Government

Process Is Of No More Use Here

Trump is out here ethnically cleansing the country, and people are asking if he has a dang permit.

By  
on

Process is meaningless when the outcome has already been decided. Oh, it might make you feel good. It might make you feel civilized. But when you have already decided what needs to happen, when your power is so absolute that you need not brook any disagreement, then process becomes a mere show. An inconvenient one at that.

And so I’m not really horrified nor am I even a slight bit surprised that President Donald Trump has threatened to do away with process at the border. As Ramsay Bolton once said: if you think this has a happy ending, then you haven’t been paying attention. Trump has already decided the outcome: brown people are criminals. They’re rapists, they’re gang members. All of them. He keeps telling us that he thinks that, over and over again.

The people Trump is speaking to, his Republican base, agree with him. The immigration “debate” has never been about a real difference of opinions between competing interests on policy. The policy of both parties has always been to be, more or less, disgusting towards people seeking to enter this country from the South. The parties have coalesced around the ideas of border security, and deterrence.

Trump’s special sauce is just… terrorism. The only operative difference between Trump and, say, Jeb Bush on the issue, is that Trump sees value in terrorizing people attempting to cross. Taking away their children, jailing them, taking water out of the desert so there’s a greater chance they DIE when trying to get here. Any leader of a terrorist state would recognize these ideas.

And his Republican supporters are all here for that. It’s not about enforcing the law, that’s always just been a phrase his white supremacist supporters have learned to repeat when the New York Times comes to town to “understand” them better. For the base, it’s always been about terrorizing and humiliating brown people, because picking on the weak is what passes for “toughness” among cowards.

Why the hell would you need “process” when they’re all here to do what they know needs to be done? I mean, they don’t exactly give permits out for ethnic cleansing anyway. Process, in that context, is a freaking joke. They don’t need process, they need to an outlet for their metastasized whiteness.

Sponsored

Frankly, I don’t need it either. I don’t need a thin veneer of legalism that is only there to disguise ethnic cleansing and racial terrorism. I don’t need my Nazis to pretend there are laws governing how you kidnap children and hold them hostage. Christ, the Committee on Public Safety had TONS of “process”… before they chopped off the heads of people they predetermined needed to be killed. Trump, and his people, are no different.

We are not a nation of laws anymore. We are fighting against a racist dictator. Either we’re going to meet the dictator, and his white supremacist forces, in the field, or we’re not. Either we’re going to join the battle, or we’re going to cower here behind our useless laws, rules, and norms.

“Process.” Please. Progressives are out here bringing a gavel to a gun fight.

Elie Mystal is the Executive Editor of Above the Law and the Legal Editor for More Perfect. He can be reached @ElieNYC on Twitter, or at [email protected]. He will resist.

Sponsored

Topics

, , ,