And here's Liel Leibovitz, with more on Trump's disgraceful immigrant ban:
The events of this past weekend have made it clear that Trump and his aides have no interest in governing. Had that been the case, they might’ve taken the trouble to explain the order and its purpose. They could’ve reassured millions of anxious Americans that Green Card holders needn’t worry. They would’ve allowed sufficient time to make sure we don’t cruelly and needlessly afflict those—like the Iraqi translator who had served with American forces in Iraq, say, or the brilliant Sudanese-born who is a resident at one of our best medical institutions—who merit an obvious exception to the ban.
They did none of that. In fact, they did the opposite, with senior Trump aide Steve Bannon overriding, according to some reports, orders by the Department of Homeland Security insisted that lawful permanent residents—men and women like myself, here legally—should be targeted as well, separated from their families for no other reason but the unhappy accident of their particular place of birth.
This should come as no surprise to anyone following this administration. Whatever else might be true about its aims, this much is absolutely clear: Trump and his people do not care about this nation in any form that I, and millions of others, recognize or cherish. They don’t care about its institutions or its traditions or its higher calling. They see the world as only terrified toddlers do, as an endless battlefield between those who stand with us and those who stand against us, a contest that could be decided only by means of domination, subjugation, and humiliation. And their enemies aren’t the terrorists lurking on some foreign shore; they’re millions of Americans whose hopes and ideas and convictions have made them the enemies of their own state. This is why Bannon has propelled himself to the National Security Council, why he gleefully went on the record and told the free press to keep its mouth shut, and why he advocated for the travel ban to be as painful as possible. A self-described Leninist, he knows all about the old Bolshevik’s favorite tactic, that of heightening the contradictions: do something outrageous, wait for your opponents to come out in full force, then rally the faithful with hysterical talk of impending peril. Czeslaw Milos captured this dynamic neatly: “I predict the house will burn; then I pour gasoline over the stove. The house burns; my prediction is fulfilled.”
The gravest danger of the Trump Administration, then, isn’t that its actions are objectionable to many Americans. It’s that they’re carefully designed to tear this nation apart, and to goad its citizens into a state of permanent conflict and unending mistrust. And that’s a crisis that calls out for more than political solutions. It demands moral outrage.
Mick Hartley 
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