Think of an angry, roiling river strewn with rapids and waterfalls, and you’d have a good metaphor for Donald Trump’s presidency. There’s constant noise, a sense of destruction and it feels almost unstoppable.
With the Trump river smashing into the UK this week, there’s been the usual sense of turmoil. Criticism of the UK’s Brexit negotiations. Praise for Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage. Remarks about “nasty” Meghan Markle and Sadiq Khan being a “stone cold loser”.
Trump in full flow generates a flood of headlines. But rather than be deluged by it all we need to stand back to get some proper perspective.
Just ahead of the visit the White House announced new tariffs on Mexico as punishment for not restricting migration into the USA. There was a plan to bar anyone from claiming asylum at a US border if they’d transited through a third country - which would close the door to endangered people from Central American countries. And there was news of a US State Department body being set up to provide “fresh thinking” on human rights, which no US human rights groups had been informed about.
Sudden, jarring moves like this are the new normal under President Trump. The travel ban, cuts to global funding for women’s reproductive health, withdrawals from the UN Human Rights Council: done, now we rush onto the next thing. Remarks excusing neo-Nazis at Charlottesville, a ban on trans people in the military, more arms for Saudi Arabia: all done and dusted.
From a human rights perspective, the Trump deluge is relentless. There seems to be very little holding this administration back. Which is where exhaustion and a sense of defeat can set in.
Yet, as protests in London and elsewhere showed last year and this, people are not taking things lying down. I know from colleagues in the US that there’s a continuing sense of outrage and defiance at the stream of negative, hateful policies from this government. People power still matters. While Trump’s government pulls out of the Paris climate treaty, Greta Thunberg sparks a generational climate crisis resistance movement. While the US immigration force puts migrant children in cages, people like Scott Warren - a volunteer with the No More Deaths group - puts out water and food to help prevent migrants dying in the Arizona desert.
In other words, this can be resisted. The rampaging river can be contained, dammed in.
On top of brave individuals and campaign groups, we also need governments to stand up for basic human rights principles. Under Theresa May we’ve rarely seen this. We need a future UK government which will publicly and consistently defend decency and cooperation, rather than divisiveness and hatred.
Take a step back from the diplomatic carnage of this latest visit and it’s clear that Trump’s rampaging river needs to be resisted at all costs. With his Twitter outbursts Donald Trump may be the master of media distraction, but the rampaging river rolls on. The destruction is real. This is a serious time. We need to be serious about the need to resist.