Make Them Pay
Trump’s America is not a place for the faint of heart. As an immigrant who was as shocked as our current POTUS when Hillary Clinton lost to an openly white nationalist campaign — despite her myriad flaws — I look for things to get worse every day. And they get worse — not slowly and incrementally, but suddenly, in big bursts of horror designed as far as I can tell to “shock and awe” us into submission.
Get HenryVIII’s stories in your inbox
Join Medium for free to get updates from this writer.
After every new horrific policy or decision, there’s some disbelief (usually on the part of the media and the pundits, still befuddled that this man is doing exactly what he promised he’d do), excitement (as his base is cheering him on) and calls to protest (from nice, well-intentioned people who will go wave a sign for an hour after work before having to get home and make dinner). And then most of America moves on, while the communities affected by whatever new cruelty Stephen Miller and John Kelly dreamt up fray a little more but huddle close and try to endure another day.
And now we’re 18 months into this administration and we’re debating whether a cage is a cage, whether a child vomiting and screaming for his dad is at summer camp, whether a baby is a recruiting opportunity for MS-13. Low-rent Leni Riefenstahl wannabes are busy extolling the virtues of the regime with the requisite faith and none of the talent. Former presidents are hiding behind their wives because it’s unseemly to come out and oppose clear evil in the name of a decorum which was shattered the moment Donald Trump descended that escalator in 2015. Of course, it could be that their wives are less tainted by the policies they put in place, less directly associated with the machine now in the hands of a president who’s eager to just crank it up and see what it can really do, what this baby is really capable of.
Things are going to get worse. Much worse. But I still believe that the Trump era will pass, like the Bush era did. And when it does, I want us to pledge to ourselves and to one another that we will make these people pay. They’re not going to go to jail or lose their money but the least we can do is shun them. Not give them the respect they so clearly and nakedly desire. That we — or those of us who will make it — will not invite them to give speeches, to be fellows at Harvard, to share their hard-earned insights. That we’ll walk out when they walk into a restaurant or a store. That we’ll turn our backs when we pass them in an airport. That we’ll keep them from our airwaves, from our social media feeds, that our children will not know their names.
To be clear, I want them to pay in so many more ways than this. I am a parent of a 4 year old and I spend a good amount of time imagining these people where they belong — in the Hague. But I also know America protects the powerful and punishes the weak so nothing of consequence will befall them. At the very least thought let’s promise that we’ll be clear about what they are and how we should treat them when this long national nightmare is over.
