The Weaponizing of Children

I’ve had it.

For a year or two now, I’ve had civil conversations with friends who support Trump. We’ve discussed his policies reasonably and at length. They’ve offered valid reasons for the policies they like. I’ve agreed with some. And vice versa.

I learned that most Trump voters had two primary reasons for supporting him: they hated Hillary Clinton and they thought the system was rigged in favor of “liberal elites”.  I didn’t disagree. To me it was a matter of choosing which crook to vote for.

It’s all part of our democracy.

What isn’t part of our democracy is what our leaders are doing to illegal immigrant children.

Call me a bleeding heart liberal, but tearing children away from their mothers and fathers isn’t American. It is cruel and vicious. It tortures child and parent. It is psychopathic.

Our President is weaponizing children to strike fear in the hearts of any family thinking of crossing into the US illegally.

What if it happened to you, President Trump? Would you or Melania like to see Barron yanked away and not know where he was taken, or what would happen to him, or when you’d see him again? Would you still puff and strut?

How about you, Attorney General Jefferson Beauregard Sessions, III? Suppose people had taken Mary Abigail, Sam, and Ruth away from you when they were little? Would you keep that phony smile?

Or you, Kirstjen Nielsen, Secretary of Homeland Security? Would you and your husband like to have your kids hauled away? Oh, that’s right. You don’t have a husband. Or kids. That figures: connecting with someone emotionally requires empathy, which you clearly don’t have.

We’d have to reach back to WWII and Roosevelt’s internment of Japanese Americans to come even close to what Trump and his minions are doing to these families.

No. Wait! There was an actual war then and the country was scared of anything Japanese. There was something of an excuse, weak as it was.

No. Wait again! Roosevelt didn’t separate Japanese kids from their parents. He actually kept the Japanese families together – even in the internment camps.

We’d have to go back to the 1930’s to find the last time someone tore children from their parents’ arms, back to Hitler and the Nazi’s. That’s when trainloads of Jews arrived at concentration camps and children were immediately taken away, most never to be seen again.

If referring to the Holocaust seems like a stretch, Google: dr. seuss 1941 cartoon adolf the wolf.

You’ll see a grandmother type reading to two frightened kids: “…and the wolf chewed up the children and spit out their bones. But these were Foreign Children and it didn’t really matter.”

Note the “America First” slogan on her shirt.

Note the drawing style. Yes, that Dr. Seuss.

Stephen Miller, one of the Trump advisors behind the weaponizing of children, was a Jeff Sessions’ advisor before joining Trump’s staff.

Here’s a scary fact: Stephen Miller is Jewish.

You know what is really scary? With a few exceptions, our Republican leaders, from Senator McConnell to Speaker Ryan to Senator Toomey of PA, – every one of them – has been downplaying, ignoring, or outright denying the immorality of treating people this way.

They aren’t leaders; they’re cowards, focused only on keeping their power.

They’ve been too busy genuflecting to their Don to stand up for children.

Just for a minute, Mr. and Ms. Republican, just for a minute, let’s forget about politics. Let’s forget the Clintons’ hijacking of the Democratic Party, over-regulation and over-taxation, climate change and all the other issues.

Just for a minute, imagine that some son-of-a-bitch just took your kids from you.

Imagine the horror, the freezing fear, the boiling rage.  Imagine getting your hands around the neck of any of the people who did that to your kids, to your grandchildren, to any child.

Now, hold onto that horror, hold onto that fear, hold onto that rage through the November election and maybe even 2020.

Take those feelings to your voting booth and throw out every single politician who supported – even for a moment – weaponizing children.

Democrats and Independents may be disorganized, weak-willed, regulation happy, do-gooders, and all the rest. But they don’t do this to children.

Yes. I’ve had it. And I hope you have, too.

(If you like this, pass it on. If you don't, pass it on anyway. Why should you suffer alone?)