OPEN HEARTS AND CLOSED GATES
By Trevor K. McNeil
Every Human Heart
Humans are complex creatures. What we say, and what we want, do not always dovetail with our actions. I think that we, for the most part want to do good and are essentially empathetic. Which is why I was so crushed to see what has gone on in recent days and weeks at our southern border. Quite aside from the President of the United States apparently thinking that dignity can be bought, something he is not even honest enough to admit, which is bad enough in itself, what is going on at the border, just for a moment, made me question my faith in humanity.
Not in Our Back Yard
We are all familiar with the images by now. Makeshift tents row upon row, people just trying to get through the day, children playing in spite of it all. Pretty typical in terms of refugee camps. Long panning camera shots and concerned looking correspondents being fixtures of cable television. Still, whoever would have thought that such camps would be constructed at the border of the United States? It is a mental disconnect I don’t think most of us are able to cope with, refugee camps being something that happens “over there.”
It’s Sad….But
Exactly where “over there” is I am not sure, but certainly not here. It is a similar case with terrorism. Up until 2001, regularly occurring, high-casualty terrorist attacks while sad, were things that happened to other people who weren’t like us, in other countries very different from ours. Which explains our surprise when a team of foreign actors, operating completely under the radar managed to murder 3,000 Americans on American soil with very non-conventional weapons. Which is probably why there were people at the time who said it was the only time America had been directly attacked. Apparently forgetting about Pearl Harbor. We simply didn’t see it coming. Sort of like how the indigenous Natives of the Americas literally could not visualize the future result of those first landings by European galleons. It was a sight so far outside their experience that their brains simply could not process it.
