Infernal Sadism

 So let me get this straight. In the past several months, the Trump administration has deliberately murdered more than 80 civilians in drone strikes at sea—because it claims these people were transporting drugs. 

Most of them appear to have been poor fishermen. If some of them were in fact transporting drugs (and we have nothing but the administration's say-so to believe it), they were likely trying to pick up a tempting pay-out for their families by moving a few kilos of cocaine alongside their usual catch. They were not traveling with the far deadlier fentanyl, which is trafficked over land routes—making a mockery of the administration's purported rationale for the attacks, even if it wasn't so patently spurious on its face already. 

So, these fishermen were declared to be homo sacer—banned from humanity and killable on sight, without charge or trial—for allegedly succumbing to the temptation to collect a few hundred measly dollars by transporting contraband. 

But meanwhile—the Trump administration just pardoned a former president of Honduras who was convicted in U.S. courts of masterminding a transnational drug trafficking conspiracy?

It appears there is to be one law for the poor and quite a different law for the rich, in Trump's America. 

I call that hypocrisy. More than that: I call it that "hypocrisy, falsity, and callousness of the Law," which Hugh MacDiarmid wrote about—"The infernal sadism that hauls to the scaffold / A poor woman sick at both ends [...] yet kisses the bloody hands of mass murderers..."

So too, the Trump administration just the other week was metaphorically kissing the hands of the mass-executing Saudi dictator, MBS—and calling an American journalist "insubordinate" for daring to question Trump's royal guest about his suspected role in the murder and dismemberment of a Washington Post columnist. 

Yet meanwhile, he calls a poor fisherman a "terrorist," fit only for extrajudicial execution on sight, merely for transporting a kilo of coke to get an extra payday for their family. 

Likewise, he tries to collectively punish all refugees from Afghanistan—and, now, all asylum-seekers and many green card holders from plenty of other nationalities—based on the alleged actions of one individual (even as U.S. officials reportedly explore the possibility that he was effectively forced into the attack by coercive threats against his family from the Taliban). 

Trump does not hesitate to punish the innocent for the murder of a U.S. guardsman—sweepingly condemning whole communities based on stereotypes—the essence of racism. 

But meanwhile, Trump himself is the one who put these guardsmen in harm's way—in order to stroke his personal ego through wholly needless military deployments designed to make him look tough. 

Meanwhile, Trump himself is the terrorist—executing 83 civilians at sea without legal cause, and openly bragging about how his actions have intimidated even innocent fishermen from trying to ply their trade on the ocean. 

Hypocrisy, hypocrisy, hypocrisy all the way down!

A former drug kingpin who flatters Trump is forgiven for his duly-convicted crimes in Honduras. But meanwhile, nearly a hundred civilians who have never been convicted of any crime get murdered in cold blood on Trump's orders—merely because they are poor and inconvenient and Trump is looking to send a message to reinforce the image of his unbridled, illegitimate power. 

Edgar Lee Masters's image of the double standard of the law comes to mind—with Justice in one hand bearing a sword—"Sometimes striking a child, again a laborer, / Again a slinking woman," while in the meantime, holding a scale in the other hand, into which "pieces of gold were tossed / By those who dodged the strokes of the sword." 

One law for the rich, in short; and another for the poor. 

Meanwhile, we are approaching the Christmas holiday, and our Secretary of Defense had a holiday greeting for us. Amidst allegations and Congressional investigations probing whether he committed war crimes in his extrajudicial executions at sea, he posted a meme on social media showing the children's book character Franklin the turtle blowing up a supposed "drug boat" from a helicopter. 

"For your Christmas wish list," Hegseth appended to the image. And a happy New Year. Good will to men? 

Thomas Hardy's words on "Christmas, 1924" come to mind: 

" Peace upon earth!" was said. We sing it,

And pay a million priests to bring it.

After two thousand years of mass

We've got as far as poison-gas.