Just A Figure of Speech?

It was just a figure of speech, I am told, used by President Trump to describe the horrendous brutality of the MS-13 gang.  He was not referring to immigrants, Mr. Trump said yesterday, but to members of that gang.  Fresno County Sheriff Margaret Mims complained that California State law forbids her from telling U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement about undocumented immigrants in her jail—even if  they may be members of a gang.  (This is a half-truth).  To be precise and to quote the sheriff, “There could be an MS-13 member I know about.  If they don’t reach a certain threshold, I cannot tell ICE about it.”  Mr. Trump then responded saying, “We have people coming into the country or trying to come in, we’re stopping a lot of them, but we’re taking people out of the country.  You wouldn't believe how bad these people are,” he said.  “These aren’t people.  These are animals.”  Who?  Who are the so-called animals?  Those persons Sheriff Mims thinks may be MS-13 gang members or the undocumented immigrants she has incarcerated?  They are not all of one lump.  Immigrants and MS-13 are two separate and distinct categories—one having to do with immigration and the other with criminality.  Mr. Trump has a propensity to lump the two groups together as immigrants and what many of us heard him say on Wednesday was that immigrants are not people, but animals.  We have heard him say this on numerous other occasions with other derogatory words.

One writer claims Mr. Trump is using appropriate language when applying the term “animal” to MS-13.  Oxford dictionary describes an animal as “A person without human attributes or civilizing influences, especially someone who is very cruel, violent, or repulsive.”  Mr. Trump is consistent, says this person, since he called the perpetrator of the Syrian chemical attack, “Animal Assad.”  Sarah Huckabee Sanders defended the president’s comments, arguing the word “animals” didn’t go far enough.  “If the media and liberals want to defend MS-13 (which they are not doing), they’re more than welcome to.  Frankly, I don’t think the term that the president used was strong enough.”  Sarah has the same propensity as her boss.  She tends to lump media and liberals together.  They are not the same, and they are not the only ones reacting negatively to calling people (any person) animals.  She failed to mention the diplomatic letter sent by the foreign ministry of Mexico to the U.S. State Department complaining that Trump’s comments were “absolutely unacceptable.”  

Adolf Hitler, in Main Kampf, wrote, “…the personification of the devil as the symbol of all evil assumes the living shape of the Jew.”  Germans, he wrote, must free themselves “from the snares of this international serpent…Hence today I believe that I am acting in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator:  ‘by defending myself against the Jew, I am fighting for the work of the Lord.’”

We are treading on dangerous ground when we think we are so good, right, and circumspect, that we can call any human being an animal.