Two items caught my attention in today’s Post-Dispatch.

1) The victory of the U.S. Women’s Soccer Team: Aren’t they a joy? Their countrywomen and men must support wholeheartedly their demand for equitable compensation.

2) Yet again the incompetence, indifference, and viciousness of the Trump administration’s treatment of migrants is openly displayed. Kevin McAleenan of Homeland Security (what a euphemism!) explained the government’s abuse of migrants because “It’s an extraordinarily challenging situation.” But is the government so lacking in foresight and so rigid in their non-response to humanitarian emergencies that this explanation could at all suffice? In addition, our duplicitous President, sounding like a holocaust denier, tweets that reports of the awful treatment of the migrants are much exaggerated. 

I think Sen. Jeff Merkley is right to perceive in this disaster “an underlying philosophy that it’s O.K. to treat refugees in this fashion.” This would be an application of the principle that non-whites have no rights. But I would say more. This atrocious mistreatment of refugees is not merely tolerated by the administration as being O.K., it is being done on purpose. It is a well-planned screw-up whose dog-whistled purpose is to reduce dramatically the number of brown-skin people entering our country. It is part of a determined effort to keep America white, a goal of the white supremacist program of Trump and his inner circle.