By now, we’re all familiar with the tumult that is now Trump Washington.  The idiotic tweets, nasty insults, petty feuds, and the lies, lies, lies are now fundamental to our daily diet of TrumpWorld’s pollution of the news 24/7. Trump has brought his genetically encoded slum-lord personality to the White House, running the government like he ran his business and television shows.  In a word, he’s simply an asshole who couldn’t care less about anything except is own comfort, status, supremacy, and dominance.  He’s not governing the US; he’s infesting it as a gigantic parasite sucking the very life out of our society.  And his party is following along as lemmings; right before our eyes, we’re seeing politicians supporting policies that are even worse than they endorsed before he burst onto the scene.  They celebrate racial and religious discrimination; they endorse disenfranchising millions of voters, taking healthcare away from millions of Americans, and pumping millions of dollars into Trump’s personal empire.  Simultaneously, they are looking the other way while Trump accepts graft from foreign governments and demands absolute loyalty from our highest law enforcement officers.

The hardest feature to accept, though?  The mindless cruelty.  Banning entire populations from the US; slashing programs that only help the poor; insulting everyone who’s not rich, while simultaneously stoking the fires of hatred, racism, and grievance to prop up the base.  The latest injustice came to light this week.  Eight German exchange students, arriving in Denver for a 4 week English language program in Colorado, were deported  on the same day. The program they were to participate in, Rocky Mountain Language Adventure,  was designed to improve their English speaking skills by staying with local families in Salida, Colorado while volunteering in local businesses so they could use the language.  Up until this week, the program has been bringing in exchange students for 5 years.  Why were they deported?  Some genius at Customs and Border Enforcement at Denver International Airport decided that, since they were volunteering at local businesses, they were taking jobs away from Americans and should have work visas; their visitor visas weren’t good enough.  After making this decision, this idiot orders the students deported back to Germany immediately.  Efforts by the governor’s office, Congressmen, and Senator Michael Bennet could not delay or stop the deportations.  They’re back in Germany, and will likely never come back.

One would like to believe that this case is just some moron at CBP being over-zealous.  But it’s not…this is our new reality under Trump where intolerance creates an environment where arbitrary, unjust, and illogical decisions that impact thousands of lives just happen.  Agents of the US government now feel empowered to deny entry to anyone without regard to the impact to people’s lives or even our own reputation as a society.  This decision was especially egregious simply because of its cruelty.