Procrustes' New Bed?
First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a socialist.
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.
---Lutheran Pastor Martin Niemöller (after WWII)
We have already lived through a genocide. According to census.gov, this country is 76.5% white, though no white people are native to what is now called the United States.1 When the first Europeans arrived in these lands, people were already here thriving and flourishing…from sea to shining sea, in fact. Today, as a direct consequence of European invasion, the population of the aboriginal inhabitants has all but flatlined to a mere 1.3%. This represents a 98.7% drop in the original composition of this land’s human inhabitants—an eradication. A genocide has already happened.
100% of white people here are immigrants at best, a scourge at worst.
Virtually every last one of the human beings living in this country has come from some place else. For this reason alone, a national ethos of empathy for the immigrant experience should be expected. To claim that a physical asymptote is necessary to keep certain immigrants out is yet another vile manifestation of the white supremacy upon which this nation is founded. (Why is there no talk of a barrier with majority-white Canada?) The fact that the overwhelming racial majority is white in the U.S., though whites be not native is damning enough evidence that heinous crimes against humanity occurred against this country’s original inhabitants. There was a clearly defined and demonstrated state-supported disruption to the Indigenous’ right to life, liberty and pursuit of prosperity. As well, the reality of the white super-majority should foster some feelings of conciliation among whites, contrition even, for having literally annihilated the First Nations. But that’s the trouble with white supremacy: it has absolutely no self-awareness about its destructive and rapacious behavior, nor does it ever account for the damages it wreaks against others. Instead, it doubles down—and in spectacular fashion—in this case, demanding a physical barrier which would impede entry to a people who are the most racially akin to those whose lands were stolen out from under them by white people in the first place!?!
Mylar blankets and concrete pillows do not suitable crib-liners make; they constitute a crime against humanity. Per Greek legend, the diabolical host ‘Procrustes the stretcher’ extended lodging to weary travelers, entreating his guests to lie down on a bed of iron. Once nestled in, he would restrain the unsuspecting victim then mutilate them to make their bodies fit the length of the bed, either by chopping off the extremities which hung over the edge or affixing some torture contraption to stretch them to fit the bed’s length. His victims always perished. The avenger Theseus, forewarned of the nefarious ‘innkeeper’s’ brutal exploits, lured the sociopath into his own contrivance, then decapitated him; presumably to make his body fit the same bed he made fit all of his victims. Irrespective of whether or not the U.S. government is emulating Procrustean practice, human experience tells us that the way Immigration and Customs’ Enforcement is treating pilgrims at our southern borders is not right. Beleaguered, road-weary children taken from their parents the way veal is separated from beef, or worse still, the way Black families have been torn apart at slave auctions is An. Atrocity. Period. An atrocity, I might add, which is happening right now, on our watch, by a democratic government supposedly run by the people...our government, we the people.
Life teaches us that the human rights’ abuses we spectate can be re-directed toward any of us at a moment’s notice. The very presence of abuse inoculates and may desensitizes society at large to the unconscionableness of it. This is what Nobel Laureate Rev. Dr. M. L. King meant by “injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere”: as we accept wrongdoing in our society, that acceptance—especially via silence—explicitly sanctions its use against others AND implicitly justifies its use against ourselves. Harming someone else because we think we are protecting ourselves is how we invite harm and violence back to ourselves. It behooves all of us to commit to a humanely functioning society upon which we mutually rely for our various pursuits of happiness and prosperity, lest we find ourselves in the gaze of a rogue Big Brother and become the object of the pursuit about which Pastor Niemöller prognosticated.
God bless America: help her to understand AND ACCURATELY ACCOUNT FOR the collateral damage her course of action creates for others, thereby harming herself.
Stand beside her and guide her: building and maintaining a society by placing human beings in captivity is her problem, not her solution.
People do not belong in concentration camps ever, least of all not children.
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1 https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/US/PST045218