Culpable

The roses still sweeten the air under our oh-so-blue skies. God knows I’d rather focus on the little things in my life, especially on what’s going right. The fact I get to choose whether to choose outrage or calm speaks of the privilege of the life I lead, even with the challenges I face—including those I don’t share in public (or even in many private) spaces.

In my day job, I read lab manuals. What’s not to love about some clear rational thoughts? Although, these days I am increasingly aware that certain “trigger” words might keep someone from learning the science in the books. Such strange times in which we live.

For whatever reasons, for the past 20 years or so, in my spare time, I have been drawn to reading fictional books that challenge my comfort level—in short, that allow me to appreciate my own nonfictional life. About regimes changing over and genocide (e.g., Cambodia, Iran, and Rwanda), but mostly I read about Nazi Germany (and the various countries they invaded) and slavery in the USA. Happy stuff—not.

But it allows me to put a human face on those who are crushed by those in power—I try to understand the lives of people who either never had power or people who had their power taken away. And these readings remind me to be concerned for the powerless and to know that they are people like me, who want the best for their families.

What happens in almost every instance of these awful tilts in power is that the group at the top works hard to dehumanize those they consider the Other. Frankly, it would seem as if the authors of the books were lacking in creativity and just writing the same story again and again. Sadly, the power differentials in the plots are not fictional but historic.

One of the biggest ways these powermongers dehumanize and destroy the Other is by separating families. Divide and conquer. Make it so they must make subhuman, no-win decisions if they do wish to stay together.

This has not been the way of the America of my birth. But especially with Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ May 7 declaration (that every person entering America illegally will be prosecuted and those who arrive with children, will have them taken from them), it is now.

Unconscionable.

Don’t give me that argument that they deserve everything they get because they are breaking the law. It’s false equivalency to equate those whose only crime is illegally seeking refuge with people who have committed additional crimes. If this attempt to access our borders is their first recorded trespass, shouldn’t the punishment be no more than to send them away from our borders?

However, if we are going to insist on prosecuting them, even ignoring that many of those are arriving seeking asylum from violence of many kinds, the additional tactic of separating children from their parents still remains an action similar to the tactics from the pages of evil regimes.

As of late, We the People are being told not to worry about people in high places who ignore ethical boundaries or break laws, maybe even commit high treason, but these people crossing the borders deserve the sentence of losing their children? For the crime of wanting to protect their children?

There has to be a better way to protect our borders without dehumanizing those whom we seek to keep out.

Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, Berlin

I fear for these children and parents. What we are doing to these people makes me especially afraid of who and what America is becoming—please tell me that we are not trying to write our own evil storyline.

Because this is the sort of plot that never should play out in real life in a country such as ours, which has long been a leader in improving human rights. If we act as if the rules of human decency only apply to how we treat our own children within our borders, we need to reconsider who is truly subhuman.

“Culpable (guilty),” whisper the parents in the border courtrooms.

Culpable indeed. This should not be considered a political statement—this is a human rights statement.

What are you going to plead?