The Responsibility Of All Good People

The US government is running concentration camps on our southern border. (If you have any doubts about the truth of this statement, please, please click this link and read the article.) Thousands of people, many of whom are fleeing for their lives, are being imprisoned in these overcrowded camps simply for exercising their internationally recognized right to come to our border in search of asylum. I am not using the term “concentration camp” as a metaphor. I’m not using it hyperbolically to imply that these facilities share some similarities with actual concentration camps. These are full-on, actual concentration camps, by definition, which is the term for the mass detention of civilians without trail. And there are some 50,000 people currently imprisoned in our concentration camps.

These are not (yet) “death camps,” like those the Nazis ran at Auschwitz, although at least 30 people, including 6 children have died in them, but they are concentration camps nevertheless. In fact, the President intends to beginning using a place called Fort Sill in Oklahoma, a place that served as a concentration camp for Japanese-Americans the last time we succumbed to ignorance and fear during WWII. We said “never again,” yet here we are.

But this is about more than mere ignorance and fear: this is about an administration that is engaged in unabashed racist cruelty as policy. And these are not just concentration camps for adults: thousands of children have been kidnapped by these monsters, some as young as four months old, put into cages, and kept from their parents for months on end. Some have reportedly even been given up for adoption to American families. Many are sick. They are living in overcrowded filthy conditions. Perhaps these are not death camps, but this behavior is genocidal, and if we the people allow it to continue, I fear that it won’t be long before we will have actual death camps on our hands.

The President meanwhile makes jokes about shooting them. Funny guy. His is the face of pure evil. These are times of pure evil. And now that you know this, now that you cannot claim ignorance, if you continue to support this man, you are aiding and abetting evil in the same way the so-called “good” Germans aided and abetted the cruel policies of the Nazis. Indeed, even if you don’t support these monsters and their policies, if you remain silent, you too are aiding and abetting this evil. More children will have their lives destroyed, more will die. We cannot distance ourselves from this: it is being done in our name.

We must, each of us, stand up and speak out. Our representatives need to hear from us, our friends need to hear from us, our friends, neighbors, and co-workers need to hear from us. Please use your social media platforms, make phone calls, write emails. Lives have already been destroyed, so in that sense it is already too late, but it isn’t too late for someone. This is not a political matter — it is a matter of the highest moral urgency — but the only solution is political and raising holy hell is the responsibility of all good people.

 

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