Stand as Witness to the Coming Atrocities*
Don’t Look Away
I am baffled by those who thought he would not follow through with his alarming campaign pledges or that Project 25 was not at the top of his agenda.
Equally saddening is the mindset of those who tune out because they think their accidents of birth and privileged lives won’t be upended by someone a majority of voters just greenlit to carry out widespread human and civil rights violations.
I certainly understand people who “checked out” in disgust. On November 6, I tried checking out. That lasted less than a day. I promptly checked back in.
During the implementation of Trump’s family separation policy at the southern border, I posted Righting His Wrongs is a Moral Imperative. I had a growing sense of urgency and helplessness from a perception that the assaults to undermine the traditional and institutional mechanisms for addressing the growing domestic and geopolitical problems were succeeding. It was the indiscriminate, overwhelming use of substitutes for thinking on public display and its purported religious base. It was the ominous realization that one-third of the citizens of this country overlooked or even welcomed dishonest, corrupt, inhumane, and otherwise reprehensible conduct precisely because they saw it as attacks on intellectualism, on the critics of the president, and on liberal democracy. It was recognizing that the president continued having stunning success encouraging people to be their worst, most selfish, least empathic, morally irresponsible selves. It was the foreboding that comes with congressional impotence at meaningful oversight, at holding him to account, and at course correcting. It was a growing sense of moral responsibility in the face of my own helplessness as the dark pages of his unprecedented history and those of his administration continued to be written.
If you thought it was bad during his first administration, buckle up!
With presidential immunity from prosecution, zero barriers between the White House and Department of Justice, the overarching influence of white supremacy and Christian nationalism, the dangerous incompetence of his compromised cabinet nominees — which appears to be the point — and the power to pardon the growing list of loyalists eager to implement sadistic inhumanity and anti-democracy, very little stands in the way. Certainly not Congress. The courts have no enforcement power or mechanism, even if they intervene.
Undocumented immigrants have lower rates of crime than U.S. born citizens in virtually every category. Immigrants are essential to a thriving U.S. economy, help keep inflation in check, and pay one in every six tax dollars to federal, state, and local governments. Here’s what Trump 2.0 means for the economy, from tariffs to mass deportations (“analysts from the Brookings Institution, the American Enterprise Institute and the Niskanen Center project that lower — potentially even negative — net migration to the U.S. would hurt the country’s economy”).
Last Sunday, as expected, Trump announced that Tom Homan, the former acting head of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) will serve as his “border czar.” Homan, you may recall, “was one of the architects behind its controversial family separation policy. More than 5,500 children of immigrants were separated from their parents at the U.S.-Mexico border in 2018 under the administration’s short-lived ‘Zero Tolerance’ policy. According to the Department of Homeland Security, as of April [2024], there were still 1,401 children without confirmed reunification.” Homan told 60 Minutes last month he would “restart workplace enforcement after the Biden administration moved away from the controversial practice of mass worksite immigration raids in favor of pursuing ‘exploitative employers.’ He also said in that interview that ‘families can be deported together,’ suggesting children who are U.S. citizens but with undocumented parents would have to go with them.” Homan returning as “border czar”. See also Mass Detention: Trump’s plans on immigration are coming into focus.
Friday, Huffpost reported:
“In a Thursday call with reporters, immigration experts laid out how they expect Trump’s deportation operation to work: ICE could conduct militarized worksite raids, targeting vulnerable populations in particular (e.g. immigrants at remote work sites far from access to legal representation, like meat-packing factories). Local law enforcement could racially profile people in their own communities, casting all immigrants as criminals. And officers could intentionally make a show of the brutality of their efforts to inspire fear among immigrants so they’ll self-deport.
“‘Let’s not sugarcoat the dragnet, the indiscriminate nature of what’s about to happen,’ said Naureen Shah, deputy director of government affairs at the American Civil Liberties Union.
“She cautioned people not to let Trump’s rhetoric of primarily deporting criminals to ‘skew our understanding of who now has to live in fear that they will be picked up, just because they happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time — and what that means for millions of people and millions of mixed-status households in the country, who have to worry that their husband or their father is not going to come home whenever they leave the house.’”
Dem Governors Are Vowing To Fight Trump’s Mass Deportations. Most Aren’t Prepared.
Those identified or mistakenly profiled as undocumented immigrants and their U.S. born children won’t be the only victims of inhumane treatment. With the new administration will come a steep upsurge in violence and other forms of hate crimes, deprivation of rights, and government-sanctioned harassment and intimidation of all marginalized communities. The day after the election, Human Rights Watch summarized what is on the near horizon:
“Donald Trump’s second term as United States president poses a grave threat to human rights in the United States and the world . . . . These concerns reflect Trump’s rights-abusing record during his first term, his embrace of white supremacist supporters and ideology, the extreme antidemocratic and anti-rights policies proposed by think tanks led by former aides, and campaign promises, including to round up and deport millions of immigrants and retaliate against political opponents.
“‘Donald Trump has made no secret of his intent to violate the human rights of millions of people in the United States,’ said Tirana Hassan, executive director at Human Rights Watch. . . .
“During Trump’s first term as president, from 2017 to 2021, Human Rights Watch documented his record of rights abuses. These included policies and efforts to expel asylum seekers and separate families at the US-Mexico border, advance racist tropes against Black communities and other people of color, adopt policies that punish low-income families and deprive them of health care, and to fuel a violent insurrection to overthrow the results of a democratic election.
“Trump’s pledges during his 2024 campaign raise greater cause for concern in a second term, both domestically and internationally. In 2023, he said he would not be a dictator ‘except for day one’ in office. . . . He has proposed policies that would weaken democratic institutions that protect fundamental human rights and would lessen checks on presidential authority. The threat of abusing the executive office is of even greater concern because of a recent US Supreme Court decision that grants presidents broad immunity from criminal prosecution for official actions taken in office.
“Project 2025, a governing plan written by Trump’s former advisers and political allies, details many other abusive, often racially discriminatory policies that the new administration may adopt. . . .
“. . . Trump made scapegoating immigrants a central pillar of his campaign. He has called for extreme policies that include mass detention of migrants and mass deportations of millions of people, which would tear apart families with deep roots in the US. Such a program would invariably entail racial profiling, lead to heightened abuses by law enforcement during mass roundups, and instigate more xenophobic actions among the wider public. . . .
“Abortion rights will be under increased threat during Trump’s second term. His insistence that states should have the power to block access to basic health care allows policies that violate rights, endanger health, lead to preventable deaths, and criminalize private health care decisions.
“Trump has vowed to retaliate against his political enemies. Throughout speeches and campaign interviews, he has used increasingly dangerous rhetoric, referring to his critics as ‘the enemy from within.’ Trump threatened to order the US Department of Justice to pursue prosecutions against President Joe Biden and others he claims oppose his agenda, including election officials and voters. Trump has also suggested he would invoke the Insurrection Act to deploy the US military and national guard against people in the US who might exercise their right to protest.
“With respect to foreign policy, during his first term Trump demonstrated little respect for treaties, multilateral institutions, or efforts to protect the human rights of people living under repressive governments. His administration consistently worked against women’s rights and environmental progress at the United Nations and tried to redefine and limit the definition of rights to be protected through the US Department of State.
“Trump has signaled opposition to funding for humanitarian aid and civilian protection efforts in major conflicts and crises. Likely partnerships with rights-abusing governments during a new Trump administration risk emboldening these governments to further harm people within their purview and perpetuate cycles of abuse and immunity from accountability around the world. . . .
“‘[O]ordinary citizens have a role to play in protecting human rights and keeping Trump from carrying out the abuses he has promised.’”
Second Trump Term a Threat to Rights in US, World (emphasis added).
What Can “Ordinary Citizens” Do?
“The ‘perfect crime’ does not exist in killing the victim or the witness . . . but rather in obtaining the silence of the witness, the deafness of the judges, and the inconsistency (insanity) of the testimony.” Of Trauma, Testimony, and the Power of Human Rights Voices (quoting philosopher and socialist Jean-Francois Lyotard, from his work The Differend). See also The Power of Witness: Imagery and Mass Atrocities.
We can start by committing not to look away, by making our presence known, by standing as witness to government brutality. As government agents intimidate and “remove” profiled people in our neighborhoods and communities, we should record and distribute images that give voice to otherwise silenced victims of the brutality, these human and civil rights abuses.
There are a number of credible organizations, domestic and international, with good track records that offer suggestions. For example:
DEFEND THE RIGHTS OF ALL PEOPLE NATIONWIDE (ACLU)
3 ways to fight for human rights in your community (Amnesty International)
How To Promote Human Rights: 10 Examples (Human Rights Careers)
R.VanWagoner https://medium.com/@richardvanwagoner publishes. https://richardvanwagoner.medium.com/subscribe
*My brother the very talented fiction writer and novelist, Robert Hodgson Van Wagoner, deserves considerable credit for offering both substantive and technical suggestions to https://medium.com/@richardvanwagoner. Rob’s second novel is a beautifully written suspense drama that takes place in Utah, Wyoming, and Norway. This novel, The Contortionists, which Rob himself narrates for the audio version, is a psychological page-turner about a missing child in a predominantly Mormon community. I have read the novel and listened to the audio version twice. It is a literary masterpiece. The Contortionists is not, however, for the faint of heart.
**Richard J Van Wagoner is my father. His list of honors, awards, and professional associations is extensive. He was Professor Emeritus (Painting and Drawing), Weber State University, having served three Appointments as Chair of the Department of Visual Arts there. He guest-lectured and instructed at many universities and juried numerous shows and exhibitions. He was invited to submit his work as part of many shows and exhibitions, and his work was exhibited in many traveling shows domestically and internationally. My daughter Angela Van Wagoner, a professional photographer, photographed more than 500 pieces of my father’s work. The photographs of my father’s art reproduced in https://medium.com/@richardvanwagoner are hers.