I lost my mother when I was a young boy, barely 9 years old. It was traumatic, sending me initially into a state of shock and denial. And that was followed by sadness, melancholy, and depression for a long time thereafter.

Even now more than 6 decades from that life changing moment, it’s still with me; it’s there, lodged in my psyche and still doing its mischief.

Time, it is said, heals all wounds. There is a grain of truth here, but it also contains an element of wishful thinking. In my case, time did offer some respite from the trauma of my sense of loss at so young an age. But what allowed me to metabolize my trauma (to the degree possible) was sustained and sensitive help from my family and neighbors in the first place, but even more from people trained to treat such trauma. In other words, therapy. My only regret is that it took me so long to seek out such help.

Which brings me to the children at the border who have been torn away from the mothers and fathers. What they are experiencing is unspeakable trauma, far worse than I did in so many ways. Not only are they terrified by the fear at this moment that they will never see their mother or father again.

But they also find themselves in an unfamiliar and unfriendly place, steel cages in some instances. And they are alone. No relatives or neighbors are at their side to comfort and assure them that things will get better, that their separation from their parents and family is only temporary. Instead they are in the hands of people, most of whom neither share their country of origin nor are of the same color. Who knows how many speak Spanish.

In short, these children and babies can’t help but feel a deep sense of isolation, alienation, powerlessness, fear, betrayal, sadness, and pain.

Even if these children are returned — and that isn’t a sure thing — to their mothers and fathers and receive professional help, the damage has been done and will likely be with them for a long time to come.

As one Catholic priest said yesterday, Trump’s policy fits the definition of evil in every way. I would only underscore that it’s an evil that’s indifferent to the terrible harm that it’s doing to thousands of children as well as steeped in racism and nativism and calculated to turn babies and children into bargaining chips to gin up his base for the fall elections.

It isn’t, as some suggest, to force through Congress a draconian immigration bill this week. My belief is that Trump and his quislings understand that that isn’t in the cards. Indeed, they want to keep the border and immigration on the table and in the news cycle for the fall elections. It’s a winning issue in their sordid calculus against Democrats who advocate, they claim, “open and porous borders.”

Finally, I would add that Trump aspires to be a strongman, much like the other strongmen in the world that he heaps praise on. And in turning children into fodder and thumbing his nose at the widespread opposition, including in his own party, to what he is doing at the border, he’s demonstrating in plain sight to the country and the world that, even in the most unfavorable of political circumstances, he is boss, that he isn’t bound by any restraints other than his own desires, that he can do whatever he wants. In this sense the border crisis is, in Trump’s eyes, an opportunity to assert his dominance over friend and foe, not a miscalculation. It’s something to be seized and unrelenting pushed. Blowback? Bring it on!

Our response can only be sustained resistance until this policy is changed and the children are returned to their mothers and fathers. it’s a test of our resolve.

Could you come up with a more cynical division of labor than Trump railing against immigrants from Central America in racist language in Duluth, Minnesota last night and Melania’s “humanitarian” visit to a Texas border town this morning to “comfort” children who have been separated from their parents by her husband’s actions?

I can’t, and I hope, people in the media don’t give Melania a free pass. She isn’t an innocent nor is Ivanka. As Billy Allan, a larger than life writer for the Daily World back in the day, would say, “If you run with the hounds, you will soon smell like them.”

Wearing a jacket with the inscription, “I really don’t care,” Melania Trump bordered a plane yesterday headed to the border to visit children. Not surprisingly, it has provoked a good deal of discussion as to her intentions.

In an oped column in the NYT, Michele Goldberg writes, “It’s hard to tell whether incompetence or malevolence was behind her choice (of jacket’s inscription) … ” I have to believe she had malevolent intentions. To attribute it to incompetence is just too big a stretch for me anyway. She can’t be that tone deaf or stupid not to think that it wouldn’t be taken as a statement expressing her attitude toward the crisis at the border.

But of more importance than her intentions is s in Congress, how it was received by Trump’s loyalistapologists in the media, and diehard supporters at the grassroots. After all, they, like Trump, have must have felt on their heels in the face of an outraged country, reacting to the awful sight of children and babies forcibly separated from their parents.

In this context, it’s reasonable to think that Melania’s not so subtle message had the purpose of steadying this nasty coalition of white nationalists as well as reminding them that more harsh and extreme measures will be necessary at the border to protect their “way of life” from the growing “infestation” (Trump’s word) of “darker skinned” people crossing our southern border?

Trump’s retreat was partial and incomplete. To begin with, the fate of thousands of children separated from their parents is no better now than it was two days ago. In some ways it is worse. These children are being shipped to cities around the country where they will be held involuntarily in holding centers. And there is no plan to reunite them with their families. Nor transparency. Nor is access to these makeshift shelters to outside advocates of the children and the media.

The Zero Tolerance policy also remains in place. And there is much else in the vaguely executive order that gives Trump and gang room to pursue their discredited and immoral policy by other means.

It would be ironic in other circumstances, but to see thousands of white Trump supporters in Duluth, MN at a Trump rally last night wildly cheering Trump’s most inflammatory rhetoric against immigrants from Central America is sobering, to say the least. It was as good as a visual representation as I have seen lately of the degree to which racism, nativism, and nationalism have lodged themselves in the intellectual and emotional make up of a significant group of white people, including white workers. Duluth, if you don’t know, is about as far away from the Mexican border as you can get. Moreover, it is hardly a destination point for most immigrants. In fact, It’s only a reach, albeit a long one, across Lake Superior to Canada.