As one of the many voices vehemently opposed to the inhumane practice of separating children from their parents at the border, I give you Linda Sharp's latest essay.
Under His LieIn the award winning, yet highly-disturbing-in-its-increasing-probability, series, The Haidmaid's Tale, one of the required Gilead utterances of the maids is "Under His Eye." It is a reminder that someone is always watching, and that "someone" is some backchannel to God.
Basically, it is oppression. A reminder that any step out of line, over the line can mean instant punishment up to and including death.
In the writing of this dystopian tale, author Margaret Atwood made it very clear that she only incorporated behaviors, treatments, aggressions, oppressions, and punishments that this world had already seen practiced in real life. She imagined nothing, simply infused the real life horrors into her storytelling.
The series is stomach churning, nightmarish, and as I said above, disturbing in how quiet echos are being heard throughout our reality these days. The constant attempts to insert God - ONE GOD, THEIR GOD - into what is supposed to be secular governance. The incessant chipping away at a female's bodily autonomy. People who are not white being sent elsewhere. (The series does not depict this, however, the original writing does). The drumbeats to push women and their rights back into the kitchens and delivery rooms. The heinous and proud TRUMPeting that LGBTQIA people are NOT people, that they are lesser than, that they deserve to be targeted.
And now, the administration orchestrated and sanctioned stealing of children from their parents.
These ALL happen in Haidmaid's Tale, which means they have all happened in history. That this one is happening here, in this country that is supposed to be a beacon of light, freedom, civility, and hope? Well, we are damned.
And the fact that every day, Trump tries to shift blame for these actions to someone else?
Well, we are now living Under His Lie.
This repeated verbal shell game of Trump and his lackeys is done with one aim - distract, divert, obfuscate. They are following the Goebbel's playbook of “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it."
Most people are familiar with this quote. But it goes on...
"The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.”
The truth is the mortal enemy of the lie.
That is why it is "vitally important" for the majority - yes, MAGAts, that's right, regardless of that lie he keeps vomiting at you, YOU are NOT the majority - to continue to seek the truth, protect the truth, disseminate the truth.
And the truth is, children are being force separated from their parents, spirited away, and kept in cages.
Yes, Steve Doocy, you piece of sh*t shill - they ARE cages. Despite you trying to split hairs with this bullsh*t: "Some have referred to them as 'cages,' but, keep in mind, this is a great, big warehouse facility where they built walls out of chain link fences."
Hmmm, chain link fence. Enclosed. Cannot get out. I would say the dog is CAGED, Steve.
Hmmm, chain link fence. Enclosed. Cannot get out. I would say they are CAGED, Steve. Only, the dog has it better because he is outside in the fresh air.
The world is watching. And we deserve every bit of condemnation, every knife-through-the-heart descriptor being levied against us. “This is a spectacularly cruel policy, where frightened children are being ripped from their parent’s arms and taken to overflowing detention centers, which are effectively cages,” Amnesty International Americas Director Erika Guevara-Rosas said. “This is nothing short of torture. The severe mental suffering that officials have intentionally inflicted on these families for coercive purposes, means that these acts meet the definitions of torture under both U.S. and international law.”
"This is nothing short of torture."
And the MAGAts who laugh and tweet and comment their bile that these people deserve it because they are all illegal? Look, we know that anyone who supports this outhouse with eyes is soulless, and woefully ignorant. WE KNOW THAT. But the lies they buy, and the ignorance they spread about even the basics is boggling.
In the limited contact outside human rights organizations have been allowed, the truth is shameful.
Amnesty said that the organization had interviewed 17 families who have been separated from their children and found that “all but three of them had entered the USA legally to request asylum.”
ASYLUM IS A LEGAL PROCESS, MAGAts. It means they have presented themselves LEGALLY to this country, to this government. They are following the rules, as much as that truth makes your heads hurt. And they are still having their children stolen.
While this administration's inability to form a coherent story or even a sentence has become legend, they are completely stepping in their own verbal shitdrool with every utterance on this policy.
Trump blames Democrats.
But Jeff Sessions is on record, on CAMERA detailing how this policy will provide deterrent, "If people don't want to be separated from their children, they should not bring them with them."
Melania Trump, she of the very questionable immigration manipulating - genius, anyone? - crawled out of her hidey hole to opine that she "hates" seeing children taken from their parents.
White House neo-Nazi Stephen Miller says “It was a simple decision."
John Kelly blew it off with "children will be 'put into foster care or whatever ." What a guy...
Kellyanne Conway tried to fake being a human while defending the administration with this on the news shows, "As a mother, as a Catholic, as somebody who has a conscience ... I will tell you that nobody likes this policy."
Trump shitweeted this a$$ nugget, "It is the Democrats fault for being weak and ineffective with Boarder Security and Crime. Tell them to start thinking about the people devastated by Crime coming from illegal immigration. Change the laws!"
Again with the Democrats being to blame. For the record, the Democrats are trying to put forth legislation that puts an end to this inhumanity, YOUR INHUMANITY, Donald. And not a single Republican will sign on.
But as to you repeating your lie, Doebbels?
Your own Homeland Security Secretary, Kirstjen Nielsen, who spent her weekend tweeting that the separations are a lie, is now on the record as saying, "We will not apologize for the job we do..." and that despite her ramblings all weekend that the children were not being taken, now says, "They are very well taken care of" according to "some of the highest standards in the country."
I see.
Well, then I challenge every single GOP lawmaker who is defending this policy with the Bible, writing it off as a nothing burger, and now claiming these kids are "well taken care of" to put their own children in these places for a period of four weeks. With just the clothes on their backs. Regardless of age. Male or female. With no notice, no explanation. These children must be caught unawares, and forcefully pulled from their GOPer parents. Tears ignored. Pleas for mommy and daddy must go unanswered.
And you will not be allowed contact for the duration. In fact, as they will become some of the 11,000 children currently in federal concentration camps, you will not even be allowed to know where they are, which state they have wound up in, and who is taking care of them - food, bathing, nurturing, medical needs - NOTHING.
Surely, if there is no cause for all this alarm; if the press is inflating the situation; if the children are being cared for by the "highest standards in the country," you charlatans should have zero problem surrendering your children. No worries about their safety. You won't miss a wink of sleep wondering if the person bathing them is also raping them. So Disney musical-like will be their experience in custody that, hell, you and your spouse may want to take a vacay of your own!
Think of it! Four whole weeks without care. No stories to read over and over. No hours spent preparing meals. No clothes to wash, bedrooms to clean. No cartoon movies to be subjected to repeatedly. No bothersome tears to wipe when they skin their knee. Nothing but freedom, peace, quiet.
What's that? You would miss them? They are your heart? You have to know where they are at all times in order to breathe? You have taught them "stranger danger"? They are autistic? Have diabetes? Are still breastfeeding?
FU*K YOU, and FU*K YOU TWICE.
These are exactly the fears, heartache, and nightmares you have plunged these parents into. The horrors that would fill your mind, fill theirs. The ache that won't let go of their hearts? No different than what would befall yours. The feeling that your limbs have been ripped from your body? THE VERY SAME.
The color of their skin does not change the content of their hearts, the love for their offspring, the 24/7 fears for their safety, security.
The only place it is different is in your morally bankrupt souls, if you have souls at all. In your heartless shells, you do not consider them to be your equal. Because you can afford travel soccer and they dared to birth a child who can only grown up to kick rocks in the street. Because you sleep in a gated community, and they are at our gates seeking asylum. Because your children get Gold Stars in their private kindergartens for counting to ten, while their children get a gold star for waking up another sunrise, for outliving another dangerous night, for living to the age of 10.
Oh, and let's be honest here - because your children are not brown. That is where so much of this horrific policy begins and ends.
I want to see these callous sons of bitches pony up their own children. Ivanka, pick two of yours. Melania, surrender Barron. Paul Ryan - cough up Liza, Charlie, and Sam, you know, your "highest priority"? The ones you waxed rhapsodic about in your tone deaf Father's Day video?
Prove that this entire administration you support is not lying. That every child being forcibly separated from their parents is entering an idyllic existence and the highest standards of care.
You won't. None of you will. Because despite the constant lying, you know the truth. The facts that threaten Trump's and your tenuous hold on power, the spotlight, money.
Here is the truth - reported by another rights worker who is on the ground in Texas trying to assist these people:
Michelle Brane, director of migrant rights at the Women's Refugee Commission, met with a 16-year-old girl who had been taking care of a young girl for three days. The teen and others in their cage thought the girl was 2 years old.
"She had to teach other kids in the cell to change her diaper," Brane said.
Brane said that after an attorney started to ask questions, agents found the girl's aunt and reunited the two. It turned out that the girl was actually 4 years old. Part of the problem was that she didn't speak Spanish, but K'iche, a language indigenous to Guatemala.
"She was so traumatized that she wasn't talking," Brane said. "She was just curled up in a little ball."
Brane said she also saw officials at the facility scold a group of 5-year-olds for playing around in their cage, telling them to settle down. There are no toys or books.
But one boy nearby wasn't playing with the rest. According to Brane, he was quiet, clutching a piece of paper that was a photocopy of his mother's ID card.
"The government is literally taking kids away from their parents and leaving them in inappropriate conditions," Brane said. "If a parent left a child in a cage with no supervision with other 5-year-olds, they'd be held accountable."
Dr. Colleen Kraft, the head of the American Academy of Pediatrics, said that she visited a small shelter in Texas recently, which she declined to identity. A toddler inside the 60-bed facility caught her eye — she was crying uncontrollably and pounding her little fists on mat.
Staff members tried to console the child, who looked to be about 2 years old, Kraft said. She had been taken from her mother the night before and brought to the shelter.
The staff gave her books and toys — but they weren't allowed to pick her up, to hold her or hug her to try to calm her. As a rule, staff aren't allowed to touch the children there, she said.
THERE IS THE TRUTH. These children are being emotionally tortured. If not physically, too. And it is heartbreaking. It is sickening. AND IT IS HAPPENING RIGHT NOW.
Goebbels was right - "the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.”
So you stay comfy under his lie in your self created Gilead, you MAGAT laden GOPers.. Just know that the truth is relentless, as are those of us who will weaponize it against you in November.
