after Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, was interviewed on The Christian Broadcast Network. The interview took place a few days after Mr. Trump had said it was time to recognize Israel’s sovereignty over the Golan Heights. During the interview, Mr. Pompeo was asked: “Could it be that President Trump right now has been sort of raised for such a time as this. . . to help save the Jewish people from the Iranian menace?” A beaming Pompeo responded: “As a Christian, I certainly believe that’s possible,” and he continued by saying he was “confident that the Lord is at work here.”
Although Mr. Pompeo was referring to Mr. Trump’s comments about the Golan Heights, it seems obvious that if God had raised Mr. Trump to take that action, as Mr. Pompeo suggested, he would not have cut him loose with respect to his other activities.
And that brings us then, to the question for this week. Is God making his wishes known through Mr. Trump, or, through Pope Francis? The question is presented because both men addressed similar problems during the last week of March, and had quite different ideas as to how they should be addressed. The problem the two men confronted was immigrants crossing borders.
On March 29, 2019, Mr. Trump announced steps he intended to take to deal with the thousands of immigrants seeking to enter the United States on its southern border. He believed it necessary to announce the new steps because of the unfavorable publicity he was receiving for his treatment of those seeking to enter the United States. Most notable, at the time of his declaration, was the fact that the United States was holding hundreds of men, women and children who were fleeing terrible conditions in their home countries, under a bridge in El Paso, Texas, an enclosure surrounded by fencing and razor wire. According to reports of conditions under the bridge, children were forced to sleep on gravel covered with trash, and they and the adults were sleeping outdoors as nighttime temperatures were as low as 40 degrees. In some instances, the detainees were deprived of sleep, access to medical care and adequate food and water. Conditions for thousands of other immigrants, though not housed under a bridge, were hardly better.
Mr. Trump attributed the need to impose those conditions on immigrants, to the lack of a border wall to keep the immigrants out. And since there is no border wall and immigrants continue to come in vast numbers, he has said he will withhold aid to El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras, countries from which most of the problem immigrants are fleeing. By withholding aid to those countries, he believes, those countries will be more aggressive in restricting the flow of immigrants to the United States. Furthermore, he has often said that if there were a long, impenetrable wall along the southern border, all of the problems posed by illegal immigrants would be solved.
At the same time as Mr. Trump was announcing his proposals for addressing the problem of immigration in the United States, Pope Francis was on a trip to Morocco during which he hoped to support immigrants and establish closer ties between his Church and moderate Islam. In an address in Morocco to 10,000 people, many from sub-Saharan Africa, he told the crowd: “I encourage you to continue to let the culture of mercy grow, a culture in which no one looks at others with indifference, or averts his eyes in the face of their suffering.”
On the return trip to Rome, the Pope spoke with reporters accompanying him on the plane. In response to a reporter’s questions about steps the Spanish government was taking to keep immigrants out, the Pope responded that using barbed wire to keep out those seeking to enter Spain in search of better lives, as the Spanish government had done, was not only cruel, but “not a way to resolve the grave problem of migration.”
One reporter observed that much of Europe was responding to the Pope’s appeals to policy-makers and government leaders to protect and help migrants, by doing the opposite. The Pope responded that the leaders were gripped by fear and fear is the beginning of dictatorships. He said that there is all of Europe in which to distribute migrants and it must be done with “an open heart, that accompanies, promotes and integrates.”
Addressing one of Mr. Trump’s favorite solutions to keeping out immigrants, the Pope disputed the value of building walls. He said that one of the phrases from Ivo Andrich’s novel “The Bridge on the Drina” had always stuck with him. It says that the bridge is made by God with the wings of angels so that men can communicate. . . .” Walls, the Pope said, are against communication and are for isolation and, as a result those who close the borders of their country to those seeking better lives “will become prisoners of the walls that they build.”
Here is the question for my readers. If God is addressing the world-wide problem of immigration, who is his spokesperson? Mr. Pompeo’s Trump or Pope Francis?
Wednesday, March 27, 2019
The Amateur Hour
Be Mysterious, even to the point of soundlessness. Thereby you can be the director of the opponent’s fate.
— Sun-Tzu,Emptiness and Fulness
The Trump family is a source of constant inspiration to other families whose children are not as accomplished as their parents might have hoped, as well as to the parents of those children.
Jred Kushner became the administration expert on Middle Eastern matters on virtually the same day his father-in-law was elected president. It was to him that Trump entrusted the task of negotiating a peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians, a task many more experienced than he, had found to be almost impossible to achieve. His success in that arena is well known and needs no further description here, other than the brief observation that the recent exchange of bombs and rockets between Hamas and Israel suggest that there is still a little work left for Jared to do. What do merit attention in this column, however, are the events of the week of March 10, 2019.
That week presented us with two revelations. The first was the revelation that Donald Trump Jr. was every bit a match for his dad when it comes to understanding foreign affairs. He penned an op-ed piece for the British newspaper, The Daily Telegraph, in which he displayed an understanding of foreign affairs that few, if any of us, knew he had. The issue he discussed was Brexit. In that piece he gave a closely reasoned analysis of Brexit and Prime Minister Theresa May’s dealings in connection with it. In the op-ed he shows that he understands what has been happening in connection with the Brexit negotiations and why they are floundering. He places some of the blame for Prime Minister May’s lack of success on what he calls the “European elites” in Brussels who, he says, are bent on sabotaging Brexit. He also explains that because Prime Minister May ignored his dad’s advice that had been offered to her several months earlier, “A process [implementing Brexit] that should have taken only a few short months has become a years long stalemate.” He observed that as a result of all that “democracy in the U.K. is all but dead.” That can only be described as a cogent observation.
As startling as the op-ed was, it did not hold a candle to what we learned three days later. That was the pronouncement by Secretary of State, Michael Pompeo, that God had sent us Donald’s dad. (That pronouncement was made before the release of the 4-page summary of the Mueller report, a release that has taken the focus off Mr. Pompeo’s comments.) To describe the Trump advent to the world stage as a gift from God, was a little like saying that the recent floods in the mid-west are a gift from God to the farmers whose livelihoods have been wiped out. Nonetheless, that’s what he said and here’s how that proclamation came about.
Mr. Pompeo was visiting Jerusalem and while there was interviewed on The Christian Broadcast Network. The interview took place a few days after Mr. Trump had said it was time to recognize Israel’s sovereignty over the Golan Heights. During the interview, Mr. Pompeo was asked: “Could it be that President Trump right now has been sort of raised for such a time as this. . . to help save the Jewish people from the Iranian menace.” A beaming Pompeo responded saying: “As a Christian, I certainly believe that’s possible,” and he continued by saying he was “confident that the Lord is at work here.”
A number of readers have written to ask whether I can explain how it is that God has selected a man known to be, among other things, a liar, lecher, crook, tax cheat, unfaithful husband and, in short, a two-legged moral vacuum, to carry out his work. Furthermore, how could Mr. Pompeo believe God raised Trump to help Israel or to do anything else for that matter? I have the answer for them. I found the answer in a site on the internet called “Got Questions.”
In a section of that site entitled “What does it mean that god works in mysterious ways?” the writer explains that “God works in ways that are often deemed ‘mysterious’-that is to say, God’s methods often leave people totally bewildered.” It is so obvious as to scarcely bear repeating that the selection of a moral vacuum to live in the White House, as the supposed leader of the free world has certainly left all but the most obtuse or ignorant totally bewildered.
Continuing the explanation, the writer explains that there are, through the ages, “true stories of how God turned situation after situation, problem after problem. . . completely upside down-and He often does it in the most unexpected, astonishing, and inexplicable ways.” Once again, with that explanation it is easy to understand how Trump came to be president. His election clearly turned situation after situation and problem after problem completely upside down and it was done in a way that was unexpected, astonishing and inexplicable.
Those of my readers who are of a religious bent will continue to awaken each morning wondering if that is the day God will reveal why he put Trump in the White House. Those who are not of a religious bent will, of course, have no reason to assume that at some point the reason for Trump’s prominent presence in the world will be explained to them. It won’t.
Tuesday, March 19, 2019
A Heartbroken Trump
Whoever you are-I have always depended on the kindness of strangers.
— Tennessee Williams, A Streetcar Named Desire
It is no wonder his heart is broken. Not only have they been wonderful employees, but it’s impossible for him or anyone else to know what Eric’s daddy really wants. It all has to do with the confusing rules about legal and illegal immigrants, his daddy’s inconsistent statements, and the difficulty his daddy’s companies have had complying with the law when it comes to employing immigrant workers at their various properties.
When it was reported, late in 2018, that the Trump organization employed many undocumented workers at its assorted properties, and in some cases had assisted them in falsifying their documents so they could remain employed, the organization vowed to change its ways. Eric Trump, a vice president of the company, explained, while simultaneously demonstrating his grammatical creativity: “We are actively engaged in uniforming this process across our properties and will institute e-verify at any property not currently utilizing this system.”
When it became publicly known that the Trump organization employed a number of workers who were not qualified to work in the United States, even though many of them had worked for the Trump properties for many years, they were fired. Their firing took an emotional toll on Eric.
Referring to their firing, Eric said: “I must say, for me personally, this whole thing is truly heartbreaking. Our employees are like family. . . .” He went on to say that the fact that the Trump organization had hired illegal immigrants was not unique to that organization and that it “demonstrates that our immigration system is severely broken and needs to be fixed immediately.” He didn’t bother to comment on the fact that had the organization used the e-verify system, a system used by countless other organizations around the country to determine the status of immigrants seeking to work in this country, those working at the Trump properties illegally would not have been hired in the first place.
Eric’s daddy, as we all know, has strong views on immigration. They were disclosed during his State of the Union address on February 5, 2019. In that speech he said: “I want people to come into our country in the largest numbers we’ve ever seen, but they have to come in legally.”
The day after daddy’s speech, daddy was further questioned by reporters about his stance on immigration. In response he said “I need people coming in because we need people to run the factories and plants and companies that are moving back in. We need people.” Here’s how that is going to happen.
On March 12, 2019, it was announced that the administration is planning to close its 23 U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services offices overseas. (USCIS). People needing their services can either go to offices in the United States, assuming they can get in to do that, or to State Department outposts overseas. Not everyone is familiar with the USCIS.
According to its website, USCIS “administers the nation’s lawful immigration system. . .. {I}t is the government agency that oversees lawful immigration to the United States. We are 19,000 government employees and contractors working at more than 200 offices across the world.” It further states: We will be ever mindful of the importance of the trust the American people have placed in us to administer the nation’s immigration system fairly, honestly, and correctly.The explanation given by the administration for closing the international offices of that agency says the closure will not only save millions of dollars,1 but will clear up the back-log of domestic applications for legal-immigration programs.
The Director of USCIS, L. Francis Cissna, explained that the work the closed offices had been doing would be transferred to offices in the United States and embassies and consulates abroad. He said the effect would be to “maximize our agency’s finite resources.” He was further quoted in the Washington Post saying: “I want to assure you we will work to make this as smooth a transition as possible for each of our USCIS staff while also ensuring that those utilizing our services may continue to do so and our agency operations continue undisrupted.”
Critics, of course, may find it difficult to reconcile the closure with Eric’s daddy’s pronouncement that he welcomed more new workers from foreign countries entering the United States. Some say it is an attempt by the Trump administration to discourage foreigners from seeking to come to the United States. A former director of USCIS described the move as “a pullback from the international presence of USCIS. It’s in keeping with this isolationist bent that this administration has had more broadly.”
Lynn Lee, an immigration attorney who files many petitions at USCIS offices overseas commented on the changes and the backlog confronted by those offices saying: “We would love for USCIS to alleviate that backlog, but it’s not going to be done by taking the most streamlined and efficient office in their entire organization and eliminating that office. It’s a serious loss.”
George Brun, an immigration lawyer and former ambassador to Belize said: “This is not an immigration friendly administration. The service currently being provided is awful, and I can only imagine it’s going to deteriorate further with these office closures.” He may well be right. When Eric learns of it, it is almost a sure thing that Eric will find it “truly heartbreaking.” He isn’t the only one.