I had a nice post set up for y’all about my long, winding trek towards becoming a writer. I never expected to write professionally and I’ve done (and continue to do) a lot of different things.
This isn’t that post. Nor did I ever see myself writing about this. Others already have with greater cogency and eloquence while I tend to get all stuttery and repetitive. But it’s frivolous and oblivious to let this week past without commenting on current events.
As I type this ICE agents are separating kids from their asylum-seeking parents at the U.S. border. There’s no law mandating this and the UN and a slew of others in power oppose this policy but the Trump administration justifies it, denies it, and blames it on others in turn, per usual. You can Google your news source of choice to double-check me; if it doesn’t bother you I imagine you’ve quit reading by now anyway.
For some reason this latest outrage puts me on alert in a way that previous Trump excesses haven’t. I can’t articulate why. Maybe it’s the corralling of people in prison-like facilities when they’ve done nothing wrong (asylum-seeking is perfectly legal). Maybe it’s that ICE won’t tell them–or us–what they plan to do with these children in the long term. Maybe it’s that ICE agents are blatantly lying to detained parents about where their kids are and when/whether they’ll see them again.
There’s more than a whiff of Japanese internment about this and it makes my skin crawl. It reminds me of other corralling done in the past as well, and that makes my blood run cold (and that sounds so paranoid that I can’t believe I typed it).
I could make righteous noises of “this isn’t America” except it demonstrably is, historically and ongoing. But it’s not what America aspires to be, and a country should aim for its ideals, however lofty.
I’m sure some of y’all are bothered that I “got all political”. To each their own; I hope you come back for the craft and weird next week. But please understand that some of us can’t afford to ignore what’s going on. I could spout clichés about “canaries in the coal mine” and “this is how it starts” but really: this is how it starts.
I’ve called my representatives for all the good it will do: in a blue state it amounts to little more than an “attaboy”, and when my senator’s already working against child detainment and it’s still not enough it’s disheartening as hell.
And before you accuse me of histronics let me say: I hope I’m wrong. Hopefully by the time this post goes live one of the bills reuniting families will have passed. Maybe the Powers That Be will listen to the protesters at the border. Perhaps public outrage will count for something.
But I’m scared none of this will make a difference.
I want to go back to my cheery posts about weird history and editing, and will most likely next week. But I can’t afford not to pay attention or pretend everything’s ok. It’s not.
