We Are So Much Better Than This
Tuesday, my three-year-old exclaimed, “where’s daddy where’s daddy” when she was accompanied unto an escalator by her uncle (my brother), while I used an elevator to take my one-year-old son (who was in his stroller) down one floor to meet them. At the moment, my infant son sometimes grows upset when my wife or I leave his line of vision, even if we are positioned right behind him. Fortunately, these brief periods of dread only last a few seconds. Now, imagine if children sometimes as young as my kids are forcibly ripped out of a parent’s arms and separated from them for a period of days, weeks, months or longer.
No matter if you believe in a wall, open borders or something in the wide swath of real estate that exists in the middle of these more extreme positions, it does not seem too difficult to possess the belief that children should never be separated from their parents, unless the child’s welfare is at stake, or the parent has committed a serious criminal act beyond that of attempting to provide a better life for their loved ones. This ideal should hold true no matter one’s country of origin.
These kids did absolutely nothing to deserve the round-the-clock horror that they are currently enduring. Its both sad and sickening to consider the long standing trauma they will carry with them, once again for something they had absolutely no say in attempting.
Ronald Reagan often described the US as “the shining city upon a hill.” As long as this abhorrent situation is allowed to continue, Reagan’s proverbial light will dim darker and darker with each passing day. We are so much better than this as a country.
