It's up to voters to prevent another rogue administration like Trump's

Siddique Malik | Opinion contributor

Show Caption Hide Caption Hundreds gather in downtown Louisville to oppose separation of migrant families Protesters in Louisville and across the county rallied Saturday against the Trump administration's immigration policies.

Recently the U.S. government displayed naked hypocrisy. On June 19, Nikki Haley, America’s representative at the Security Council, announced America’s departure from the U.N. Human Rights Council, citing the presence in it of countries with abysmal records on human rights.

Normally one could discuss this departure as a policy matter. And the reality is that this U.N. body has given membership to some rogue regimes, making a mockery of itself. Nonetheless, for the sake of human rights, I would have argued for America’s continued presence in it. I would have attributed the departure to faulty judgment, not hypocrisy.

However, this article is not about policy options. It’s about the backdrop of Haley’s announcement. She was pretending to be a champion of human rights when her boss was detaining babies and children and deporting their parents, thus splitting these families? Rogue regimes commit such crimes, not democracies.

America’s child-abductor president has now stopped his nefarious practice, though. But family splits that he caused have not yet been rectified. America must immediately reunite these traumatized families, provide them with professional counseling and help them settle in America. This is the least America can do to atone for its president’s cruelty towards these helpless people.

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The mental status of America’s attorney general is as disturbing as that of his boss. Jeff Sessions shamelessly quoted the Bible in his fascist attempt to legitimize child-abductions. His statement amounts to blasphemy against Christianity. Its ugliness reminded me of the terror the Taliban inflicted upon the women who simply ventured outside their homes to make a living or attend school. That cult quoted the Quran to justify these heinous crimes.

There is no difference between a clean-shaven white man in a suit justifying cruelties in the name of a religion and a bearded brown man in a tunic and headgear doing the same? They are both ignorant maniacs whom society must confront and defeat. But there is a world of difference between the two societies in this analogy. One is brutally suppressed by the beasts who control it. Anybody speaking against them faces brutality. The other society is replete with freedoms and pro-humanity values.

So why is this other society behaving like the first one? Last weekend’s nationwide protests against government-ordered child-abductions are encouraging. But how did America reach the abysmal point where its government thinks it can snatch babies and children from their parents? After all, America is a democracy.

It’s America’s collective failure. No candidate wins an election in America unless he or she appeals to centrist voters and voters from the other political party. So let’s stop blaming only hard-core Trump-supporters and normal Republicans for this collapse of humanism inside the nation’s soul. When the world hears sobs, cries and shrieks of little children snatched from their parents and sees the parents’ tears while Haley talks about human rights, it rightly blames the American people, under whose authority the child-abductors have acted.

The fact that the 2016 popular vote went against Donald Trump is not much comfort. Even with all the handicaps of the Electoral College system, any hate-peddling candidate should have been routed in elections. America, as a nation, must accept responsibility for the emergence of a racist, xenophobic, bigoted and misogynist cult of power, also known as the Trump presidency.

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Even after the election, the failure to restore sanity has afflicted many Republican and Democratic leaders alike. They are more interested in securing their individual power bases than ridding America of state-sponsored hatred. Even Democratic leaders are afraid to stand up to Trump, their nominal, benign stances and muted statements notwithstanding.

Americans should do some serious soul-searching and good homework and kick out all cowardly incumbents – Democratic or Republican – in upcoming elections until full cleansing materializes. That will teach these pols a lesson they need to learn. But if Americans continue to vote without doing basic fact-checking, it’s only a matter of time before they give rise to another un-American, Trump kind of a rogue regime.

We are America, a name that drove terror in the hearts of dictators and terrorists and gave hope to freedom’s foot soldiers worldwide. Let’s regain that humanistic glory. I say to my fellow Americans: For long, we have suggested Muslim societies and communities to act against the bigots, extremists and fanatics in their midst. And that’s a great suggestion. But now, we can set an example, and we must. At least, the victims of the Taliban cult did not elect it.

Siddique Malik writes political commentaries.

