This is the title I chose for my personal blog, which is meant to give me an outlet for one of my favorite crafts – writing – plus to use an image from my favorite sport, golf.  Out of college, my first job was as a reporter for the Daily Astorian in Astoria, Oregon, and I went on from there to practice writing in all my professional positions, including as press secretary in Washington, D.C. for a Democrat Congressman from Oregon (Les AuCoin), as an Oregon state government manager in Salem and Portland, as press secretary for Oregon’s last Republican governor (Vic Atiyeh), and as a private sector lobbyist.  This blog also allows me to link another favorite pastime – politics and the art of developing public policy – to what I write.  I could have called this blog “Middle Ground,” for that is what I long for in both politics and golf.  The middle ground is often where the best public policy decisions lie.  And it is where you want to be on a golf course.

One major policy implemented by Donald Trump when he sat in the Oval Office confirms his place as the worst president in U.S. history.  As if more confirmation was needed.

The egregious policy:  He carved out a specific focus intentionally to separate immigrant children from their parents at the U.S. southern border. 
To me and many others, it stands as one of the most egregious cases of government gone bad.

I have thought this since Trump first implemented the policy and even took credit for it.

And, now, in a very thorough and well-written piece of investigative journalism, The Atlantic Magazine confirms, in intricate detail, the criminal conduct of Trump and his minions. 

It was written by Caitlin Dickerson and is worth reading in its entirety – all 30,000 words of it.  It was so compelling that Atlantic editor Jeff Goldberg wrote a special e-mail to subscribers which emphasized this:

“Caitlin’s cover story is a history-making accomplishment.  It is, among other things, the longest story we’ve published in memory, weighing in at nearly 30,000 words — but do not fear, it makes for a propulsive and mesmerizing reading experience.    “She has constructed a narrative in which the relentless accretion of facts points us in a terrifying direction.  It turns out that the story of the Trump Administration’s child-separation policy is not simply a story of a consciously merciless program, implemented by consciously merciless men.   “It is the story of what happens when a bureaucracy is left to its own devices, when leaders abdicate their responsibilities, when American ideals are sacrificed on the altar of career advancement and self-preservation.  She exposes the secret history of a heinous policy, and names names — including the names of people responsible who are still serving in government today.”

The intentional policy should mean that Trump no longer should be allowed to run for or hold the Office of President and, in fact, should be thrown in prison where he belongs for his misdeeds while in office.

The child separation numbers are startling, but they convey more than just simple numbers. 

Behind them are incredible stories of human tragedy – children separated from their parents, parents separated from their children.  Imagine the emotion and anguish of those moments, which, at least to a degree, still exist today.

Here is one excerpt from Dickerson’s story:

“During the year and a half in which the U.S. government separated thousands of children from their parents, the Trump Administration’s explanations for what was happening were deeply confusing, and on many occasions — it was clear even then — patently untrue.  I’m one of the many reporters who covered this story in real time.  Despite the flurry of work that we produced to fill the void of information, we knew that the full truth about how our government had reached this point still eluded us.

“Trump Administration officials insisted for a whole year that family separations weren’t happening.  Finally, in the spring of 2018, they announced the implementation of a separation policy with great fanfare — as if one had not already been under way for months.  Then they declared that separating families was not the goal of the policy, but an unfortunate result of prosecuting parents who crossed the border illegally with their children.

“Yet a mountain of evidence shows that this is explicitly false:  Separating children was not just a side effect, but the intent.  Instead of working to reunify families after parents were prosecuted, officials worked to keep them apart for longer.”

Though family separation is no longer explicitly used as a weapon in U.S. immigration policy, it is still carries with it a horrifying result.  Over the past decade, hundreds of thousands of children came to the United States without their parents, and we have not built a system to receive them with compassion and respect.  In fiscal year 2021 alone, a record 122,000 children were taken into U.S. custody without their parents.

So, as more details emerge, due in substantial part to The Atlantic study, blame Trump.  It’s stands as one of the most egregious anti-humane, anti-ethical policies of his time in office.