Tuesday, June 19, 2018

Slavery by Another Name "MAGA"

Whether or not you blindly support the impulsive and contradictory policies of the Trump administration or not, you would have to admit that the true agenda of Donald Trump has manifested itself. Trump ran on and some would say won the Election of 2016 by having a “Zero Tolerance” policy against immigrants. Don’t kid yourself, we are talking about immigrants from what Trump described as being from “Shithole” countries.

I had heard about the caravans of immigrants making their way through Mexico from Central America for months. John Kelly and Jeff Sessions have done interviews where they laid out the official policy of the Trump administration as to how they would deal with this inevitable problem. Make no mistake about it, it’s a problem. Now that we’ve concluded that we have a problem, let me offer a few observations based on comments and actions I have observed as this catastrophe of public policy has unfolded.
The overwhelming question is, “How will the kids be reunited with their parents?” I’ve concluded, “Never.” How soon do we as a nation forget, or perhaps refuse to acknowledge that this country was founded on the backs of slaves?

The Constitution that we claim to uphold to this day has a 13th  Amendment that clearly states that slavery is still legal when it comes to those who find themselves incarcerated. Under slavery when a child was separated from their parents, there was never a provision to have them reunited. The Native Americans who had their children taken away were never reunited. If you can admit that this is true, my question is, “What makes you think that these kids will ever be reunited with their parents?”

With the news constantly covering the plight of the detained kids the fact that Trump is in the process of rolling back the Child Labor Laws is getting no coverage. They repeat the refrain, “What’s going to happen to the kids?” If Trump is successful in taking our Child Labor Laws back to a time when farming was the prominent engine of the economy, it wouldn’t take you very long to surmise that these kids will be a source of cheap labor.

You can call it adoption or whatever fancy name you want to give it but, these families from Central America didn’t give their kids over to be sold (adopted) as slaves. Neither did the parents from the continent of Africa or an Indian tribe that was driven off their land. I choose to call it what it was called from the creation of this country, "Slavery."

Surely this may sound absurd to you but, electing Trump as president was absurd to me. Can we admit that absurdity has a way of becoming American policy? Of course, you can admit that. And if you can’t, well you just might be the genesis of this present problem by helping to elect a man as president who told everyone from the first political speech he ever gave.  You remember, “Mexico is not sending their best, they’re sending rapist, they are bringing drugs etc. etc. etc.”