They Are Taking the Children ...

At the beginning of America's surreal Trumpian journey, doors were being closed to keep out human beings of particular cultures  - in particular Muslims, and now a year and a half later, we are not only still trying to keep those doors closed, but we are ripping children from the arms of their parents who dare to seek asylum in the United States.  It boggles the mind, it breaks the heart, and tragically we seem to be no longer surprised.  The government in Washington is a cruel one, a greedy one, built on layers and layers of lies.  And as all this is going on, citizens are busy trying to find jobs, graduate from school, tend their children, buy good food for their families, pay their bills, take care of their health, and so on.  Life goes on in each state in the union, some of them more immediately impacted by the cruelty of this government than others...  I want everyone to be aware of what our government is doing, no matter where they live.  I do feel like I've been down this road before - yes, as a matter of fact, I remember writing a piece over a year ago where I called out for people to become aware about the closing of our nation's doors, so haunted was I by the eroding of a rational order in a place I wanted to call home.

As I watch the news of families on the border whose children are being taken from them (you might even say "kidnapped"), I can hardly believe my eyes and ears.  We seem to be taking our chauvinism and bigotry to a new destructive level.  We are a country where talk of family values has been prevalent for many decades, where we claim to value the quality of our children's education and health, where great strides have been made on the part of a few to respond to the problems of disadvantaged kids, where we shout out that the escalation of the national debt will be harmful to our children and grandchildren.  If you talked to people across the land, you'd probably get a consensus that taking care of our children is perhaps our most sacred and profound duty.  They are our future.  So, by the way, are the children of the brown skinned people from the southland, from Mexico and Nicaragua, Honduras, Guatemala, and so on.  These children have futures ahead of them as well.  What our border control people are doing at the behest of the federal government is traumatizing thousands of children traveling with their parents who wish to find better opportunities for themselves in America.  We are literally extracting these children from the arms of parents and putting them in detention centers while the parents, most of whom have no criminal history, are being jailed as they wait for determination of their fate.  This is unspeakable, terrifying, ugly  It makes me ashamed to call myself an American.

I happen to take this event personally.  I am haunted by this sad story because I was a child who did not have the benefit of a normal upbringing, whose mother made a number of selfish choices to ignore and disrespect me over many years of my childhood.  I know the consequences of such absence of mothering: an insatiable need for love to the point of irrationality, a tendency for self loathing, substance abuse, fear for one's safety and hyper vigilance that does not allow you ever to just rest in the moment -- and there is certainly more destructive fallout.  There is lifelong damage, but it is not irreparable if one has the right opportunities and support.  I have spent many decades of my later life trying to heal myself and find compassion and self love.  I was one of the lucky ones, you could say.  There are certainly plenty of young people, many treated far more cruelly than myself, who slipped through the cracks and ultimately self destructed.

And now think of these thousands of children from Latin America who are deprived of parental care and love, whose fear at this young age may be with them the rest of their lives.  Fear and uncertainty and absence of love ... where will that take them?  Perhaps into angry and rebellious lives, and the ultimate destruction of an ordered society ... They may well become damaged goods because our government chose to steal their lives from them.

It is time for people of conscience to rise up and stop this from happening. This has nothing to do with political parties or positions, this has to do with what is right and decent as human beings.   Our government is behaving not only illegally, but immorally.  There's no religion in the world that would support or justify this kind of behavior. 

I take this personally, as I said, not only because there's a raw place in my heart about being a neglected child, but also because I see that we as living, breathing sentient beings, as mammals, have as our primary job taking care of the children we bring into the world.  Mammals themselves don't seem to have any problem with this, but then again they are blessed to be free of our mental entanglements, such as greed and hatred and ignorance...  

I take this personally and I feel like crying out for a response.  Let's tell the truth here, lets admit we can still enforce immigration laws without visiting this cruelty upon those from other cultures trying to come here to build lives.  Let's take care of our own -- all of them.  

Think of it.  Over two thousand children in two months as victims.  Is this really our country after all?  Let's ALL take this personally.