The way certain politicians manage to rile up some people’s resentment against a vulnerable minority scapegoat never ceases to amaze me.
Recent headlines of children being taken away from their parents at the southern border in the U.S. have stunned sensible people with a shred of compassion in their souls for fellow humans.
Following international outcries of concern, the U.S. president reversed course, despite initially claiming his hands were tied.
Last week, video and audio from a holding facility — essentially a converted big box store warehouse-style building — showing wailing and sobbing children detained in large fenced-in pens crying for their parents shocked many people around the world.
Struggling to hold back beaming enthusiasm with what can only be described as restrained jubilation, U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions gleefully announced not long ago — citing cherry-picked Bible verses as justification — a policy to separate children from their parents. People who are all too often fleeing rampant drug war fuelled violence throughout Central America, seeking a safe sanctuary in the so-called Land of the Free.
Critics have pointed out the verses quoted by Sessions were once used as a justification for slavery. Others remind us the verses are taken out of context and ignore other calls found within the Bible’s pages to love our neighbours as well as show compassion to those in desperate need.
Former first lady Laura Bush spoke against the policy as reminiscent of Second World War Japanese internment camps.
“I live in a border state. I appreciate the need to enforce and protect our international boundaries, but this zero-tolerance policy is cruel. It is immoral. And it breaks my heart,” she wrote in a column published by the Washington Post.
“Our government should not be in the business of warehousing children in converted box stores or making plans to place them in tent cities in the desert outside of El Paso. These images are eerily reminiscent of the internment camps for U.S. citizens and noncitizens of Japanese descent during World War II, now considered to have been one of the most shameful episodes in U.S. history.”
Even first lady Melania Trump has decried — through a spokesperson — the deplorable tactic of tearing apart families, and that while the U.S. is a land of laws, the country should be governed with heart. However, perhaps not surprisingly, she propagates her husband’s divisive propaganda that the issue is somehow bi-partisan.
Despite Sessions’ announcement — which clearly places responsibility for the recent actions on the U.S. administration that could cease and desist without congressional approval — the president still manages to lay the blame fully at the feet of Democrats, who remain all but powerless in a Republican majority government anyway.
Arguably most disconcerting of all are some of the comments posted in social media discussions on the matter. While many are indeed appalled, no shortage of others seem to believe traumatizing otherwise non-violent individuals who seek nothing more than to work hard for a better life is not only perfectly palatable but totally warranted.
So much for the Statue of Liberty’s “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.”
Pitting the poor against the poor while giving the wealthy lavish tax breaks is the political version of the old military maxim to divide and conquer.
Whether in America, Canada or anywhere else in the free world, we cannot allow our humanity to be subverted by divisive rhetoric that depicts struggling masses of desperate people as nothing more than mere criminals who deserve contempt.
Because if we sacrifice our humanity, what do we even stand for anymore anyway?
