Nurse the Hate: The Trouble With History

The problem with being relatively well read is having a grasp of history.  Those who do not know history are doomed to repeat it, which makes life temporarily more stress free for everyone watching reality TV shows right now.  As the nation slides further into authoritarianism, most of the population is willfully disengaged.  This is maybe best illustrated by our government deciding on a policy to take children away from their parents, placing them in detention centers and stripping these children of their sense of safety.  This is, in effect, torturing children.  Regardless of how you feel about immigration policy, snatching away the kids from someone desperate enough to try and cross the border is plainly wrong. 

Why there aren’t angry mobs of torch wielding citizens outside of their representatives’ homes is primarily because most of the population can’t be bothered to engage with the scenario.  If a truckload of cops took kids from Upper Middle Class Elementary, put them in a cage, and didn’t allow their parents access to them, that would likely get their attention.  However, as these are faceless brown people, that allows deep seeded racism to lurk below the surface of the “law and order” façade.  “Well if they didn’t break the law, then...” just doesn’t cut it to permit torture of children.  There is no scenario in which this is right. 

It seems impossible that we are allowing this to happen.  A minority voted in this dictator and the Congress is complicit in allowing behavior that directly crosses what we pretended were our shared values.  We have always had the self-perception of being The Good Guys.  Yet, here we are.  This is a scene that is reminiscent of Nazi Germany, the great “Darth Vader” of modern history.  While maybe six months ago making comparisons to National Socialism was considered reactionary, we have firmly stepped into this neighborhood.  There is a line that has been crossed and it won’t be easy to go back.  It’s who we are now and it must be owned.

When history turns its unforgiving eye back on these years, I don’t want to be part of the “I didn’t speak up for the immigrant children because I was not an immigrant child” crowd.  Maybe we no longer live in a country that has any empathy.  The values or lack thereof being demonstrated in all our names has no connection to my belief system.  I can't seem to change anything, so I'm along for the ride right now.  Maybe we can change this with a vote this Fall.  Or maybe not.  Maybe there is too much momentum in the wrong direction.  History does tend to repeat itself.