“Things Happen”
My posts of late are dedicated to addressing a serious existential threat to our nation and our basic humanity. We are in the midst of a frightening level of dehumanization. If we dehumanize someone, we are attempting to destroy the dignity of a unique human subject with moral agency and intrinsic value. When we do so, we reduce them to an object, a thing we instrumentalize to please us. Please join me in seeking at every turn to rehumanize our human brothers and sisters — all of them made in the image of God.
On Tuesday, our president rolled out the red carpet for Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, while lauding Salman’s human rights record. Human rights? This Saudi prince has an atrocious human rights record: executing lower-level criminals, imprisoning political opponents, and muzzling journalists trying to do their jobs. Or maybe not stopping at muzzling. The CIA determined that bin Salman authorized the execution of journalist and American citizen, Jamal Khashoggi, in 2018.
When White House correspondent Mary Bruce asked the president about Khashoggi and the Saudi role in his death, Trump (after berating the reporter for asking the question) made an unnecessary but very revealing comment about Khashoggi. “You’re mentioning someone that was extremely controversial,” the US president said.
“A lot of people didn’t like that gentleman that you’re talking about. Whether you like him or didn’t like him, things happen.”
“But he [the Crown Prince] knew nothing about it,” Trump added. “You don’t have to embarrass our guests.”
So, in one fell swoop, our president threw his own country’s intelligence community under the bus (again), lauded someone who, in reality, has trashed human rights, and finally implied that Khashoggi bore responsibility for his own fate. In other words, our president blamed the victim. You know, if a journalist fails to please the right people… well, “things happen,” don’t they?
Never mind that any journalist worth their salt will often fail to please the very people who have the most power and are often the least accountable. That’s why we need journalists.
The value of a human life is increasingly a tenuous matter with this president, as he continues to establish a culture of dehumanization and endorse it in other countries.
Take journalists, for example. “Quiet. Quiet, piggy,” is our president’s response to reporter Catherine Lucey asking the president why he doesn’t just release the Epstein files on his own authority. A fair question — just not a pleasing one to the man who would be king.
When Mary Bruce asked the same question a few days later, the president assaulted her dignity, first suggesting she was insubordinate (you’re not pleasing me!), then calling her a “terrible reporter” and a “terrible person.”
And who can forget when the soon-to-be President Donald Trump, mocked Washington Post reporter Serge Kovaleski by mimicking his disability? Many of us will never understand how this incident alone did not fatally destroy Trump’s political aspirations. The callous dehumanization on display was just jaw-dropping.
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Regardless of our political affiliation, we deserve a leader who respects human dignity and value. Unfortunately, we do not have one. In fact, the examples cited in this brief reflection are only the tip of the iceberg. All of us, then, must be a voice for rehumanizing our social and political landscape.
