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| US CUSTOMS AND BORDER PROTECTION Image caption This image from the US Customs and Border Protection shows the foil blankets given to children - BBC News |
Topics: Civics, Civil Rights, Existentialism, Human Rights
Ephesians 6:12 “For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.” See also Pastor John Palovitz's statements.
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| AMANDA VOISARD/AP Demonstrators gather to protest against the separation of immigrant families at the border in Austin. |
Presidential historian Jon Meacham on MSNBC alluded to "we've gone from Emma Lazarus to Dred Scott," ironically on Tuesday, the annual African American celebration of Juneteenth.
We are housing hundreds of babies and toddlers in internment camps titled by the Orwellian term "tender age shelters." There are apparently children changing the diapers of other children because there are not enough caregivers to do it. The Attorney General announced this president's* zero-tolerance policy in April. Children and babies are being separated from their mothers with NO plans or procedures to return them to their parents. Stephen Miller - the 21st-century dead ringer for Joseph Goebbels - along with this administration* was apparently gleeful of the mayhem and chaos they'd caused. He couldn't sign an executive order until he signed an executive order. Top this with Melanie's IDGAF jacket at the Texas gulag! (Question: why is a so-called billionaire's wife in a $39 jacket on the FIRST day of summer in Texas?)
Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she
With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”
The New Colossus, Emma Lazarus
"In the opinion of the court, the legislation and histories of the times, and the language used in the Declaration of Independence, show, that neither the class of persons who had been imported as slaves, nor their descendants, whether they had become free or not, were then acknowledged as a part of the people, nor intended to be included in the general words used in that memorable instrument...They had for more than a century before been regarded as beings of an inferior order, and altogether unfit to associate with the white race, either in social or political relations; and so far inferior, that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect; and that the negro might justly and lawfully be reduced to slavery for his benefit."
The Dred Scott decision - March 6, 1857, Chief Justice Taft's opinion of record. Mr. Scott's grave and remains are buried, coincidentally outside of Ferguson, Missouri.
My father would have been 93 years old on Tuesday. (It was also my sister's birthday.) He, like a lot of young men, got his draft card during the conflict with the Fascists in Europe. He was assigned to the United States Navy. He was a Third Class Petty Officer and became a Heavy Gunner, a Naval Boxer, and Cook. Like a lot of African American men, he thought to excel at war would "win the peace" of Civil Rights at home.
Hitler was defeated. He came home to a still-segregated America. He met my mother and married. I followed in 1962 in a still quite segregated society.
In the 21st century, at 55, I am still existing in a segregated society. Bigotry, birtherism, sexism, and xenophobia were weaponized into an effective presidential* campaign with hostile foreign assistance. We now have what amounts to concentration camps on American soil. We have a campaign chairman that openly mocks Down syndrome children. "When they go low, we go high" by First Lady Michelle Obama has been replaced by the daily, exasperated refrain: "How low can they go?"
We are the monsters now...
The Central American janitor in our facility at JSNN is distraught by the news of children screaming for their mothers. She relayed she's been threatened by some in maintenance, the same who's former member hung a noose in a lab in a school that has more diversity than the UN. The idiot was immediately fired, but his fellows threaten my Latino friend: "the president's going to send you home soon." She defiantly asks "why"? since she's a naturalized US citizen. She works just as hard as them, if not harder since their services are called when something breaks: she cleans toilets and overrunning trashcans from the second floor to the basement in every classroom; every bathroom, every lab. They have pictures of their orange god at their workstations; they wear MAGA hats.
We are the monsters now...
This is the backlash for having the "Audacity of Hope" to elect the first and so far, only African American to sit on the seat of power in 232 years of the republic. This is a continuation of the backlash that was seen at the border with wild-eyed citizens screaming at busloads of children from Central America. These are the voters of Orange Julius that wear MAGA hats and are emboldened by his bigotry. These are the modern brown shirts/red hats gang that are deathly afraid of becoming a numerical minority that the interference of a foreign power in their federal election process is of no consequence...as long as the outcome maintains white supremacy.
The site Blavity points out that separation of children from families is an American tradition, started with slavery to this current moment where brown immigrant children whose parents are seeking legal asylum have no rights the AG, nor this present darkness respects. Hoovervilles have seen a resurgence in the form of tent cities, and a government shutdown in September if there's no border wall might drive us...into an actual Hoover depression. It is a matter of time before we're not sobbing over children in cages...but wailing like Rachael's over children in graves, as tent cities in deserts - greater than 100 degrees Fahrenheit; 38 degrees Celsius - might as well be ovens at Auschwitz. Only sociopaths would cheer this vile assault on humanity.
We are the monsters now...
...or, we are the citizens that fix this November 6, 2018, Russian interference be DAMNED! The continued sovereignty of our republic is at stake. We will either be remembered as a good example or warning proverb. We will either be Winthrop's "city on a hill"... or, a shit pile (more superfluous than a "hole," that epithet itself projection)!
*The usage of the asterisk (*) next to president* I borrow from and attribute to Charles P. Pierce, a writer for Esquire magazine and frequent media commentator on MSNBC. He's also the author of the prescient book: "Idiot America: How Stupidity Became a Virtue in the Land of the Free." And so, despite his and other authors' warnings to the contrary, our republic is at the stage-edge of this cliff...
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