Five hundred forty-five children, separated from their parents at the border, cannot be reunited with their parents. It wasn\u2019t in the middle of some natural disaster, and the parents didn\u2019t commit some murderous act. No, by intentional policy of the Government of the United States, children were taken from parents. They committed the misdemeanor offense of crossing a \u201cline in the sand\u201d, and the Government failed to maintain adequate records to put them back together. Some were babies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
They are now called the \u201cunreachables\u201d. The children went into the \u201csystem\u201d, from Customs and Border Control in the Department of Homeland Security, to the Office of Refugee Resettlement in the Department of Health and Human Services. They were scattered throughout the nation. Meanwhile the adults were deported to their home countries. There was no tracking process to maintain a connection between the two, and those kids were simply lost to their parents. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
There was a debate in the Trump Administration about the policy, the plan to \u201cdeter\u201d migrants by taking their kids when they arrived in the US.\u00a0\u00a0The \u201chard-ass\u201d Trump appointees thought it would scare migrants into not trying to get here.\u00a0\u00a0But the pros in the \u201cdeep state\u201d that dealt with illegal immigration for year had a real understanding of the problem.\u00a0\u00a0Conditions were so bad in Central America that whatever the \u201cdeterrence\u201d offered by US Border Control couldn\u2019t hold a candle to the gang violence and economic ruin there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And the \u201cpros\u201d also warned that their system would be overwhelmed with the children. Before it even happened, they said we would \u201close\u201d kids. But the Administration went ahead with their plan, and for five hundred and forty-five kids, destroyed their lives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
If any other country did this, Americans would rise up in \u201crighteous anger\u201d over the crimes against these children. But this is not some \u201cwar crime\u201d committed in a far away desert or jungle. It happened in American towns like McAllen, Texas and Nogales, Arizona. It\u2019s happened under the \u201cStars and Stripes\u201d in the \u201cland of the free and the home of the brave\u201d. And we aren\u2019t completely sure it\u2019s not happening now. We don\u2019t seem very brave. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
There are so many outrages committed by the Trump Administration that it\u2019s hard to keep track of them all. He started his campaign for the Presidency by blaming \u201cMexicans\u201d as rapists and drug dealers. His first days in office he tried to ban a religion from entering the United States, the \u201cMuslim Ban\u201d. And for the last four years the President has appealed to our worst fears, blaming \u201cbrown people\u201d for a whole variety of \u201cwrongs\u201d. Trump incites and encourages the evil strain in America: from \u201cfine people on both sides\u201d at Charlottesville, to telling the \u201cProud Boys\u201d to \u201cstand back and stand by\u201d, to pretending his doesn\u2019t know what QAnon is.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But for these five hundred and forty-five children and thousands more, the Trump Administration has in the name of the United States, ripped them from their parents. It doesn\u2019t get any uglier than that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When they say that this election is about \u201ccharacter\u201d, it\u2019s not just about whether the President lies (over 20,000 times according to the Washington Post) <\/em>or hides his taxes. It\u2019s not just about a President who constantly denigrates anyone who criticizes him, but seems to take particular pleasure in attacking women, from Nancy Pelosi to Leslie Stahl. It\u2019s not even about a man who says wearing facemasks will help control the pandemic then ridicules those who actually wear them. <\/p>\n\n\n\n No this is the true \u201ccharacter\u201d issue. Donald Trump leads a Presidency that has no moral compass. They are willing to do literally anything to pursue their policy goals. They ignored COVID. His White House has \u201ccozied\u201d up to the worst dictators in the world, from Putin to Erdogan to Duterte to Kim. And they sat around a table and chose to drag innocent children out of the arms of their parents. It was a vote, only Homeland Security Secretary Kirstin Neilsen, who was well aware of the consequences, voted no. But the rest pressured her to change her decision. <\/p>\n\n\n\n There have been so many mistakes, and there is so little time to correct them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Americans are taught from an early age that our founding story, from heroic immigration to the Revolution, is exceptional. We were raised on Ronald Reagan\u2019s \u201cshining city on a hill\u201d speech: the United States as the example of democracy to the world. We acknowledged the failures in our past, from slavery to internment camps, but vowed to be better in our present and future. <\/p>\n\n\n\n But there is nothing \u201cexceptional\u201d about tearing children from their parents\u2019 arms. It is cruel, barbaric, and desperate. It represents the worst of us, not our better angels. And that is decision we need to make in the next two weeks. Americans need to decide what kind of \u201ccharacter\u201d we want in the leader of our nation. More importantly we need to decide what kind of character we have ourselves. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Exceptionalism<\/h3>\n\n\n\n