By John Gray, United States Army Veteran, Fort George Meade, Maryland
What is humanity exactly? It is commonly known as some level of concern or empathy with and for other people. As President, Donald Trump has always seemed to lack humanity and has never shown any evidence of wanting to implement humanitarian policies for the nation.
If one looks at his cabinet, he has filled it with people who apparently lack humanistic virtues or any sense of courage and valor, people who are sycophants through and through. The best example of this is Stephen Miller, a man proven to be a virulent racist who has shown his inhumanity through his practices on immigration. He is the mastermind behind deportations, unjust imprisonment, and general xenophobia as part of homeland security policy.
Humanity is also not evident in the warmongering Trump is doing in Iran while also supposedly trying to campaign for new nuclear treaties. This lack of humanity spoken about ultimately makes one wonder about the President’s sanity. Does this man have any semblance of basic morality?
Trump’s own inhumanity can be traced back to lessons learned from his father. If one looks at Donald Trump’s childhood, particularly his relationship with his father, one would find that strength and the pursuit of power overpowered all other concerns.
Fred Trump was described as having an extremist mentality, believing firmly in a world of winners and losers. Obviously, he imparted this worldview to Donald, pushing him to always be a winner, no matter the cost.
It is said that military school was the place where young Donald began to practice the harsh lessons his father taught him. He was described as being a flat-out bully, practicing “strength” through force and domination and loving every moment of it. These were the first signs of Trump putting his own inhumanity into practice, reflecting his own self-hate onto others.
It is certainly possible that this sense of “might makes right” accurately describes Trump’s morality, especially when speaking of his cabinet selections. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth can only be described as an unqualified man who is so in love with confrontation that he changed the title of “Secretary of Defense” to “Secretary of War”. This change of title clearly points to a need to portray strength through violent terminology, a mentality Trump clearly appreciates. The unnecessary war in Iran further proves this point, as Iranian lives have been obliterated in bombing campaigns that have hit civilians, even though this administration claims the strikes were directed towards military targets. These are the actions of a man and an administration with no true regard for humanity and people’s basic right to life.
Speaking of this disregard for human life, one has to talk about Donald Trump’s associations with other authoritarian leaders such as Xi Jinping, who has been accused of suppressing Chinese democratic activists in addition to getting rid of presidential term limits, making himself the supreme leader of China. Additionally, Jinping’s government has enacted severe repression against Uyghur Muslims, forcing them into internment camps and forcing them to assimilate into mainstream Chinese society. The recent meeting between these two leaders, which proved to be nothing more than a photo op, clearly showed that Trump cozies up to leaders with inhumane policies as a means to push an image of strength. Do Trump’s followers somehow believe that, in some schizophrenic way, he will modify his inhumane thoughts and behavior for their benefit? If so, they are just as deranged and inhumane as he is.