Rachel Maddow on Friday night had a weirdly contrived premise that every Democratic candidate had at least one moment that went well enough for them to be able to build on. I think there’s a difference between having a good moment in the moment and having a moment that “did themselves some good”, so the framing here was frustrating.
Confoundingly, though, the one moment she picked out of a hat that I want to highlight here is from Marianne Williamson of all people. Yes, the candidate I said was from Neptune.
(Before I go any further, it needs to be said that this is not an overall endorsement of Williamson, either as a presidential candidate or as a “self-help” guru. Much of her kind of thinking is disingenuous as best, dangerous at worst, as this Twitter threaddescribes.)
Williamson was lambasted all Thursday night by people finding some pretty classic stuff in her Twitter feed and then well into Friday as a result of her closing statement being put to Twin Peaks’ “Love Theme”, but the segment Maddow pulled is one that people should be talking about.
Yes, what Donald Trump has done to these children and it’s not just in Colorado, Governor, you’re right–it is kidnapping. And it’s extremely important for us to realize that. If you forcibly take a child from their parents arms you are kidnapping them. And if you take a lot of children and you put them in a detainment center thus inflicting chronic trauma upon them that’s called child abuse. This is collective child abuse. And when this is crime–both of those things are a crime and if your government does it that doesn’t make it less of a crime. These are state-sponsored crimes.
This is important not only because Williamson here is calling out these things for what they in reality truly are but because she bothers to mention the trauma being inflicted on child refugees. Trauma being something that isn’t just there for them right now, in the short term, but will be with them in the long term, possibly if not likely for life.
Trump’s policies, of course, are by their nature traumatic because they are meant to be both punitive and a deterrence.
It’s not just cruelty, it’s sadism, regardless of whether Trump means to have the ghosts of these things we are inflicting upon these children revisit them throughout their lives or whether he simply does not even think about it.