On Wednesday, I noted that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo had been booked to speak at the October Tim Clinton (aka American Association of Christian Counselors) conference in Nashville. Clinton touted Pompeo’s record on trauma in his announcement. See below.
However, the Trump administration has a rather dismal record on trauma in our own nation. In fact, yesterday a federal court had to instruct the administration on basic care for migrant children. Among other things, the Trump administration had argued that soap and dental care were not basic needs for children. An appeals court said otherwise:
“Assuring that children eat enough edible food, drink clean water, are housed in hygienic facilities with sanitary bathrooms, have soap and toothpaste, and are not sleep-deprived are without doubt essential to the children’s safety,” the appeals court panel ruled.
Why would anyone need to be ordered to do this for children?
It is no secret that Tim Clinton supports Trump and is on his evangelical advisory committee. He is the owner of AACC and can do what he wants with it. However, he markets the business as a trade organization of a diverse group of counselors, some of whom work with children and many of whom work with trauma. There are experts in trauma resolution speaking at the conference, such as Diane Langberg. Break out sessions on trauma are scheduled. In my opinion, it is an insult to have a key representative of an administration generating trauma speak to a group who every day tries to prevent and heal that trauma.
“…it is an insult to have a key representative of an administration
generating trauma speak to a group who every day tries to prevent and
heal that trauma.”
Amen. And how is it that tDump’s evangelical supporters refuse to see it?
How many professional associations of this sort are for-profit entities? I can’t think of any. I worked with trade associations before, as well as a union, and none of them were for-profit organizations. Certainly, the best known organization in my former profession, the American Bar Association is nonprofit, as is every bar association I know. Offhand, I can’t think of any “professional association” that is for-profit, but then I suppose there might be.
But this smells like the typical grifting monetization of “charity” so beloved in the Evangelical world. It parallels the privatization of government services favored by the Republican Party. Outsourcing necessary services to the private sector cost taxpayers at least $8 billion that we know of in the obscene Iraq/WMD pantomime that brought so much peace to the Middle East. (I have often wondered how Republicans would have reacted had Bill Clinton outsourced military duties to a company that just happened to be a business formerly headed by Al Gore, as Bush & Co. did with Dick Cheney’s Halliburton. Newt Gingrich would have led the charge and held the noose as they marched down Pennsylvania Avenue to hang Gore from the nearest lamppost.)
Through the stench of these incestuous relationships runs the Republican principle that government is good for nothing, charity is for suckers, and war is just another way to turn a buck. Tim Clinton looks like someone who fits right in with this pattern.
Why would anyone need to be ordered to do this for children?
Because with today’s Republicans and this “administration” in particular, cruelty IS the point.