Dear Mr. Trump:

Let me make sure I understand this correctly.

Now, before returning any of the missing children to their parents, your minions have decided to take DNA tests and won’t return the children to their parents unless there’s a match? That’s the only way now that you can connect the family pieces that you ripped asunder?

When human beings go to the hospital or the ER, they get unique identifying bracelets. Your ICE goon squad couldn’t have used these kinds of bracelets on the children and their parents so that they could be brought together again? No, I guess not, because you never planned to reunite them and don’t want to reunite them still. To you, they’re just vermin. Why bother?

What about those children who came with grandparents, older cousins, or aunts or uncle who wouldn’t have the same DNA match as natural parents? How much of a DNA connection will allow you to reunite families?

What about children who were accompanied by step-parents or adoptive parents? There would be no DNA connection, yet the emotional ties would be as strong as those of natural parents.

What about the well-documented errors that occur all the time even in accredited DNA labs? If a bit of contamination happens to ruin a sample, there’s a baby girl or baby boy who will never see their parents again. They will be orphans, no family, no country, no home, no life.

It’s purely a result of your hatred and racism, Sir, the destroyer of families.

Very truly yours,

Bruce J. Berger

Dear Mr. Trump:

What have you done with the missing 2,000 children your agents ripped from the arms of their mothers?

You don’t know and you don’t care. To you and the likes of you, to the craven Republicans who support you, these children are “vermin,” an “infestation.” You’d stomp on them as if they were cockroaches if you could get away with it.

More than 2400 years ago, Sophocles described the pain you love to inflict, the agony of parents stripped of their children and children stripped of their parents* :

O children, Where are you? Come here, come to my hands … I weep for you – I cannot see your faces – I weep when I think of the bitterness there will be in your lives … Clearly you are doomed to waste away … You can see then now, so young, so utterly alone …

There are none so blind as you, Sir. There are none so blind as those who refuse to see.

Very truly yours,

Bruce J. Berger

*(Oedipus Rex, trans. by David Grene)

Dear Mr. Trump:

Why don’t you denounce the Boise, Idaho knife attack on refugees?

Oh, I get it.  You don’t see anything worth denouncing or, if the knife attack makes you uncomfortable, you feel you cannot say anything against it for fear of turning off some of your supporters. That’s it, isn’t it?

This violence against refugees in Idaho and the attack on the Capital Gazette newspaper in Annapolis are the kinds of events that your presidency has encouraged. Remember when you talked about “the Second Amendment people” taking care of any Supreme Court nominee that a President Hilary Clinton might appoint? Remember when you asked that your supporters beat up protesters and promised to pay the legal fees of anyone arrested for such violence?

We all understood what you were saying: Violence against those you don’t like is all right. Violence against those with whom you have a grudge is all right. Violence against those who disagree with your political views is all right. Wink, wink.

Long before you were elected, we knew what kind of country you were trying to create. And you may have won the battle, but not the war.

True Americans despise your so-called leadership. True Americans recognize that you have no values except your own promotion. We will turn out at the polls in November.

Very truly yours,

Bruce J. Berger

Dear Mr. Trump:

Here is a checklist, “Sir,” for the things you will try to secure in a new Supreme Court appointee.

First, he must be a liar, like you, so that when he (of course you will appoint a male) is asked questions under oath in the Senate about whether he’s made any deals with you in return for his nomination, , he can say “no.”

Second, you will presumably secure promises from this potential nominee to do all the following, according to your will and regardless of what the law or constitution requires:

• Overturn Roe v. Wade so that women’s bodies can be controlled by the government.
• Overturn Brown v. Board of Education so that racial discrimination in education can once again be the official policy of government.
• Overturn Obergefell v. Hodges, which recognized a constitutional right to same-sex marriage, in furtherance of your campaign to deprive gays and lesbians of equal rights under law.
• Uphold your ability to pardon yourself of all crimes – federal and state – that you have committed or may commit in the future.
• Promise to not stand in the way when you declare null and void the writ of habeas corpus, under the pretense of public safety, thus allowing you to imprison anyone you feel is your political enemy without due process.

You’ve already made clear your goal of ending democracy and equality, of flouting laws, of assuming the role of dictator, of getting rid of due process. The next step is to find just the right person who’s willing to lie and make these promises.

Or maybe, since this is an election year, you should just wait until a new Democratic Senate takes office.

Very truly yours,

Bruce J. Berger

Dear Mr. Trump,

How nice for you, Sir, that the Supreme Court allows you to be a bigot, that the so-called conservative justices – what a misnomer – have ignored the Constitution’s First Amendment to pretend that you’re not a racist.

What a joy for you, Sir, that the disgusting anti-Muslim things you’ve said don’t count in court. It’s like a Nazi Germany court ruling in 1934 that Hitler’s diatribes against the Jews are not relevant. Mein Kampf? Der Fuhrer was just mouthing off.

A fairly constituted Supreme Court, one to which Merrick Garland had been confirmed, would not for a second have allowed you to carry out your anti-Muslim bias. But now it seems you’ve been given license to practice discrimination against anyone – all the inhabitants of those “shithole” countries you hate, all the victims of gangs who are trying to seek asylum in America to survive another day – in the name of “national security.” The Muslims today, the Jews tomorrow, the Catholics the day after, the disabled the day after that, the judges you don’t like next week.

It’s your bigotry that destroys our national security and nothing else.

Very truly yours,

Bruce J. Berger

Dear Mr. Trump:

Why are you doing nothing to fix the problem you created? Consider these facts, as reported by the Detroit Free Press:

Four days ago, a Homeland Security official proclaimed: ‘We are not separating babies from parents.’ Yet in the middle of the night, two baby boys arrived in Grand Rapids after being separated from their immigrant parents at the southern border weeks ago. … One child is 8 months old; the other is 11 months old. Both children have become part of a bigger group of 50 immigrant children who have landed in foster care in western Michigan under the Trump administration’s zero-tolerance border policy. … Many have gone 30 days or more without talking to their parents because their parents can’t be located.

These children and their parents are not a threat to America. They are not the “infestation” that you protest you’re guarding against. They are human beings, seeking asylum. They are not vermin. When you imply that these people are vermin, you echo your hero, Adolf Hitler.

How can your thug agents rip babies from their parents’ arms and then have no idea how to reunite them?

Your behavior – your policies, your rhetoric, your inhumanity – are all despicable, “Sir.”

Very truly yours,

Bruce J. Berger

Dear Mr. Trump,

Do you not feel any shame whatsoever? Of course you don’t. That was a rhetorical question.

Ripping children away from the parents will cause irreparable harm to the children, if not to the parents as well. It’s unconscionable. Your claim that a law passed by the Democrats forces you to do so is patently false, another of your thousands of lies, and you’ve never been able to identify the law that you speak of.

You’ve made the United States a disgrace in the eyes of humanity. It’s the kind of behavior that Adolf Hitler would have loved, though. He perfected concentration camps like you’re creating now, and they were but a short step away from the gas chambers. Hitler convinced his people that the answer to their problems was hatred of and violence against minorities, and you are following in his footsteps.

You and your policies and your apologizers in Congress are sick. The good citizens of the United States will now and forever reject you, your lies, and your depravity, “Sir.”

Very truly yours,

Bruce J. Berger

Dear Mr. Trump:

It’s clear that you live in an alternative universe, one in which you make up your own facts. To argue, e.g., that North Korea no longer presents a nuclear threat, is to prove your ignorance, Sir.

What changed? Kim still has the same nuclear weapons and the same delivery system. North Korea is still at war with South Korea. That’s not a threat as far as you’re concerned, Sir? Then what is?

I guess Russia is not a threat, either, nor China. In your world of alternative facts, as long as you praise the dictators, as long as you suck up to the thugs and purveyors of terrorism, they’re good guys, “very smart.” You would have praised Hitler for being “tough” and “smart” too. You love the people who still praise Hitler and call them “very fine people.”

Kim flattered you, Sir, so now you consider him a good guy? He’s a murderer. He’ll kill anyone who disagrees with him. You’d love to do the same, I’m sure. You like Kim because he herds dissenters into concentration camps, just like you’re herding refugee children into concentration camps. Hitler stripped babies away from their parents at Auschwitz, and you’re doing it in Texas.

The thugs like Putin and Kim are your friends because you envy them and want to be just like them.

But your time in office is limited, Mr. Trump, Sir. The good American citizens who cringe at your behavior expect to vote you out of office – you and your lookalike Republic cronies – if you are not first removed by impeachment. God help the people who unjustly suffer at your hands before then.

Very truly yours,

Bruce J. Berger

Dear Mr. Trump,

You took the trouble to email me recently about some of your amazing, out-of-this-world plans. In particular, you informed me – and others who breathlessly wait to receive your emails – that you “will establish a foundation for an eventual mission to Mars.” I cannot think of a better place for you to go, Sir, and – when you blast off – please bring along with you the vice president and the apologist Republican leaders of Congress.

Oh, I’m sure there will be many who miss you, such as the millions of Americans who don’t realize you lied to them repeatedly, the people who thought that you’d protect their health care and social security, the people who thought that you would “clean out the swamp,” the people who believed that your craziness about imposing tariffs somehow bring back their jobs, the people who don’t realize that, for every job you save by building walls, 16 jobs will be lost.

Yes, there will be people who miss you, such as the millions of Americans who also hate refugees and the children of refugees, who think it’s a happy day when you make fun of the handicapped, who also get their jollies from disparaging American heroes such as John McCain.

Yes, there will be people who miss you, such as the millions of Americans who believe that grabbing p***y is their right, that adultery is their right, that lying is the only way to deal with tough issues, that climate change is a hoax.

I realize that, by shooting you and your cohort off on this space ship, we would greatly risk contaminating the rest of the solar system. So be it, Sir. Right now, we need to protect the earth more than anything else.

Very truly yours,

Bruce J. Berger