SUFFER, LITTLE CHILDREN!*
Sleigh Riding Cemetery Hill, Watercolor, 20" x 28", Richard J Van Wagoner, Courtesy of Van Wagoner Family Trust**
The heartbreaking, unnecessary suffering of children, in large numbers, will last decades and have multi-generational effects here and throughout the world.
No doubt, even a president’s best decisions have life and death consequences. I’m guessing that when those decisions are not based in legitimate domestic, geopolitical or national security considerations or moral leadership, but instead on a president’s selfishness, ego, compromised status, political or criminal cover, loyalty to a hostile foreign power, cruelty, bigotry, white nationalism, grandiose delusional disorder or whim, children suffer in much greater numbers and in many instances their suffering is more extreme.
How will the children fare the Trump administration?
The 70,000 children Trump separated from their parents at the border?
The 100,000 children who remain in immigration-related custody in the United States?
The children participants in the medical deferred action program who received notices their time was up — literally.
Children who were maimed and/or whose parents and siblings murdered when Trump greenlighted Turkey’s ethnic cleansing of US allies who were largely responsible for containing and reducing the ISIS caliphate in northern Syria?
The children of the Ukrainian soldiers killed in resisting Russian aggression while Mr. Trump withheld congressionally approved military aid in his effort to extort/bribe Zelensky for personal political benefit?
The millions of war-torn, starving Yemeni children at the hands of the Trump-backed, murderous Saudi regime?
Hundreds of thousands of Puerto Rican children.
The intended recipients of funding diverted from children’s cancer charities to Trump’s political campaign.
The list goes on.
How will millions of privileged children fare, and the rest of the world as a result, children whose parents consider Trump a role model, a hero, a modern-day messiah?
The leadership of the religious right, money ministers mostly, I suspect, have embraced Trump and his ism as fulfilling biblical prophecy, a modern-day messiah. Trump agrees. With the inside track on the mind and will of god, the religious right has consistently warned of god’s wrath and the wages of sin (death, according to the Apostle Paul). They continue issuing their warnings, but the sins have changed. “Thou shalt unconditionally embrace and defend Trump, the new Messiah.” “Thou shalt give us your money” (embracing and defending Trump is expensive). I may have listed the commands in reverse order.
Regardless of one’s religious or philosophical orientation about the nature of man, formative influences have lifelong consequences. Racism and misogyny, homophobia and hate-crimes, sexual violence and abuse, infidelity, public corruption, deceit and dishonesty, grift and graft, fraud and shameless self-promotion, war crimes and crimes against humanity, cruelty for cruelty’s sake. Seldom has such a collection of depravity concentrated in a single person, let alone a public figure, and never in a president of the United States. Until now.
The release of negative energy, building up in large numbers of children here and around the world, will last decades and have multi-generational effects.
“But Jesus called them unto him, and said, ‘Suffer little children to come unto me, and forbid them not; for of such is the kingdom of God. Verily I say unto you, Whosoever shall not receive the kingdom of God as a little child shall in no wise enter therein.’”
*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 and https://lastamendment.com
**Richard’s 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 a number of traveling shows domestically and internationally. My daughter Angela Moore, a professional photographer, photographed more than 500 pieces of my father’s work. On behalf of the Van Wagoner Family Trust, she is in the process of compiling a collection of his art work. The photographs of my father’s art reproduced in https://medium.com/@richardvanwagoner and https://lastamendment.com are hers