‘Between Zero and One’

As relief agencies struggle to deal — simultaneously — with two of the largest refugee crises since the second World War, the Trump Administration has slashed the number of people the United States is willing to grant refuge.

The United States, one of the wealthiest nations in the world and formerly a leader on the world stage, admitted only 53,716 refugees in the fiscal year ending last month. Church groups, the UN, and relief workers all say that number is far too low, but the Trump administration apparently wants to make it even lower.

White House chief of staff and Hand of the Trump John Kelly — the former general disgraced last week by his choice to make up nasty lies about a grieving Gold Star family and a member of Congress — apparently thinks that accepting any refugees is accepting too many.

“Kelly said he’d prefer to admit between zero and one refugees into the US each year,” The Hill reports:

White House chief of staff John Kelly reportedly told other members of the Trump administration that if it were up to him the number of refugees admitted into the U.S. would be between zero and one.

The New York Times reported Wednesday that Kelly made the comment while the administration debated lowering the cap on the number of refugees allowed into the country.

President Trump eventually decided to lower the refugee cap to 45,000, the lowest levels since the Reagan administration, when the Refugee Act was passed.

Admitting zero refugees would, of course, be blandly evil. That’s what a villain would do.

But John Kelly’s idea of admitting just one, single refugee — that’s what the villain would do. That is not just evil, but literary evil. Rejecting all refugees simply makes one a part of the immoral crowd, a participant in amorphous, faceless cruelty. But rejecting every refugee except one — that makes you the antagonist.

“Save one, let all the others die” is an ancient, time-honored tactic for antagonists who seek to impose a blanket oppression, but who also want to savor their cruelty. This was the approach attempted by Haman in the story of Esther. It was the same villainy demonstrated in the story of Lot in Sodom and its parallel in Judges 19.

“One of you will be spared, but all the rest will be killed” is the hallmark of the most sadistic villains. “You’re all going to die” is never quite as twisted or creepy as that. This is why those horrifying Saw movies were such big hits. Your wife or your child? Which of your children?

Kelly’s Single Refugee idea is almost like a more extreme, deadlier version of the Joker’s bombs-on-two-ferries scheme in The Dark Knight — as though Kelly wanted to replicate that, but with millions of bombs on millions of single-person canoes.

The idea is like the start of a hackneyed epic fantasy series: “Spare the orphan boy, but let his kindly old mentor and the rest of his village die,” the Dark Lord cackles, six books before that boy grows up to be the Chosen One who overthrows his evil empire.

“Between zero and one.” Good people don’t think like that. John Kelly does. So does his boss.

The best that can be said for Kelly is that he’s speaking out of fear. Admitting refugees, he seems to think, creates risk. But the risk that John Kelly is worried about is not a risk to public safety — he knows that’s nonsense. He knows that refugees are families fleeing war and disaster, and that they pose no risk to America. But what he’s worried about is political risk. He fears that some day, some person somehow connected to a refugee might do something, and that he will be Willie-Hortoned because of it. It’s the same fear that leads other cowardly politicians to seek to eliminate parole in just the same way he wants to eliminate refuge.

This would-be antagonist is a sad, frightened, weak little man.