When Donald Trump announced his candidacy by stating those coming from Mexico were rapists and drug smugglers, assuming “some” were good people, meaning most in his mind were not good people, did you speak out against it for the lie that it was, or did you look the other way – or worse, accept that it was true?
When he referred to those arriving at our border this past summer as an “infestation,” were you repulsed by the dehumanizing ugliness of the term, disgusted that words meant to describe rodents and cockroaches were used to describe our fellow human beings, or did you look the other way – or worse, agree it was an apt description?
When we ripped families apart, sending infants and toddlers hundreds and sometimes thousands of miles from their parents, did you suffer a pain in your gut and an aching in your heart for the cruel, inhumane act done in our name, or did you look the other way – or worse, feel it was justified?
And when our government tear-gassed toddlers in diapers at our border, did you recognize we were crossing a line, where our fear and anger at others was turning us violent against mothers, fathers and children, or did you look the other way – or worse, cheer because you felt it was about time?
If you are not, finally, among the repulsed, I need to ask what it will take. When do you say enough is enough? Because this is how it happens. This is how it always happens. First we accuse others of being the source of our pain – our joblessness, our low pay, our crime. Then we paint with a broad brush, telling lies about the evil of those “others.” Then, we begin to see them as something less than human. It makes it easier to accept inhumane acts because, well, how can one be inhumane to one not really human. And all along, we look the other way, or worse we cheer. We are doing it to men, women and children along our border. It’s been done to men, women and children as long as man has created borders real and imagined between us and "them."
How else would nations that gave us Confucius and Tchaikovsky and Einstein fall under the spell of men like Mao and Stalin and Hitler. Simple. They start with small insults, desensitizing us to the larger atrocities to come. And by the time those atrocities come, we don't recognize them for the horrors they are. We are witnessing just such a progression in our own backyard, done in our name. So the question again, is when do we say enough? Is it when we attack children. Is it when we tear them from their parents? Is it when we refer to them as vermin? Or is it when we lie about them in the first place. If you haven’t taken a stand yet, it is not too late. But if you once again choose to look the other way, understand that you are an enabler – and well on the way to becoming just as much an accomplice as anyone in history who chose to simply look the other way.
