American Dream Or American Scheme?

"We cannot defend freedom abroad by deserting it at home."

-- Edward R. Murrow

Forget the irony. The hypocrisy is suffocating.The grandstanding insufferable. The cruel indifference, disgusting. The crimes against humanity right under our noses, blatantly, gratingly criminal.

President Donald Trump has twisted the "American Dream" into a lurid, conniving, vain American scheme. And it will be on full, obnoxious display this Fourth of July 2019.

Happy Independence Day.

As we Americans -- purported champions of truth, justice and human decency -- fly Old Glory and fire up our BBQ grilles to celebrate our democratic liberties, we'd do well to consider whether those liberties we espouse so readily, are sound.

Just pause long enough in between rushed purchases of red, white and blue plastic hats and paper plates at Wal-Mart, to ask:

Are we still truly America -- "home of the brave" and "land of the free"?

If so, then where's the overwhelming brave citizen outrage defending those espoused freedoms in the face of unprecedented, destabilizing criminal threats to the Republic?

Fresh off another troubling, cringe worthy performance on the national stage -- shunning our allies and embracing murderous dictators at the G-20 summit -- while his punishing immigration policy imprisons thousands of children in concentration camps -- President Donald Trump plans to throw a grand ol' party.

For himself.

At our expense.

On our Independence Day.

Now, to be sure, this Fourth of July at the nation's capital there will be plenty of due homage to our patriots of the past and present, who have fought and died to win and defend our freedoms as a sovereign Republic.

It should end there.

But, it won't. Indications are that The Donald's professed "Salute To America" will pretty much be about The Donald.

Trump intends to contort America's most celebrated national holiday, typically geared toward honoring the brave freedom fighting Colonists who shed their blood for our Independence from imperialist England some 240 years ago, into essentially a Trump 2020 campaign rally.

Unspoken campaign slogan: "Keep America Grating."

The same narcissist whose policy has perpetuated the suffering of desperate Central American migrants, separating adults from their children and caging them like wild animals for months on end so his corporate campaign donors can reap daily dividends, ultimately scoring millions of dollars for literally caging kids -- is going to outdo his predecessors.

Trump plans to stage the most opulent and garish of Independence Day commemorations dating back to 1801 when  President Thomas Jefferson first opened the White House doors to the public for the nation's fireworks-punctuated birthday bash.

Big deal.

After all, P.T. Barnum, the world's first greatest showman in the 19th Century, once said: "The public appears disposed to be amused even when they are conscious of being deceived."

But there's a danger in all the vain hoopla, of course, as it's orchestrated to mask Trump's criminal degradation of America; the insidiously abnormal is incrementally being normalized.

How long can a society endure the incessant, corrupting eroding of American ideals under a demagogue like Trump without a devastating, lingering impact on our values?

We've already seen hates crimes spike in the States starting dramatically in 2017, Trump's first year in the Oval Office; the nation hasn't been so divided since the Civil War.

Surely, the Fourth in Washington D.C., with Trump as the ringmaster, will be a spectacle. A hard-to-resist circus sideshow extravaganza which would make showman Barnum, Trump's admitted mentor, proud. 

Supplicant major cable and network news channels no doubt will be tuned into the gaudy attraction, further legitimizing the unfit leader in return for consistent jacked ratings.

By doing so, the nightly cable and network news is guilty of just the kind of dereliction of duty that legendary TV broadcast pioneer Edward R. Morrow, who exposed the Communist fear-mongering of Senator Joseph McCarthy in the 1950's, specifically warned the broadcast industry against.

"This instrument (TV) can teach, it can illuminate; yes, it can even Inspire," said Murrow in a 1958 speech to the Radio-TV News Directors Association. "But it can do so only to the extent that humans are determined to use it to those ends. Otherwise it's nothing but wires and lights in a box.."

Anymore, we're pretty much stuck staring at "wires and lights in a box" -- deprived of anything inspiring or edifying particularly when Trump's tiresome mug fills the boob tube screen.

Non-the-less, snubbing tradition, the President intends to be intimately involved with D.C's Fourth of July festivities -- perhaps marching in a Bastille Day-like military parade, speaking at The Lincoln Memorial or stroking an M1A1 Abrams tank or two. 

Trump may have signed a 4.6 billion border bill on Monday, reportedly to improve care of the migrants in detention centers and bolster border security. But the measure fails to enforce the 90-day stay limit and doesn't allow legislators to inspect the facilities unannounced, as Democrats had pushed for.

In the meantime, the Department of Homeland Security's Office of Inspector General announced Tuesday it had discovered squalid, over-crowded conditions at detention centers for asylum-seeking migrants near the border, confirming Democrats' recent discoveries.

"No child should ever be separated from their parent," said Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, an outspoken critic of the detention centers, she appropriately described as "concentration camps." "No child should ever be taken from their family. They should be given water, they should be given access to human rights."

So, as the President delivers his scheduled Lincoln Memorial address about America's "tremendous" military might and our "great" democratic ideals, chances are brown-skinned children as young as two years old, with runny noses and wearing dirty diapers, may still be in need of water and sitting on cold, concrete floors just so Republican campaign donors like private prison companies, GEO Group & CoreCivic, can make millions of dollars.

"No child ever has to suffer for the benefit of another," added Ocasio-Cortez.

Fox News viewers falling for the liar-in-chief's "fake news" claims on the whole matter, 

should ask themselves why in the past week the acting director of Customs & Border Patrol resigned and typically Conservative-accommodating Bank of America announced it would stop financing the for-profit immigrant detention centers.

Just follow the money. At an estimated cost of $775 a day to house a single child, the federal government last year shelled out $2 billion to private prison companies. One company has cashed in on $43 million just since September for shuttling immigrants to camps.

As one private prison executive has said plainly, the President's immigration policy is "good for business."

Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee Jerry Nadler on Monday described the long-term housing of migrant children, he's witnessed in person, as "disgusting" and  "criminal."

"This clearly is child abuse and subject to prosecution," said Nadler. "It violates probably half a dozen laws."

Of course, Trump on the Fourth, will be surrounded by the exceedingly disingenuous and criminally complicit. The Republican National Committee reportedly is handing out VIP tickets for front row seats to big-time campaign donors. 

And don't be surprised if Trump propagandist outlet Fox News touts an exclusive sit down with the ever conflicted commander-in-chief.

As is the norm, the public are invited too.
But, Trump's grandiose plans suggest a logistics nightmare for the Washington D.C. police, as the fireworks display shift away from the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool to the West Potomac Park for the first time 20 years.

In the end, it won't have mattered how much fireworks, patriotic anthems, pompous poses and preposterous platitudes that ambitious White House loyalists squeeze into a single celebratory day -- meant only to sway the complacent and gullible towards viewing the impulsively autocratic President in a kinder, gentler light.

The truth is out there and it's begging to be seen and heard by folks who give a damn and are willing at least to not pretend all is copacetic in the White House.

If the American people somehow were to be swayed into a false sense of patriotic-infused security, by the intentionally distracting, manipulative Reality TV circus this Thursday, it's another resounding step towards game over.

If we were to forget Trump's dysfunctional behavior abroad or ignore his relentless divisive incites, obstruction of RussiaGate and his tortuous treatment of desperate southern border migrants in our homeland, we'll have abandoned our moral right to defend ourselves from the White House deception in the future.

Here, the words of the late famed American writer Gore Vidal forbode: "We are the United States of Amnesia, we learn nothing because we remember nothing."

Yeah, Trump is a fool and yeah he's dangerous as hell, the overwhelmed majority of Americans seem to be saying, but I got to take out the trash, feed the dog and kick the cat. No time to sweat it.

But, if the President's inhumane immigration policy, that has overseen the deaths of at least six children this year, doesn't ultimately dictate the end of Trump's presidency, it may just lead to our end as a free people.

What would stop an emboldened Trump, who has demonstrated not a sliver of compassion as he trashes our constitution and our country, from going further and start caging political opponents or members of The Press -- which he has repeatedly accused as "enemies of the people" and purveyors of "fake news"?

We already know that the President feels more kinship with the likes of Russian President Vladimir Putin, North Korea's Kim Jong-un and the Saudi Crown Prince than he does with our allies.

As TV and radio broadcast pioneer, Murrow, exposed McCarthyism's oppressive overreach in a 1954 CBS address, he accused McCarthy of causing "alarm and dismay amongst our allies abroad" and giving "considerable comfort to our enemies." 

That's exactly what Trump is doing.

Now, is the time to speak out and stand up to crimes against humanity -- signed, sealed and delivered not by the Democrats, or President Barrack Obama, but undeniably by our authoritarian President. 

It's Trump's policy that has reportedly lost track of an estimated one thousand immigrant children, as if they were mere slips of paper in an overwhelmed accounting system. 

Abetted by loyalist Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, it's Trump's policy, bereft of humanity or justice, that is exacerbating the desperate situation at the border -- and further dividing our nation.

So, yeah as we rightfully embrace our freedoms as Americans this July 4, we should be as mindful as ever of the old saying, "Freedom isn't free."

As President Trump, immersed in militaristic grandeur, embarks on his nationalistic speech before an immortalized President Abraham Lincoln, he should be reminded of a line from Murrow's 1954 landmark televised confrontation of McCarthyism.

"We cannot defend freedom abroad by deserting it at home."

(Kevin McKinney is freelance writer and former daily newspaper journalist living at the Jersey Shore. His writing has appeared in publications across the country, including The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Hill, The Spokesman Review, Knoxville News Sentinel, CounterPunch and McClatchy Newspapers. He tweets @WriteFight99. Email: mckinneywrites@outlook.com)