"Suffer the children," not "make the children suffer"

Warning: I'm about to Godwin like you cannot believe.

My good lady wife is rocking a thorough and well-documented discussion of the atrocities being committed in our names over here, and I highly recommend checking it out. But one thing that should be always kept in mind when thinking about this situation, whichever side you're on, is her first bullet point: 

1. Seeking asylum is LEGAL.

So all those facile memes you've seen about "of course we separate children from their criminal parents!" are simply wrong. 

And ask yourself this: what would you think of these asylum seekers if they didn't try to get their children to safety? Is that how you'd roll if the lives of those you loved most were in serious danger? You'd just stay put? Or would you do everything in your power to keep your children alive? So why on earth would you look down upon others for doing the exact same thing you would do? For trying to be good parents? 

Which is to say that, putting aside #1 for a moment:

I mean, we all grew up knowing that, didn't we? We all grew up learning about Anne Frank and the heroic Dutch family who broke the law in trying to keep her alive. 

And yet, while that's all true, it's also not entirely germane, since—again:

1. Seeking asylum is LEGAL.

Okay.

So I read this powerful and concise explanation of where we are and why. It's very much worth clicking through and reading the entire (relatively brief) thing, but here's the nutshell: 

The suffering of these children isn't a byproduct, it's the point.

Or as has been said in other, much more benign contexts—since almost all other contexts are more benign—it's a feature, not a bug. 

This was a solution in search of a problem. Illegal immigration has gone down since 2009. The president himself crowed about that just over a year ago. So this isn't some crisis of hordes of people pouring over the border. Things are less drastic than they were years ago and, frankly, as someone who lived there at the time, it wasn't that huge a deal then, either. (For those of us not trying to cross deadly deserts, that is.) It was certainly nothing like the crime-ridden hellscape a certain network would have had you believe. 

Then I read this comment: 

The scariest moment I can recall from when I was young was losing my parents on vacation. I was probably 4 years old and got distracted by something. When I turned to where I thought my parents were, they weren't there. I was looking around frantically, surrounded by people, just overwhelmed with terror. There wasn't really thought, just panic. Fortunately I saw them, ran over to them and at that point I probably began to cry.

I was probably lost for 30 seconds. We were in Disney World, the "happiest place on earth". Looking back on it, it really doesn't seem like that big of a deal. And yet out of everything from when I was little, that's probably the most scared I've ever been. To intentionally force that feeling on others is absolutely horrifying to me. For these kids to suffer and endure everything they've been through to get to the US, without any real understanding of why, to then be taken from the only thing that they actually know, there's just no way this should be allowed to happen. The fact that anyone feels the need to argue where to assign blame for it happening instead of doing everything they can to stop it immediately is deplorable. Stop terrorizing helpless children.

and I realized I had a few memories like that myself. Even less dramatic but, yeah, I remember being four or five and lost for just a few seconds and how utterly terrifying and traumatic it was. And I can't remember what I had for breakfast the day before yesterday but I vividly remember spinning and spinning around at my brother's soccer game, trying desperately to catch a glimpse of my mother. And that lasted a few seconds, not days, not weeks, not maybe forever. 

And we have people in this administration—the president, his (literal) Nazi-sympathizing advisor Stephen Miller, his Department of Homeland Security's asylum chief—who planned this horrific scenario over a year ago. This isn't an accident. This is what they wanted. They actively wanted to terrorize children. They planned to terrorize children. 

The Trump Administration are literal terrorists. They are deliberately terrorizing innocent civilians in order to achieve their political goals. That is the very definition of terrorist.

I find it hard to believe that almost any of them don't have a similar memory of being separated when they were young. Or, even worse, that gut-wrenching, horrific feeling of not being able to find your own child. Maybe it was in a grocery store for a few seconds, or at a park, or a mall, or the beach, or in the house. It's terrifying and it gives any parent nightmares for the rest of their lives. 

And yet this is actively what they decided to do. They planned this for over a year. They want to terrify children. That was the idea from the very beginning. 

For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you made me welcome

But...how is that possible? How is it possible someone like Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who herself has children, can not only stand by and let this happen, but actively aids and abets this horror show? How can she help terrorize children? 

Because, of course, those terrified children are not fully human. 

These theoretically pro-life advocates do not see these helpless, terrified babies as fully human. 

It's the only explanation I can come up with. It's the only thing that makes sense. The people in this administration and their supporters do not see—for obvious reasons—these poor screaming, terrified, traumatized children as fully human. 

Again: Donald Trump does not see these terrified, innocent little children as human. 

And we all know how that turned out last time. 

I'd like to remind you all of the president defending the white nationalist/neo-Nazis just a year ago. Those of us who paid attention during the campaign—or who had paid attention to him for decades—warned about his clear racism. We were ignored or told we were overreacting. But this is who he is. And as the great Maya Angelou once said,

"When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time." 

This is who Donald Trump is. One of his closest advisors is a white nationalist. He himself has a long history of racism. He has spoken of Hispanic and Latino immigrants in dehumanizing terms. And now he has ordered babies to be treated in utterly inhumane ways. 

Let's repeat that again: he has ordered babies to be treated in utterly inhumane ways. 

This is not a coincidence. This is not an accident. This is who he is. 

It is not a legal requirement. This was a choice. This was his preference. This was his desire. 

Donald Trump and his administration wanted to treat babies in a cruel and inhumane manner. 

So. That leads to the obvious next question:

Who are you? Because whether you continue to support him and his party—and that's key, since if you support his party, which has written him a blank check for a year and a half now, you are supporting him, whether you like it or not, whether you care to admit it, even to yourself, or not—will determine that. 

Are you one of the good Germans? Are you going to pretend you didn't know? Are you going to tell yourself that torturing babies is okay because of tax breaks? Or abortion? Or her emails? 

Are you?  

Comments

[Penelope]

Thank you. I'm not always as articulate as I want to be, in writing, since my brain tumor. I am so grateful for all the writers who still are, and who still write.