I've been trying to stay away from politics, because no good ever comes from politics on social media.
But I'm going to make an exception in this case, because the issue isn't so much a political one as a moral one.
I speak, of course, of the situation at our borders, where young children are being detained in cages for the crime of crossing the border with their parents.
The Internet is inundated with false equivalency over this outrage. It was Clinton's law. Obama did it. The Republican's hands are tied. Single parents who go to jail or prison have their children put in foster care, and what's the difference?
All of these attitudes make me want to vomit, because they DON'T FUCKING MATTER.
Does the fact that this execrable law was enacted under a Democratic president make the suffering of these families less acute?
Does the fact that a Republican president chose not to enact policy of this nature under the same set of laws mean that this travesty is less immoral, less heartless, less egregious?
Does the fact that unaccompanied minors who attempted to cross the border illegally were also detained under a Democratic president mean that putting 1st graders in cages without access to their families is less abhorrent?
No. It does not. Those kids - and their parents - give not two shits whose "fault" it is. They don't care if self-righteous so-called Christians are justifying this atrocity because they can't bear to check their privilege and feel some compassion for brown people. They don't care if faith leaders all over the country are calling for this practice to be discontinued on moral grounds. They don't care if the perpetrators are Democrats, Republicans, or Independents. They care that their kids are being abused by the state, they care that they're scared, they care that they have no idea what will happen to them as families.
And that's what we should care about, too.
I'm not saying we should ignore illegal immigration. I'm not saying we shouldn't care about the integrity of our borders.
What I am saying that those concerns, in this specific case, should be secondary to being decent human beings, to protecting the moral integrity of our country as an institution, to being committed to preventing child abuse, not perpetrating it.
Why the fuck are we arguing along party lines about "who started it," and "I know you are, but what am I," and "You're a Nazi, I'm not a Nazi?" Within the context of this crisis, it's incredibly counterproductive, and leaves those children in an untenable situation while we point fingers and bitch at each other like The Real Housewives of America.
What's happening at the border is immoral. It's inexcusable. It's horrifying. It's against what this country supposedly stands for. It's wrong, and no amount of false equivalency and partisan bickering is going to make it right.
So how about we, as citizens, demand our leaders rescind the policy of May 2018 directing this atrocity to occur? Can't we, as Americans, put aside our politics for one damn minute and do the right thing by these children? Can't we contact our representatives, our Senators, and demand action upon pain of losing their offices?
The bipartisan support for such action gives me hope. But these days I'm more of a disillusioned cynic than not, so I suspect the answer is "no." And our continued refusal to hold our government accountable for our country's immoral acts continues to break my heart, every minute of every day. Because our failure means that us, all of us, are complicit. To our everlasting shame.
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