A few days before the Feast of the Nativity, let’s see if we can manage a Christmas prayer for the alleged drug couriers Trump is massacring on the high seas. A prayer for over a hundred dead, almost all men of color, killed in the name of the people of the United States, and a prayer for their families.
Trump lied and said their boats contained fentanyl and cocaine bound for the U.S. Almost all experts dispute his saying they’re the same as war fighters. But this Christmas, there’s no public outrage, either about the killings or the drumbeat of war with Venezuela. Trump and Hegseth so far refuse to show us the video of them and their commanders killing two helpless men in the water. Fearing that people would turn against capital punishment, most governments ended public executions generations ago. Trump may worry what would happen if we saw what he did.
Yet so far, Republicans have fallen in line. Democrats aren’t spending much capital, either. Politicians don’t speak up for drug runners. The question invites what conservatives used to call the sin of moral relativism. We say it any number of ways. “I don’t necessarily like how we’re doing it, but it serves the drug pushers right.” “If they don’t want it to happen to them, then they can find something else to do for a living.” “Oh, so you’re sticking up for the people who are contributing to our 30,000 cocaine overdoses a year?”
As all demagogues do, Trump is using an easy scapegoat to leverage a diminishment of the public’s conscience. Feasting on someone we hate also helps him sharpen his silverware should he decide to come for you and me. Just as he can write his name on any federal building, he can have his operatives write a secret memo suspending the civil rights of any of us, including those who might choose to add their illegal graffiti to his on the Kennedy Center. Also in the Christmas news is his outlaw Justice Department going after people whose speech it doesn’t like.
We always knew the Jan. 6 man, who permitted his mobs to use potentially deadly violence against 140 police officers during his attempt to keep power illegally, would reoffend. Some thought our bulwark against tyranny was commanders and enlisted personnel refusing to follow illegal orders. They have evidently not refused this time, making martyrs for freedom out of those they have killed in the Caribbean and Pacific.
So we pray for our own and for liberty’s sake but also for the sake of the dead. They may well have been doing what they ought not to have done. And yet we must judge them to be innocent until proven otherwise. That’s what we do in our country. We have laws against drugs. Decent presidents transact justice the right way. When they do it the wrong way, victims of the denial of due process get the benefit of the doubt.
We also pray for those who mourn. By now, a community of perhaps a thousand is preparing to bear witness around empty places at Christmas tables. We can imagine them all together in one place. Parents, grandparents, spouses, siblings, children. Think of the weeping, and the anger at you and me. Imagine hearing each of a hundred or more stories, learning why the men were doing what they did, if they actually did it. Imagine being face to face with those who will suffer because they’re gone, every mother and father, and having to defend what Trump did.
This thought exercise may make us think that low-level alleged drug couriers, making a few hundred dollars a run, if that’s what they were doing, don’t deserve such consideration. The Christian disciple thinks differently. The Christ Child came for everyone. There is room for everyone at our table. The disciple also remembers those crucified with our Lord, probably accused of robbery, insurrection, or some other crime for which fewer and fewer civilized nations would pronounce a death sentence. Jesus loved them and said that they would be with him in paradise. Remembering that, perhaps we can manage at least one Christmas prayer for those in peril on the sea. (Image: Rembrandt, 1653)