OPINION: When Donald Trump was separated from his family
The president who received cruel treatment as a child now abuses children at the border, says Michael D'Antonio.
In a large-scale psychodrama set on the U.S.-Mexico border, the Trump administration is ripping immigrants' children and locking them up. The authorities explain that it is a zero tolerance policy for those who enter the United States illegally. For me, as a Trump biographer, this is a reenactment of Trump's own childhood traumas, anecdotal evidence that child abuse can be passed down from generation to generation.
Although science has not proven intergenerational abuse with certainty, some studies show that children who were hurt at an early age are more likely to become abusive adults. The defining moment of Donald Trump's childhood was when he was ripped from the family home at age 13 and sent to a Lord of the Flies-style military school, where adults beat children and then confronted them, I believe said Trump and some of his former colleagues.
When I see the images of border agents separating children from their parents, I recognize a similar cruelty. Some will recognize a more general cruelty despite not knowing Trump's story: "... this zero tolerance policy is cruel. It is immoral. It breaks my heart," said former United States First Lady Laura Bush. "Babies ripped from their parents. I can't take it," Oprah Winfrey said.
"The effect of this kind of event will follow children into adulthood and throughout their lives," said Ana Maria Lopez, president of the American College of Physicians.
Even if Trump's actions had nothing to do with how he was treated as a child, the policies that he and Attorney General Jeff Sessions implement speak of a president who cannot display the normal empathy we expect from our leaders.
The impact of childhood trauma is well understood by clinicians and it has been established in many studies. Nadine Burke Harris' book The Deepest Well: Healing the Long-Term Effects of Childhood Adversity describes it well. Of course, no one needs a book to explain that it is wrong to hurt children. Common sense tells us that pain inflicted on a child can have lasting effects.
Trump falsely claims that Democrats are to blame because they allegedly drafted a law ordering the separations. There is no such law. Trump ally and US Senate candidate Joe Arpaio says it is parents who cross the border illegally with their family to blame. Arpaio and Sessions (who has cited the Bible to defend this policy) do not understand that these families are refugees, that they are fleeing danger in their country. Desperate for safety, they embark on dangerous journeys and cross borders in the hope that the United States will have compassion on them.
Instead of receiving the attention that strangers in need deserve, migrant families endure treatment that undermines the United States' ability to defend human rights around the world. How can a country that treats children like this credibly oppose human rights abuses by the world's regimes? It is obvious that the credibility of the United States is weakened in case of protests against authoritarian acts in North Korea, the Philippines or Venezuela, just to name three places where the United States has to defend human rights.
This policy clumsily ignores that cruelty can enrage and radicalize victims and bystanders and inspire them to defend themselves. (Terrorists and criminals are born from this kind of treatment.) It also causes moral trauma to American citizens who want to believe that their country represents something better. How are we supposed to hold the Statue of Liberty and photos of imprisoned children in our hearts?
The pain generated by the zero tolerance policy disturbs compassionate Americans because it is an abuse committed on our behalf and because we do not have the power to change this policy directly, we feel like powerless bystanders. However, some people have influence on Trump and his decisions and in this case it is useful to resort to the family factor.
The president who received cruel treatment as a child now abuses children at the border; his wife, Melania Trump, said something needs to be done to rectify the situation. I think it's time for your own kids to act.
There is no one more important and influential in Donald Trump's world than his daughter Ivanka, who according to reports has a project in favor of the family and children. As a child, she was treated very badly during the divorce of her parents. (Check the tabloid headlines of the time for proof.) Everything indicates that everyone treats their children with empathy and affection, which means that they have ended the cycle of abuse in the Trump dynasty. She now has the opportunity to do more by directly addressing the abuse of immigrant children by the government and demanding that it be stopped. Decency asks for nothing more.
