A welcome departure...

Jeff Sessions testifying
by Office of Robert Aderholt

 I begin to write this in the last few minutes of January 20, 2021. I will probably publish it in the first hours of January 21, which, among some other distinctions, marks the first full day of the Biden-Harris administration. TV news has shown President Biden swearing in new officials of his administration, with an admonition similar to Churchill's famous "blood toil tears and sweat", and a single, uncompromising requirement: he required all his appointees to always show respect for their colleagues and the American people. 

At the same time, the officials, strategists, functionaries and hangers on of the previous administration have departed Washington, one or two clutching freshly printed presidential pardons, others just leaving. As Americans celebrate a hard-won transfer of power, in the last minutes of this day I want to celebrate the departure of a man who left Washington over two years ago, and now lives in well earned obscurity, his attempt at a political comeback denied by Donald Trump for precisely the wrong reasons. That man, Jefferson Sessions, implemented the most egregiously cruel of all the policies of the Trump administration, the policy of family separation at the American border with Mexico. 

Every government's record inevitably undergoes a reassessment in light of subsequent events, and as political hostilities fade. George W Bush, for example, left office after a series of disastrous failures, most notably the housing meltdown and financial crash, the Iraq war, and the failed relief efforts following hurricane Katrina. Many commentators, of all political stripes, declared him the worst president ever. Yet his initiative to support treatments and prevention efforts to arrest the spread of HIV in Africa, not widely noted or praised at the time, have lead to a reassessment of his legacy.

Immigration detention, US Government photo

It will surprise nobody who reads this web log to learn I believe the Trump administration will leave one of the worst legacies of any American administration. I believe most of the assessments to come will show even parts of the record Donald Trump and his supporters rate as successes amounted to illusions. Prosperity based on borrowed money will not last, deals with autocratic regimes will only last if they improve conditions for the great majority of people, wealth generated by the destruction of the land, air and water will turn to ash. 

The family separation policy was different. Decent people saw it as a stain on the United States from its inception. It marks the Trump administration as absolutely, outrageously cruel. Donald Trump's advisor Stephen Miller promoted the policy; given credible reports of his connection to white nationalist outlets such as VDare and American Renaissance, as well as his promotion of the racist, anti-immigration tract "Camp of the Saints", it seems reasonable include a desire to discourage immigration by people of colour among his motives. Stephen Miller promoted the policy; Jeff Sessions carried it out.

Whether or not either man ever faces a legal reckoning for a policy of literally pulling toddlers out of their parents' arms, the people of the United States of America and the world should never forget what they did, nor ignore the evidence of why they did it. Mr. Sessions oversaw a policy of taking children from their parents as a "deterrent", inflicting trauma on children barely old enough to walk in order to terrify others tempted to seek refuge or opportunity in the United States. Under his authority, servants of the American government left toddlers comfortless on concrete floors under mylar blankets.

By a decisive majority, American voters have rejected these policies and the administration that carried them out. I hope the American people will never forget, never lose sight of what, precisely, they have voted against.