A Piece of my Mind

Family separation is all the rage right now.  You wanna know what makes a rage?  Usually something so immoral or so great that people tend to wake up to its evilness or its goodness.  In this case it's the bad side.  But that's just me, I can't speak for Trumpers.

My buddy Danny back in Emerald City as had the enviable opportunity to visit Auschwitz.  He told me it is a silent somber place as befitting the horrendous crimes that were perpetrated.  People are quiet as they walk inside those walls of torture and death.

Trump blames Democrats.  False.  McConnell defends all things Trump.  Jefferson Beauregard Sessions of Alabama, seeming unencumbered by matters of conscience and forever striving to stay in Trumps good graces, spouts the same Biblical passage we used for slavery and the Germans used for Jewish extermination.  He said, "I would cite you to the Apostle Paul and his clear and wise command in Romans 13, to obey the laws of the government because God has ordained the government for his purposes."  

Nice to see Laura Bush and Melania Trump speak out against Trump-Sessions zero tolerance policy.  Few Republicans have.  Ms. Bush wrote, "It is immoral and it breaks my heart.  Our government should not be in the business of warehousing children in converted box stores or making plans to place them in tent cities outside El Paso.  Americans pride themselves on being a moral nation, a nation that sends humanitarian relief to places devastated by disaster...We pride ourselves on believing that people should be seen for the content of their character, not the color of their skin.  We pride ourselves on our acceptance.  If we are truly that country, then it is our obligation to reunite these detained children with their parents - and to stop separating children from their parents in the first place."

Melania wrote, "...we need to be a nation that follows all laws,  but also a country that governs with heart."

It is fair to say, Whoa!  Americans separated children from parents once the slaves came to auction - better to make money from the young ones.  Americans separated Native-American children from their parents to white-run boarding schools.  Americans separated children from their parents when we interred Japanese into concentration camps during World War II.  

Sure our hands are not clean.  We have ghost blood that will stay on our national fabric for as long as we are a nation.  These past offense can't be erased and they can't be justified.  But at the same time, the greatness of our nation is that even with past misdeeds, we are a composite of people who strive to redeem ourselves with goodness.  Today we abhor the thought of slavery.  We cringe at our treatment toward Native Americans and the abysmal way we handled the Japanese during the War.  We keep looking "the upward way."

Personally I am all for a strong impenetrable border.  We are a nation that needs to be aware of those who would enter illegally.  But zero tolerance is a poor policy.  There are many reasons people come to America.  Some for ill, some for riches, some for hope.

   

Nations don't become evil overnight.  They take a hundred small legal steps, usually wrapped in lies and propaganda.  They stack the courts, the legislation, and ordain leaders with cult-live adoration.   People follow.  Good nations can go bad.  After the concentration camps were liberated Eisenhower demanded that the German citizens be paraded past the rotted and rotting corpses, gas chambers and torture rooms.  They were even forced to take those bodies and bury them in mass graves.

Along the border, the kids are housed in structured, monitored, windowless warehouses.  The guards are ordered to not touch, hug or help any kid who is crying.  They are behind chain link fencing with mats on the floor.  One documented report said during a separation a young child, crying, was so upset she started vomiting.  The mother asked if she could have 5 minutes and she was told by Border agents, no.  This is a Trump policy, no one else. 

"First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out -
because I was not a Socialist. 

Then they came for the Trade Unionists and I didn't speak up -
because I was not a Trade Unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, but I didn't speak out -
because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me - and there was nobody left to speak for me.

Martin Niemoller - on German complicity to Hitler



Addendum:  Yesterday President Trump signed an Executive Order to keep families together.  He lied throughout the crisis blaming it all on the "Dems" and then admitted it was a ploy to leverage for the Wall.  Apparently this incident is over.  Keep vigilant.