Take a close look at this photo. A young immigrant girl crying for her parents, from whom she was ripped away. Regardless of your political affiliations, if you are unmoved by this photo or some of the audio that has been released of these young children sobbing for their moms and dads, then you lack the very things that makes us human: compassion.
Since April, the trump administration’s “zero tolerance” policy toward immigrants crossing the border has resulted in thousands of children – some as young as a few months old – being separated from their parents. There are now 2,300 children (and probably more) who have been put in detention centers (an old Wal-Mart among them), tent cities, and foster homes all over the country. Their chances of being reunited with their parents are nil.
Whenever I hear any of this news, I am sickened. This is how life was in the early days of Nazi Germany. In the event that you find that sentence ridiculous or extreme, I encourage you to read this article in slate.com. It’s harrowing.
From Slate: “In the days since U.S. border protection agents released video of immigrants being kept in cages, and the first detained children began arriving behind the barbed-wire fences of a new government camp at Tornillo, Texas, people across the country have been struggling over how to think about what the Trump administration is doing. Some, horrified by the images and a leaked recording of children plaintively crying for the mothers and fathers from whose arms they’d been torn, have drawn comparisons to concentration camps of the past—particularly the most notorious ones of all, those of Nazi Germany in the 1930s and 1940s.”
Conservative writers and pundits, of course, balk at the parallels. But from the beginning of trump’s tenure, we’ve been moving toward this moment. It started with the Muslim ban, then Charlottesville, then the glorification of dictators – Putin, Kim Jung un. And now this, using young immigrant children as political weapons because he wants funding for his stupid border wall.
Slate goes on: “When Adolf Hitler came to power in 1933, he made no secret of his intentions to punish those he viewed as enemies, stamp out “undesirables,” and restore an imagined Teutonic greatness of the past. His government built its first concentration camp at Dachau just over a month after he became chancellor, to house political opponents of the new regime. Hitler knew the histories of Spain, Britain, and the United States. He had experienced the strategies of stripping citizenship from and forcibly imprisoning civilian populations during World War I. As he consolidated power, his staff ramped up pre-emptive arrests of anyone it deemed a target or threat, gaining confidence with every step.”
Many of these children are being kept in “cages.” According to Huffington Post, children at at least 3 detention centers report abuse. This whole cruel fiasco is a white Nationalist agenda and it’s beyond me how anyone can support this maniac and excuse such an inhumane policy, as many so called evangelicals do. This zero tolerance policy was planned, with the administration already ordering 20,000 more cots for these detainees back in April when the policy was implemented.
What they didn’t plan on was how the media has seized on this and how horrified most Americans are by what’s happening.
This isn’t a cultural war issue, like the Muslim ban or forcing NFL players to stand during the national anthem.Or about bad-mouthing blacks, Latinos, women. It’s about children. And how ironic that the republican party, who claims to be the party of family values, remains largely mum.
This fiasco is trump’s Hurricane Katrina. And I hope to hell it unravels his presidency.
A bright light at the end of this country’s darkness: For several years, our highest and best spiritual psychics said that America would suffer a president who will be the AntiChrist but who will have millions of followers. Donald J. Trump. Yes. These truly psychic individuals, including the wonderful Edgar Cayce, (The Sleeping Prophet), stated that after the final reign of the anti-Christ president, he will be replaced by a Christed president. I believe this with everything in me, and I absolutely have the conviction that Trump is the anti-Christ. His reign may be brief, or it may last, Time will tell. And I am not a Christian although I do embrace certain Christian concepts and doctrines, and this is one that I most embrace, Much better days are coming. I KNOW it. I FEEL it, and I hold onto it as a Truth. We must suffer fools before our
Christed leader arrives . I’m not being a PollyAnna. I absolutely accept this and am keeping it in my heart because I sense it as valid, and Trump is the personification of EVIL. Let us focus on the person who will ultimately bring LIGHT back into our country, abolishing the blackness in which we now are suffering, especially our little ones.
What about our young generation? They’re growing up in this new “ normal” era. Their views are bound to be influenced by the constant message that people are good people or animals depending on their color, their country of origin and their religious beliefs. This is así Germany all over again. My mother was 16 in Nazi Germany when the war ended. What she was taught couldn’t be unlearned, just hidden.
Interment camps. Nazi Germany for sure. I sensed this from the beginning about trump and his swamp. Now we have the early evidence
This is the most despicable thing ever, and it IS heartbreaking and sickening. After the 2016 election, I remarked: “This is historical: America has elected its first dictator.”
And I was right. Now this is what they get for electing a goddamned Nazi. I hope they’re happy with themselves.
What’s next? Camps for journalists? Dissenters? People who aren’t white??
There is a scene in the movie Schindler’s List exactly like the video above. That doesn’t bother anybody in the White House or Washington? Are they ALL soulless bureaucrats?
I remember. Politicians have selective memories and trumpies don’t give a damn.
And then we have Melania’s jacket, which in glaring white letters stated “she didn’t care” as she visited the children in the detention camp. I feel like we’re living some kind of weird topsy turvy dimension where all that is right is wrong and all that is wrong is right.
Yeah, the jacket! What an insensitive idiot.
I think it goes way beyond insensitivity. I think it was the middle finger to the US in its entirety. She really does not give a damn about any of us, including those children. She is a model who married for money and now hates the life she has to live because the donald won the White House. I think she is going to have to leave New York when it’s over, however.
I was trying to be nice, but I agree. She’s an idiot who doesn’t have any more compassion or humanity than he does.
I spent the morning of the Summer Solstice today standing before a big former hotel in Tucson, one that no one is allowed entry into, in which some of those children are being kept. By 10 we had to leave because it was over 100. We held signs that said things like “Our Border is Not a War Zone”. There were about 20 of us. Right here in my home town. Most of us were grey hairs, but I was heartened to see a few young people, and even some kids and teenagers. A lot of people honked at us to show support, but I was also depressed to hear people yell at us about how “they deserve it”, even a man who screamed “they should be shot”. Yeah. So much for the “it can’t happen here” thing.
So now our sociopathic lying “president” has suddenly, after blaming the “democrats” for everything, said it’s ok, the kids will be reunited with their parent. But read the fine print – they’ll be held “indefinately”. This is the same charming “leader” who thinks that some Nazis are “very fine people”. Oh, America. I am so sad for what has happened to you.
I find it appalling that people yelled that. I don’t understand this hatred. And what’s truly pathetic is that has really tapped into such deep-seated racism that is so ultimately cruel and inhumane.
It’s about diversion and scapegoating. That’s what fascists always do, they find a minority group to scapegoat as they rabble rouse and divide the country. What is disgusting is that these are the most defenseless, pitiable of people, desperate people who have come here seeking sanctuary. And trump and his despicable followers even want to scapegoat children. I cannot express how ashamed I am of being an american right now.
And btw, I see a photo of our former porn star “first lady” going to visit the migrant children, with a jacket that says “I don’t care, do u?”. You can’t make this up. She must have been reading the “Life and Times of Marie Antoinette”.
All the signs are there.
Lauren — Thank you for doing that. Rachel Maddow said last night that some people are asking for citizens to please contact them if they find any of the children, so that they can crowdsource as complete a map as possible. I thought that was just fantastic. I can’t remember the contact info, but it should be findable. Thank you, again, for what you did.