By Mickey Friedman
December 18, 2019
I read that the word “poor” appears 2,000 times in the Bible. It appears once in Emma Lazarus’ sonnet inscribed on our Statue of Liberty: “Give me your tired, your poor/Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.”
How’s that coming? Your tired, poor, huddled masses yearning to breathe free?
No better time for an accounting for Uncle Sam than the holidays.
Like everything in Trumpovia, up is down, right wrong, while yesterday seems years gone by. The bipartisan agreement that even though there will always be cheaters, through no fault of their own, there are poor people amongst us who deserve our help, now seems some vague delusion. So too the bipartisan acknowledgment that we are a nation of immigrants has slipped into irrelevance. Pompous politicians, sniveling Fox commentators puff themselves up to pretend their people somehow preceded the natives. No messy transatlantic voyages. No potato famines. The immaculate reception. Their people never needed help. Always white. Always well to do.
These lies enable the new indifference. The newfound mythology. Because Make America Great Again is really a call for a new culling. Sweep away those in need. Wall out the huddled masses yearning to be free.
Who better to issue the clarion call than the buffoon-in-chief, the silver spoon impostor child who never worked a hard day in his life. Private schools, chauffeurs, a private cook, a 23- room mansion as a child, and then when he finally had his own business, gifted with hundreds of millions, and comforted by the knowledge his father Fred would always cover his losses.
And yet every failure has multiplied his arrogance. He actually imagines himself superior to those who work harder, read more, know more, and most of all care more.
And it is to our ever-multiplying shame that so many have accommodated themselves to this corrupt con. Prostrating themselves, willingly surrendering good sense to the comfort of the sad herd. With every Lock Her Up chant, with every coordinated call to Build The Wall, a little bit of the best of America dies.
Because it takes a hardened heart to sit by and watch as children are wrenched from the arms of their parents.
Just a few days before Thanksgiving we learned from the Washington Post how miserly and cruel we are becoming. Can you read this without blushing: “As influenza spread through migrant detention facilities last winter, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommended that U.S. Customs and Border Protection vaccinate detained migrants against the virus, a push that CBP rejected, according to a newly released letter to Congress …
“In the months after CBP rejected the recommendation, at least two children — one in El Paso and one in Weslaco, Tex. — died after being diagnosed with the flu in Border Patrol custody, autopsy reports showed. Influenza outbreaks in Border Patrol detention facilities continued through May, sickening hundreds of people, including agents and detainees.”
It is now OK to let children die of the flu – that is, if they’re not white and fleeing poverty and violence. Vindictive enough to endanger the Custom and Border Patrol personnel who work with these immigrants.
Sadly, this is not the most shocking development. In 2018, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) apprehended more than 100,000 families for illegal entry. From May 5 to June 20, 2018 DHS adopted a Zero Tolerance Policy to refer for prosecution all adults illegally entering the United States.
According to NBC News, the Inspector General of DHS “found that the Trump administration anticipated it would separate 26,000 children if the ‘zero tolerance’ policy of 2018 had been allowed to continue, and that the agency knew it lacked the technology to track and reunite children with their parents.”
In fact the Inspector General admitted “because of these IT deficiencies, we could not confirm the total number of families DHS separated during the Zero Tolerance period. DHS estimated that Border Patrol agents separated 3,014 children from their families while the policy was in place. DHS also estimated it had completed 2,155 reunifications in response to a court order …
“However, we conducted a review of DHS data during the Zero Tolerance period and identified 136 children with potential family relationships who were not accurately recorded by CBP. In a broader analysis of DHS data between the dates of October 1, 2017, to February 14, 2019, we identified an additional 1,233 children with potential family relationships that were not accurately recorded by CBP. Without a reliable account of all family relationships, we could not validate the total number of separations, or reunifications.”
Let that sink in. What does it mean that we didn’t keep track of family relationships? That we separated kids from parents without a way to bring them back together? Couldn’t reunite families?
How is that any different from kidnapping? How sad that Family Values Uncle Sam has become Uncle Scrooge.
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Uncle Scrooge was first published in the December 12, 2019 issue of the Berkshire Record.