When you create your own problems, you ignore reality. Some of you may know I am a big fan of the original melodramatic Perry Mason courtroom dramas, that starred Raymond Burr. In season four, episode twenty-two, Perry was illustrating how logic is sacrificed to the needlessly complicated. Donald Trump has suggested subverting the Constitution to solve a self-created crisis at the border. Instead of accepting the clear facts, people are seeking refuge in the United States to save the lives of themselves and their children, he is doing what he always does, create an alternative reality. Conservatives are purposely making it an unnecessarily hard concept to conceive of because it runs into conflict with the reality of America’s immoral history.
This is not America…
Over and over I have heard pundits and teeth gnashing critics say, ‘this is not America.’ I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but this is; America. We practiced genocide against the native American, we enslaved Africans, created Jim Crow and interred Japanese-Americans. Sure, eventually we were dragged into decency and many, personally, regretted their moral turpitude, but separating children from parents and violating the humanity of “the other” is nothing new to the U.S. The Chinese, the Jews, the Irish and the Germans would also dispute some of the historical fairness of the so-called country of inclusion.
There is a special pain for people of color who literally cannot blend into the complexion of America. The Tea Party’s meaning of, “I want my country back” is being manifest in their latest white supremacist hero, Donald Trump. White racist feel so comfortable they are planning a victory march in the Nation’s Capital to gloat over the successes of their new-found leader’s policy. Mr. Trump and his defenders will tell you the President denounces these folks, but their own leaders will tell you what their misguided logic dictates, “We are determined to take our country back. We are going to fulfill the promises of Donald Trump. That’s what we believed in, that’s why we voted for Donald Trump. Because he said he’s going to take our country back. That’s what we gotta do, “said self-described Klan leader David Duke.
Necessity is the mother of invention…
People have clung to leaky boats, walked, traveled in boiling hot trucks across deserts, hid in the trunks of cars and bicycled, if necessary, to reach the safety of America’s shores. Speaking of bicycles, back to Perry Mason. The counselor was talking to his private eye Paul Drake and relayed the story of a suspected smuggler who bicycled across the Mexican border weekly carrying a heavy burlap sack. The young man would pedal over the border and walk back home. The border guards watched this for three weeks. Finally, they stopped him checked his bag and it was full of sand. They analyzed the bag for drugs, but nothing. They let him go back to Mexico. The next week the same thing. On the third week the guards were frantic and yelled at the kid, “we know you are smuggling, what is in the sand?” The kid smiled and said, nothing it is just sand I use as a pillow, I smuggle bikes to feed my family. Accept what you see Mr. Trump these people just need help.
Vote in ‘18 for Change.