Trump voters are getting just what they voted for, which is why so many of them continue to support Trump even though they mouth opposition to particular policies.

Separating children from their parents should have been the last straw--but it wasn't. The gulf between the parties is wider than ever. Ask yourself which party best reflects your values, and vote for that party's candidates. There is no better indicator of where a candidate stands than that candidate's decision to affiliate with one party or the other.

Trump's decision to withdraw from the U.N. Human Rights Council was just the latest example of his withdrawal from world leadership--it weakens our ability to support Israel, and it will damage our ability to stand up for human rights around the world.

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Where to begin? We can't ignore the hypocrisy of those who " made a deal with racists [to] get deregulation and tax cuts" and now claim that separating children from their families is not what we stand for (even though it's what they voted for), but we all have an obligation to make this right.

Adam Serwer explained in November that Trump supporters will continue to support him " because this is what they always wanted: a president who embodies the rage they feel toward those they hate and fear, while reassuring them that that rage is nothing to be ashamed of."

In an article as well-worth reading as it is long, Serwer writes that "The specific dissonance of Trumpism--advocacy for discriminatory, even cruel, policies combined with vehement denials that such policies are racially motivated--provides the emotional core of its appeal. It is the most recent manifestation of a contradiction as old as the United States, a society founded by slaveholders on the principle that all men are created equal."

Trump's appalling decision to separate children from their parents at the border should have been the last straw for every decent American. John McCain's former Chief of Staff announced that he is leaving the Republican Party because it is now "fully the party of Trump." Steve Schmidt (who also worked for George W. Bush) wrote that

[The Republican Party] is corrupt, indecent and immoral. With the exception of a few Governors like Baker, Hogan and Kasich it is filled with feckless cowards who disgrace and dishonor the legacies of the party's greatest leaders...This Independent voter will be aligned with the only party left in America that stands for what is right and decent and remains fidelitous to our Republic, objective truth, the rule of law and our Allies. That party is the Democratic Party.

And yet many Americans who acknowledge the depravity of Trump's decision nevertheless continue to support Trump and don't resist in any meaningful way. A petition drive in the House to force a vote that would shield Dreamers from deportation fell two signatures short. Not one Illinois Republican member of Congress signed the petition. Not one Illinois Republican member of Congress has endorsed Rep. Dan Lipinski (D-IL) over an actual Nazi. Not one Republican in either chamber of Congress supports the Keep Families Together Act.

What more do you need to see that party affiliation matters? The decision to affiliate with one party or another in 2018 is itself an issue we should consider, and it speaks volumes about the values of the candidates who are running.

The difference between Democrats and Republicans in 2018 is that while the Democratic Party does have outliers on any given issue who are not representative of the party, the Republican Party is so extreme that only a handful oppose Trump rhetorically, and almost none oppose Trump when it comes time to vote. From time to time, there will be Democrats who we might (depending on who they are running against) oppose. But those scenarios are increasingly rare in today's polarized climate.

The Democratic Party was the party of slavery 150 years ago. Maybe one day the parties will shift again. Political parties aren't baseball teams; we owe neither party any loyalty, and we should support them based not on habit or tradition, but based on the extent that they align with our values today.

The Democratic Party today is the only party that fights for all of the values we cherish, including strong support for Israel and opposition to Iran obtaining nuclear weapons. There is no "independent" party. It's one or the other. The Republican Party has proven unwilling and incapable of standing up to Trump, which makes it as guilty and deserving of rejection as Trump himself.  

None of this is surprising. Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein diagnosed the problems in today's GOP in 2012, concluding that if voters did not punish the Republicans at the polls, "our politics will get worse before it gets better." Guess what? They didn't and it did.

Trump governs out of whim and impulse, fueled by ignorance and casual racism . Trump is a bigot, says Neil Steinberg. We still don't know how those 2,500 children will be reunited with their parents and neither does Trump. His Executive Order reversing the worst part of his policy proved he was lying when he said that Congress needed to act. The Chicago Sun-Times warned that " Nobody should be fooled [by Trump's Executive Order]. Our president hasn't found a heart. He's still dead-set on locking up kids - albeit now with their parents - on a scale that recalls the Japanese-American incarceration camps during World War II."

Trump pulled out of the Iran Deal with no Plan B to stop Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. Trump volunteered to give up military exercises with South Korea in exchange for nothing from North Korea. Trump cut aid to the UNRWA which, as Michael Koplow explains, " will lead to an epic disaster in Gaza that Israel will have to clean up."

Trump even pulled out of the U.N. Human Rights Counci l. The Washington Post asks all the right questions: "However flawed the council's work has been, walking away rewards all the oppressors, who undoubtedly will be thrilled that they no longer face lectures from the United States. What good will come from pulling out? Will it change the behavior of the regimes for the better? Will it make the council more effective? We don't think so."

Barak Ravid reports that Israeli foreign ministry officials "say that even though they feel the council is extremely biased against Israel, U.S. membership helped to soften or fend off some anti-Israeli steps" and they are concerned that "there are at least two big anti-Israeli initiatives which will be much harder to block or deal with now that the U.S. has left the council."

Rep. Eliot Engel (D-NY), one of the most pro-Israel members of Congress on either side of the aisle, said that

Since the United States returned to the Human Rights Council, the number of anti-Israel resolutions has dropped, and the council has focused more on other pressing issues including LGBTQ rights and Syria... By withdrawing from the council, we lose our leverage and allow the council's bad actors to follow their worst impulses unchecked--including running roughshod over Israel.

ICYMI: Tom Nichols explains that Trump is everything Republicans said Obama was.

Screenshot of the Week . This is real. The iTunes terms and conditions contain a more substantive clause about not using nuclear weapons than the document that Trump and Kim signed.

Photo of the Week . The cover of Time magazine. If you're concerned that this particular little girl was not separated from her mother, then you owe it to yourself to read Shai Held.

Video Clip of the Week. Finally--Jerry Seinfeld on Between Two Ferns.