As I wrote yesterday, our disgrace as a nation is highlighted nowhere brighter than in our apprehension of people seeking asylum at our southern border. The disregard for their fear, their reasons for flight, their health, their family units is beyond shameful. And as one facility after another is filled to overflowing, we continue to stack these humans like so much cord wood.
Yet as this particular section of Rome burns around us, we have spent the past week distracted not by their treatment, but by a squabble over nomenclature. It is clear what these places are, what they have been turned into, what they represent. They are concentration camps. Yet that term seems to have made GOPers who support them pissy.
Too fucking bad. As my mother always said, "If the shoe fits, wear it."
For those ignorant - willingfully or otherwise - about the history we are seeing repeated, maybe pictures will get a few things through to you:
- People were rounded up based on one defining characteristic. Then Jewish, now brown.
- The children were separated from the adults upon arrival. Same/same.
- They were treated like garbage, forced into overcrowded facilities. Same/same.
- Conditions were frigid or oppressively hot. Same/same.
- Hunger, thirst, fear were daily realities. Same/same.
- Disease, infection, death spread easily. Same/same.
- Sexual abuse was rife. Same/same.
Those that cheered Der Fuhrer cheered all of it. Same/same.
The parallels are ominous. Hell, as you can see, in many cases, it is not just a parallel, but a complete overlap.
There has been a systematic chipping away at the humanity of these people. As each abuse is reported, our society, as it has become to Trump's continuous stream of lies, has become inured to what is taking place. Drip, drip, drip. Chip, chip, chip. This is how it starts, this is how it evolves, this is how it happens.
That there are millions in our midst who cheer this on, seeing not people in peril, crisis, in need, but to quote their Fuhrer: "animals", "mongrels", "rapists", "the worst".
This child was not an animal. She was not a mongrel. She was not a rapist, an MS-13 member. And the only thing about her that was "the worst"? The way we treated her. Her name was Jakelin Caal Maquin - a six year old child from Guatemala. She was denied water, care, despite the pleas of her father, the obvious signs of physical crisis she was exhibiting - vomiting, lethargy. She died because she was not seen as human by the guards. And the MAGAty base see only a brown "thing", not a child.
Earlier this month reports came out that Trump was discontinuing English classes, recreational programs and legal aid for the children in our custody. So now they sit, cramped, crowded, hungry, alone, sick. Who will save them? Speak for them?
And yesterday, Trump Justice Department lawyers appeared in the Nine Circuit Court and actually argued that the government is not required to give soap or toothbrushes to children apprehended at the U.S.-Mexico border and can have them sleep on concrete floors in frigid, overcrowded cells, despite a settlement agreement that requires detainees be kept in “safe and sanitary” facilities. (WaPo reporting)
What in the actual fuck? How do these people sleep at night? Forget that question - they sleep fine after brushing their teeth, taking a warm soapy shower, and climbing into an actual soft bed.
All three judges were incredulous at the arguments being made in this regard.
“You’re really going to stand up and tell us that being able to sleep isn’t a question of safe and sanitary conditions?” U.S. Circuit Judge Marsha Berzon asked.
“Are you arguing seriously that you do not read the agreement as requiring you to do anything other than what I just described: cold all night long, lights on all night long, sleeping on concrete and you’ve got an aluminum foil blanket? I find that inconceivable that the government would say that that is safe and sanitary.” - U.S. Circuit Judge William Fletcher
Think about that as you brush your teeth today. As you pull back the comforter tonight and snuggle in.
Today comes the AP report from lawyers that were permitted in to interview many of the 250 children being kept in a facility outside El Paso that the conditions are inhumane. A group of girls, age 10-15 caring for an ill 2 year old boy because no one else will. The little boy wasn’t wearing a diaper and had wet his pants, and his shirt was smeared in mucus. They said at least 15 children at the facility had the flu. The children also report having been fed uncooked frozen food or rice and had gone weeks without bathing or a clean change of clothes.
Imagine YOUR 2 year old, sick, alone, filthy, and his only hope for comfort are other neglected, frightened children. Don't tell me your insides don't begin to die at the thought.
“In my 22 years of doing visits with children in detention I have never heard of this level of inhumanity,” said Holly Cooper, an attorney who represents detained youth. “Seeing our country at this crucible moment where we have forsaken children and failed to see them as human is hopefully a wake up for this country to move toward change.”
Acting Customs and Border Protection Commissioner John Sanders admitted this week in an interview that children are not being cared for properly, and added that detainee capacity is considered to be 4,000 people in custody in our various concentration camps. We currently have over 15,000.
Let that sink in.
So we take these children, many unaccompanied minors, many kidnapped from their parents' arms, and deny them even the basics - KNOWINGLY DENY THEM CARE. We let their teeth begin to rot, their stomachs cry from hunger pains, allow bruises to form from laying on hard concrete, allow treatable infections and illness to lead to their deaths, and brutalize them with freezing cold conditions and a piece of aluminum blanket to huddle beneath.
All the while Trump and his disgusting supporters are cramming their corpulent maws with Whoppers and KFC.
And they call themselves Christians. Listen to these children desperately crying for their parents. Then tell me where your Christianity is at. Tell me about this "god" you purport to worship that sanctions treating the least among us this way.
I wrote a few months ago that these people do not actually believe in God. I don't care how hard they clutch their Bibles or how often they fart in a pew in church. They are heathens putting on a show. Because if they actually believed in their Good Book; if they actually feared their actions here on Earth; if they actually practiced what Jesus preached - they would live in constant fear for their souls in the afterlife.
Because they would know where these actions of theirs are leading them. And Hell is not big enough for all of them at this point.
They believe in one thing - CRUELTY.
Cruelty is the god they believe in, the altar at which they worship. They care only about being able to openly, gleefully hurt others they deem unworthy, unlike them, different, ANIMALS.
Which is why they prop up and cheer for Trump. Trump gives them permission to let all their bigotry, racism, hatred, and violent inclinations flow. They are in love with hurting others. They are cruelty crackwhores. They are over the moon that they get to openly lash out.
The irony here is that the immigrants are not the animals, the mongrels, the worst - THEY ARE. And deep down, they know it.
Which is why they defend the indefensible.
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