Month: June 2018

Our first wave of immigrants were Europeans. The Native Americans weren’t happy. Some people think their mistake was tolerating it in the first place.

The second wave was from Africa. Immigrating here wasn’t exactly their idea, but those European slave hunters were very insistent. In fact, during the first five or six decades, there were more blacks in the south than whites.

The delegates to the Constitutional Convention of 1787 tried to resolve the issue of rights for the second and third waves, but they couldn’t decide whether to endorse slavery or abolish it. The southern stare depended on slaves for farming.  Also, there was that numbers problem; they were fearful of a black uprising. The northern states didn’t have a farming or numbers problem, so they wanted to abolish slavery.

That’s the first time immigration became a race issue.

There was also a population issue; there were fewer whites in the South than the North. If the South counted blacks as non-persons, the North would control the country.

That’s the first time race and immigration became a combined issue.

The Constitutional Convention solved the population issue by declaring blacks 3/5ths of a human being. Efficient, huh? But they put off a decision on slavery, so anger festered for the next 70 years until the Civil War, where 620,000 died, the equivalent of 7.6 million today.

Everyone denies racism exists today, but there is still lots of arguing about how blacks (and other races and ethnicities) fit into the culture. And the dividing lines are pretty close to where they were 170 years ago.

Immigrants generally come in waves. From the Irish to the Italians to Jews to Mexicans to South and Central Americans, racism and immigration have combined to be major problems.

How many immigrants do we allow in? From where? What ethnic or religious or national groups?  Do we accept based on merit or need? Lots of questions.

Interestingly, even though we are a nation of immigrants, we’re also a nation of NIMBY’s (Not In My Back Yard).

Immigration has worked quite well for the country: Albert Einstein Werner Von Braun, Irving Berlin, Sergey Brin, Levi Strauss, Joseph Pulitzer, Madeleine Albright, Oscar de la Renta, to name just a few.

We have Italian-American governors and Mexican-American mayors, an Irish-American (and Catholic!) and a black President. We have an Indian American UN Ambassador. We almost had a Jewish VP. And there are too many immigrant descendants in down-tickets to count.

Each time a new group came in, the current groups resisted. Often the resistance was based on fear of “others” and the strangeness of their ways. They were called “dirty ___’s” (fill in the epithet), because very often they were dirty, living in ghettos in places like New York, Boston, or San Francisco.

Then, eventually, they all climbed the ladder of success to one extent or another – in business, science, education, the arts, and government and they did fit in. As they moved up, the “dirty” was dropped, and then, eventually, also the “_____” epithet. After that final acceptance, they could start applying their own epithets to the next wave.

Today, there is a virtual tsunami of immigrants, legal and illegal. The illegals aren’t waiting for permission, as others before them did, because they’re not just coming here for a better life; they’re escaping war, cartels, and genocide. So now, in addition to the normal resistance to “others”, there is anger at them for breaking our immigration laws, for pushing their way into the country uninvited. Over the last several decades, this wave has come so fast, we can’t control it’s flow or speed.

In response our governments have been doing what our first government did – putting off decisions.

So here we are, a nation of immigrants who still can’t decide what to do about immigrants. Oh, and that early issue of blacks? They’ve been 5/5ths of a person since the Civil War, but often in name only. And the dividing lines now? About the same as then.

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I stopped by a dog park the other day. There were poodles, shepherds, labs, terriers, hounds, big dogs, little dogs – and all kinds of mixes – playing together. Once in awhile, one would annoy the other and there would be some snapping. But it would end as soon as it started. They ran around in twos and threes and then changed groups, played tug of war with sticks, sniffed each other (and everything else), or just happily rolled in the grass. Dogs are great, aren’t they?

I’ve had it.

For a year or two now, I’ve had civil conversations with friends who support Trump. We’ve discussed his policies reasonably and at length. They’ve offered valid reasons for the policies they like. I’ve agreed with some. And vice versa.

I learned that most Trump voters had two primary reasons for supporting him: they hated Hillary Clinton and they thought the system was rigged in favor of “liberal elites”.  I didn’t disagree. To me it was a matter of choosing which crook to vote for.

It’s all part of our democracy.

What isn’t part of our democracy is what our leaders are doing to illegal immigrant children.

Call me a bleeding heart liberal, but tearing children away from their mothers and fathers isn’t American. It is cruel and vicious. It tortures child and parent. It is psychopathic.

Our President is weaponizing children to strike fear in the hearts of any family thinking of crossing into the US illegally.

What if it happened to you, President Trump? Would you or Melania like to see Barron yanked away and not know where he was taken, or what would happen to him, or when you’d see him again? Would you still puff and strut?

How about you, Attorney General Jefferson Beauregard Sessions, III? Suppose people had taken Mary Abigail, Sam, and Ruth away from you when they were little? Would you keep that phony smile?

Or you, Kirstjen Nielsen, Secretary of Homeland Security? Would you and your husband like to have your kids hauled away? Oh, that’s right. You don’t have a husband. Or kids. That figures: connecting with someone emotionally requires empathy, which you clearly don’t have.

We’d have to reach back to WWII and Roosevelt’s internment of Japanese Americans to come even close to what Trump and his minions are doing to these families.

No. Wait! There was an actual war then and the country was scared of anything Japanese. There was something of an excuse, weak as it was.

No. Wait again! Roosevelt didn’t separate Japanese kids from their parents. He actually kept the Japanese families together – even in the internment camps.

We’d have to go back to the 1930’s to find the last time someone tore children from their parents’ arms, back to Hitler and the Nazi’s. That’s when trainloads of Jews arrived at concentration camps and children were immediately taken away, most never to be seen again.

If referring to the Holocaust seems like a stretch, Google: dr. seuss 1941 cartoon adolf the wolf.

You’ll see a grandmother type reading to two frightened kids: “…and the wolf chewed up the children and spit out their bones. But these were Foreign Children and it didn’t really matter.”

Note the “America First” slogan on her shirt.

Note the drawing style. Yes, that Dr. Seuss.

Stephen Miller, one of the Trump advisors behind the weaponizing of children, was a Jeff Sessions’ advisor before joining Trump’s staff.

Here’s a scary fact: Stephen Miller is Jewish.

You know what is really scary? With a few exceptions, our Republican leaders, from Senator McConnell to Speaker Ryan to Senator Toomey of PA, – every one of them – has been downplaying, ignoring, or outright denying the immorality of treating people this way.

They aren’t leaders; they’re cowards, focused only on keeping their power.

They’ve been too busy genuflecting to their Don to stand up for children.

Just for a minute, Mr. and Ms. Republican, just for a minute, let’s forget about politics. Let’s forget the Clintons’ hijacking of the Democratic Party, over-regulation and over-taxation, climate change and all the other issues.

Just for a minute, imagine that some son-of-a-bitch just took your kids from you.

Imagine the horror, the freezing fear, the boiling rage.  Imagine getting your hands around the neck of any of the people who did that to your kids, to your grandchildren, to any child.

Now, hold onto that horror, hold onto that fear, hold onto that rage through the November election and maybe even 2020.

Take those feelings to your voting booth and throw out every single politician who supported – even for a moment – weaponizing children.

Democrats and Independents may be disorganized, weak-willed, regulation happy, do-gooders, and all the rest. But they don’t do this to children.

Yes. I’ve had it. And I hope you have, too.