A Cheaper Buy than the Louisiana Purchase

So last week the Administration did three things of note to the prolife Christian Trump supporters.

First, it made extremely clear that Trump is jonesing to turn America back into a Torture Regime with multiple appeals to his base for how cool torture is.  And in his interview with Sean Hannity, the two made clear that it’s not just swarthy subhuman foreigners Good White Christians should delight in torturing, but fellow American citizens (whose prison population is also, by no coincidence, disproportionately swarthy as well).  The example they used of a torture-worthy victim of the Regime is a suspect kidnapper.  And it turns out kidnapping happens here too.  But torture regimes find an expanding circle of reasons and victims for torture far beyond kidnapping.

In addition, the Regime also issued an Executive Order banning refugees from Muslim countries he is not doing business with (like Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Lebanon, and the UAE, whose citizens killed 3000 of ours on 9/11).  “Well, they need to be vetted!” say Good White Christian defenders of the regime.  They have been. So you can stop defending that lie and focus on the fact that this wicked and stupid order could keep 500,000 legal residents from returning to their families in the US.

Second, the Dear Leader issued another order designed to do to immigrants what this policy did for another regime elected on the basis its racist rhetoric:

(Coincidentally, the Dear Leader’s Holocaust Remembrance speech made no mention of anti-semitism.)

His purpose with that Executive Order is to strengthen in the minds of the American people the association “Immigrant=criminal”.  Never mind that criminals are home grown by the thousands as well.  The point is that the same bigots who cannot even concede that Black lives *matter* and insist on saying “all lives matter” to deny even so elementary a proposition as that, suddenly demand we say “only immigrant crimes matter”.  And for the same reason: to deflect humanity away from the human from the minority group and direct hostility toward him.  This is the antithesis of anything resembling “the sanctity of all human life from conception to natural death”, particularly in a nation that is now the single greatest prison state on the entire planet, with a for-profit gulag larger than Stalin’s that is, vastly disproportionately, peopled by minorities.

Which brings us to our last Administration effort pertaining to the prolife movement: the appearance of Mike Pence and KellyAnne Conway at Respect Life March in DC.

Many were thrilled that the Administration noticed the Prolife March.  My question is: what is the net effect?  If the goal is to save innocent lives then my question is, “Show me a life that was saved as a result?” Answer: none.  The net gain for the prolife movement is zero in that department.

If the goal was to give prolife people a thrill, like an unpopular girl at a high school prom being noticed by Biff Tannen, then mission accomplished.  The prolife movement was noticed by the most narcissistic sociopath ever to occupy the White House–and for absolutely selfish purposes, which are the only kind of purposes he has.

What purpose?  Obviously, to get the support of the prolife movement for torture, slamming the door in the face of refugees, turning a blind eye to his business ties in the Mideast, and scapegoating immigrants.  And given the silence and support for Trump emanating from the prolife Christian right for all that, it appears to be a hugely successful strategy.  In short the net gain was *entirely* Trump’s, not the unborn’s.

This is how it will go for four years.  While the rest of the world looks on in horror and disbelief (including our children, who see and are leaving our Church in droves) the anti-abortion-but-not-prolife Christian Trump supporter will prostrate himself to defend every wicked and stupid thing this man does in the hope of finally getting a shot at power.  He may even get that Scalia replacement and the illusion that progress has happened.  But when Trump is gone, Roe will still be in place.  And the prolife movement and the reputation of the gospel will be a heap of smoking ruins in the United States.

What shall it profit a man to gain the whole world and lose his own soul.  But for Trump?