So here we are, waiting patiently and watching what the government is doing to reunite children with their parents who have been separated at the border. The government said all it would take was a few key strokes and they could immediately identify which children were where and get them reunited. Interesting comment considering that we are now past the court mandated timeframe within which the government was mandated by the court to reunite the 102 children under the age of 5 with their parents. They had a month to do it, and only managed to reunite around 54 children by the deadline.
They have resorted to taking DNA samples from children and parents to try to match them up in a database because the process they used to separate these children from their parents didn't take into consideration the reunification process, so in most cases they have no idea which children match up to which parents.
Instead of the President taking a more compassionate approach to the obvious problem the government is having with the reunification of parents and children, he simply used his bully pulpit to say that if they don't want this to happen, they shouldn't come to the United States illegally. No compassion what-so-ever for these families or children came out of the President's mouth, which truly shows that he could care less of what is happening to those who in most cased fled persecution to try and start over in a place where they wouldn't be in constant fear. They arrived in the United States, in many cases told by people where to cross the border, looking to turn themselves in and seek asylum. But the government hasn't treated them as asylum seekers. The government and the President have treated them as the rapists, drug dealers, and murderers Trump has so many times said they are. I'm sorry, he did say that "some of them are probably good people". Saying that only infers that the President looks at these people, as a whole, to be horrible people who have done unspeakable things; which is in no way close to the truth.
So here we are, months into this ordeal, with a President who signed an Executive Order saying they wouldn't separate families and would reunite those families already separated. They have thousands of children still separated from their families. They have parents who have been deported already and sent back to the horrors from which they fled, but without their children. They have no idea how to fix the mess they started, and to this day still blame everyone beside themselves for the problem. The Obama Administration and Bush Administration chose to keep families together when possible, and they did.
It was the Trump Administration that decided to enact a Zero Tolerance Policy by which every family crossing the border would be separated and prosecuted for the misdemeanor crime of border crossing. It was the Trump Administration that made it clear they were using this new tactic to act as a deterrent for those seeking to come to the United States. It was the Trump Administration that didn't have a plan in place to reunite families. It was the Trump Administration that showed no humanity in their approach. It was the Trump Administration that just sent Mike Pence South to make a speech to those from these countries people are fleeing; telling the people to not come to the United States.
How about we look at this from a larger more all-encompassing perspective. Instead of telling people not to flee their home countries, we look at how many people are fleeing and ask ourselves, "Why?" Why are they fleeing and walking thousands of miles to try and save their families? They are doing so because their family members are being killed, their children are being killed, their families are starving and unable to find enough food to stay alive, and these things are happening to them because the governments of the countries they come from are tyrannical.
The right answer to this problem isn't to tell people not to flee. The right answer is to gather the developed countries of this world, our allies (or the allies we still have left after Trump began his isolationist campaign with the world), and formulate a plan to address the horrible and inhumane things that are occurring in these countries, causing people to flee in fear for their lives.
Instead, our government wants to tell the people to stay where they are and let it all sort itself out. How can we be a country with no heart or humanity? How can we have forgotten what the United States of America truly stands for?
It is rare that I ever shed a tear, but recently I have found myself hurting because of what is happening to these people. They cannot help where they come from. They cannot change the situations they find their families in...unless someone lets them. When the greatest country on Earth fails to show them any compassion what-so-ever, what are they to do aside of return from where they came and face dying from starvation or at the hands of their tyrannical governments?
I am sick to my stomach right now thinking about what my own damn country has become. We are divided, and there are millions of people in my own country who are perfectly good with what is happening. How is that possible? How can anyone look at what is happening in our government and be perfectly fine with it all? Where in the hell have our morals gone? Where is our heart and our humanity?
Then I recently talked with someone who is completely fine with everything that is occurring, and their retort was, "We don't take care of our own homeless. Why would we help these people who have never contributed to us at all?" First, there are organizations in almost every major city and many smaller cities and communities filled with volunteers who continually offer clothing, meals, healthcare, education, training, and other opportunities to the homeless in the United States in the hope it will get them off the streets and back into society as contributing, employed citizens. No, it isn't perfect and we could do a lot more from a governmental perspective, but our citizens; doctors, lawyers, other healthcare and mental healthcare professionals, and regular citizens, continuously volunteer to make the lives of our homeless better. Most of these families coming here because they are fleeing horrible lives, don't have food even slightly equivalent to the food our homeless communities receive in the United States. They have lost family members to the corruption in their countries, and have been threatened further loss of life if they would ever choose to stand up against the tyranny. There is no comparison here, and we are acting like we have no humanity left right now as a country.
The President is proud of how "manly" he is and how gruff he can be. A comedian, Steve Hostetter, once talked about his father who has since passed away, and how his father had always said, "Being Manly has nothing to do with strength. It has everything to do with strength of character." This is an area our current administration is severely lacking. There is a complete lack of character right now in Washington. The President, many of his Cabinet and others who surround him, and those in his party in Congress who refuse to call him out for what he says and does are all complicit in everything that happens in this country.
These children and their families are no less important than any of us. Just because they aren't Americans and just because they haven't contributed to our country doesn't mean they are less important as human beings. Set politics aside for a moment and look at it from a perspective of what is right, what is humane, and what is loving.
Remember as well that this country wouldn't exist if it weren't for immigrants fleeing situations they were in and wanting freedom. Also remember that our past isn't so perfect. We nearly decimated an entire race of people who called what is now known as the United States their home. In 2018, we should be better than this. We should be in a place where the treatment of people is more important to us than it is.
The President is going to meet with Putin very soon, and to this day, he has not talked about Putin as an adversary or enemy of the United States. Pence just went through an interview where he was directly asked if he could call Putin an adversary and he refused to. That is not where our leaders should be. Putin is a horrible man who has meddled in elections around the globe, to include the 2016 Presidential Election. He has forcibly taken over lands, shot a plane out of the sky, continued to poison people with nerve agents, etc. He is an enemy. He is an example of a tyrant. Why can our leaders not vocalize that. They seem to be able to vocalize their hatred for our allies, but not for our enemies. That, to me, is greatly concerning, as is the fact that the President is going to have a private meeting with Putin, during which he will likely stroke Putin's ego and talk to him as if he is the best thing since sliced bread, just like he did with the North Korean dictator (that's right, dictator).
Back to the children and families separated at the border. There is a need for compassion and understanding to take hold in Washington. Until that occurs, we will head ever closer to the isolationist country Trump seems to want to make us into.
To those families affected by this Trump Policy, I am so sorry for what you are going through right now. No parent wants to be separated from their children; especially with no guarantee of when you may ever see them again. There are millions of us who feel for you and wish you the greatest life you can possibly live. We are all pulling for you, for what that is worth.
DUNK
They have resorted to taking DNA samples from children and parents to try to match them up in a database because the process they used to separate these children from their parents didn't take into consideration the reunification process, so in most cases they have no idea which children match up to which parents.
Instead of the President taking a more compassionate approach to the obvious problem the government is having with the reunification of parents and children, he simply used his bully pulpit to say that if they don't want this to happen, they shouldn't come to the United States illegally. No compassion what-so-ever for these families or children came out of the President's mouth, which truly shows that he could care less of what is happening to those who in most cased fled persecution to try and start over in a place where they wouldn't be in constant fear. They arrived in the United States, in many cases told by people where to cross the border, looking to turn themselves in and seek asylum. But the government hasn't treated them as asylum seekers. The government and the President have treated them as the rapists, drug dealers, and murderers Trump has so many times said they are. I'm sorry, he did say that "some of them are probably good people". Saying that only infers that the President looks at these people, as a whole, to be horrible people who have done unspeakable things; which is in no way close to the truth.
So here we are, months into this ordeal, with a President who signed an Executive Order saying they wouldn't separate families and would reunite those families already separated. They have thousands of children still separated from their families. They have parents who have been deported already and sent back to the horrors from which they fled, but without their children. They have no idea how to fix the mess they started, and to this day still blame everyone beside themselves for the problem. The Obama Administration and Bush Administration chose to keep families together when possible, and they did.
It was the Trump Administration that decided to enact a Zero Tolerance Policy by which every family crossing the border would be separated and prosecuted for the misdemeanor crime of border crossing. It was the Trump Administration that made it clear they were using this new tactic to act as a deterrent for those seeking to come to the United States. It was the Trump Administration that didn't have a plan in place to reunite families. It was the Trump Administration that showed no humanity in their approach. It was the Trump Administration that just sent Mike Pence South to make a speech to those from these countries people are fleeing; telling the people to not come to the United States.
How about we look at this from a larger more all-encompassing perspective. Instead of telling people not to flee their home countries, we look at how many people are fleeing and ask ourselves, "Why?" Why are they fleeing and walking thousands of miles to try and save their families? They are doing so because their family members are being killed, their children are being killed, their families are starving and unable to find enough food to stay alive, and these things are happening to them because the governments of the countries they come from are tyrannical.
The right answer to this problem isn't to tell people not to flee. The right answer is to gather the developed countries of this world, our allies (or the allies we still have left after Trump began his isolationist campaign with the world), and formulate a plan to address the horrible and inhumane things that are occurring in these countries, causing people to flee in fear for their lives.
Instead, our government wants to tell the people to stay where they are and let it all sort itself out. How can we be a country with no heart or humanity? How can we have forgotten what the United States of America truly stands for?
It is rare that I ever shed a tear, but recently I have found myself hurting because of what is happening to these people. They cannot help where they come from. They cannot change the situations they find their families in...unless someone lets them. When the greatest country on Earth fails to show them any compassion what-so-ever, what are they to do aside of return from where they came and face dying from starvation or at the hands of their tyrannical governments?
I am sick to my stomach right now thinking about what my own damn country has become. We are divided, and there are millions of people in my own country who are perfectly good with what is happening. How is that possible? How can anyone look at what is happening in our government and be perfectly fine with it all? Where in the hell have our morals gone? Where is our heart and our humanity?
Then I recently talked with someone who is completely fine with everything that is occurring, and their retort was, "We don't take care of our own homeless. Why would we help these people who have never contributed to us at all?" First, there are organizations in almost every major city and many smaller cities and communities filled with volunteers who continually offer clothing, meals, healthcare, education, training, and other opportunities to the homeless in the United States in the hope it will get them off the streets and back into society as contributing, employed citizens. No, it isn't perfect and we could do a lot more from a governmental perspective, but our citizens; doctors, lawyers, other healthcare and mental healthcare professionals, and regular citizens, continuously volunteer to make the lives of our homeless better. Most of these families coming here because they are fleeing horrible lives, don't have food even slightly equivalent to the food our homeless communities receive in the United States. They have lost family members to the corruption in their countries, and have been threatened further loss of life if they would ever choose to stand up against the tyranny. There is no comparison here, and we are acting like we have no humanity left right now as a country.
The President is proud of how "manly" he is and how gruff he can be. A comedian, Steve Hostetter, once talked about his father who has since passed away, and how his father had always said, "Being Manly has nothing to do with strength. It has everything to do with strength of character." This is an area our current administration is severely lacking. There is a complete lack of character right now in Washington. The President, many of his Cabinet and others who surround him, and those in his party in Congress who refuse to call him out for what he says and does are all complicit in everything that happens in this country.
These children and their families are no less important than any of us. Just because they aren't Americans and just because they haven't contributed to our country doesn't mean they are less important as human beings. Set politics aside for a moment and look at it from a perspective of what is right, what is humane, and what is loving.
Remember as well that this country wouldn't exist if it weren't for immigrants fleeing situations they were in and wanting freedom. Also remember that our past isn't so perfect. We nearly decimated an entire race of people who called what is now known as the United States their home. In 2018, we should be better than this. We should be in a place where the treatment of people is more important to us than it is.
The President is going to meet with Putin very soon, and to this day, he has not talked about Putin as an adversary or enemy of the United States. Pence just went through an interview where he was directly asked if he could call Putin an adversary and he refused to. That is not where our leaders should be. Putin is a horrible man who has meddled in elections around the globe, to include the 2016 Presidential Election. He has forcibly taken over lands, shot a plane out of the sky, continued to poison people with nerve agents, etc. He is an enemy. He is an example of a tyrant. Why can our leaders not vocalize that. They seem to be able to vocalize their hatred for our allies, but not for our enemies. That, to me, is greatly concerning, as is the fact that the President is going to have a private meeting with Putin, during which he will likely stroke Putin's ego and talk to him as if he is the best thing since sliced bread, just like he did with the North Korean dictator (that's right, dictator).
Back to the children and families separated at the border. There is a need for compassion and understanding to take hold in Washington. Until that occurs, we will head ever closer to the isolationist country Trump seems to want to make us into.
To those families affected by this Trump Policy, I am so sorry for what you are going through right now. No parent wants to be separated from their children; especially with no guarantee of when you may ever see them again. There are millions of us who feel for you and wish you the greatest life you can possibly live. We are all pulling for you, for what that is worth.
DUNK
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