I wrote the following on November 26, 2018. The United States had just tear gassed refugees and immigrants crossing our border.
I honestly can’t stomach this anymore.
We kidnapped children from families coming to us for help. And, while there was some outrage, there were those who said it was the families’ fault. It wasn’t. They came for help. They were met with the most horrible thing you can do to any parent.
Now we’re tear gassing people. This was outlawed in 1993, because it’s an inhumane weapon that doesn’t discriminate between intended targets and bystanders… or children.
I have seen people laughing about this. I had to drop a thread altogether because there were people blaming the parents who were fleeing for their lives, and they honestly thought my outrage was funny. It isn’t.
The argument is that they can come, but they must do it legally. The legal argument is an effort to give cover to the fact that what we are doing is patently immoral. It was illegal to help a slave escape in 1850. But it was the right thing to do. Slavery was legal, but it was wrong. It was illegal to hide Anne Frank in your attic in 1939. But it was the right thing to do. Nazism was legal, but it was wrong. It is, in some states, illegal to feed homeless people. But it’s the right thing to do. Preventing people from helping others is legal, but it’s wrong.
There are many laws that are good laws because they protect us. It’s illegal to kill me, or to steal my car, or to rape someone. I’m in favor of those laws. They protect us.
I don’t need to be protected from a family crossing a line. They pose no threat to me. If they come in and hurt someone, by all means, stop them. But crossing that line hurts no one. And to greet people who come for help with tear gas instead of with open arms is the height of immorality.
I don’t want to hear that we don’t have the resources to help them. Of course we do. To believe otherwise is to buy into the oligarchy’s plan to make us fight with each other over the scraps of food they drop on the floor, while they pile up cash in offshore accounts and laugh at us. The refugees, the poor, those who need help are not a threat to you. They are not the ones keeping you from a good life. That would be the ones with the power. And so long as we keep supporting them, they will keep suffocating us.
What we are doing at our border is wrong. To believe otherwise is to delude yourself.
What will I do? I’m doing it. I’m speaking out as loudly as I can. “But, if you’re so worried about them, why don’t you let them come and live with you?” If your house is on fire, I can’t put it out. I pay taxes, though, so someone can. If you need to get to work, I can’t build you a road. I pay taxes, though, so someone can. If you are being attacked, I can’t help you. But I pay taxes so someone can.
If people need help, and I am in a position to give it to them, I will. I just offered someone our extra room if she needs it because it’s all I can do. I don’t have a single dollar to my name today. But what I have is a voice. What I have is a talent for writing. Those are what I have to offer. The Little Drummer Boy could play. I can write. We give what we have to help those who need it. We don’t attack those in trouble.
I hope you understand.
If you need a reminder of what happened, there are two links in the transcript that will take you through the details. One if from the BBC. The other is from NPR. These are traditionally two of the most objective media outlets.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-46355258
Last week I talked a little about Legalism, or the idea that adherence to a strict set of laws or religious beliefs is the way to define moral behavior. I find it to be an excuse for doing what we know is wrong. The argument that they can come, but they must do so legally, is a textbook example of the moral cowardice of Legalism.
We need to stop seeing laws and start seeing people. These are human beings coming for help. They are often hungry and homeless. They have been threatened by drug cartels. They have been victims of violence. And our response is that they have to wait until they have filled out the proper paperwork and had it stamped by the appropriate authorities? That’s simply wrong. They could be your parents. They could be your children. They share most of their attributes. And we should care about them as we care about our own families… because they are part of our family.
I spent last night reading comments from a supposed economist who was extolling the genius of Thomas Sowell and Adam Smith to explain why our Capitalist economy is the best of all possible worlds. It’s just an unfortunate side effect that this economy is filled with people trying their best to make ends meet. They work 2 or 3 jobs just to pay rent, but, by all means, let the markets regulate themselves. There are hundreds of thousands of homeless people sleeping on the streets and shivering in the cold, but that’s just sort of too bad, because if we tried anything else, it would certainly be worse.
I won’t accept such arguments. I will be the first to admit that I am nothing resembling an economist. I know next to nothing about how economies work. I don’t know the science. All I can see are the results. And the results of our economic system are appalling.
We need to stop seeing numbers and start seeing people. When children don’t have a warm bed, the economy isn’t working. When children are put into cages, the immigration system isn’t working.
In simplest terms, people matter more than money. People matter more than arbitrary laws that keep them from the help they need.
Part of the problem, I think, is that we have global markets, but we lack any global government to regulate them. This allows corporations to wield enormous power without anything to stop them. If one country taxes them, they simply move their money to another. If one country forces them to pay a living wage, they move their jobs to another. And the exploitation goes on.
We have borders to protect us from others coming to our country and taking advantage of us. But… what if we had no borders, anywhere, at all? What if we recognized that there is no Them; we are all Us? What would this mean?
It would mean an effective one-world government that benefits everyone. If we had a global democracy, we could distribute global resources to where they are most needed without dealing with borders that keep help from getting where it is most needed.
Democracy comes from the Greek terms “Demos,” meaning “people,” and “Kratia,” or power. It is the idea that people have the power to rule themselves. We’ve been trying to get Democracy right for more than 2,500 years, and we still haven’t managed it. I believe this is because governments are subject to the will of other governments, and they must compete with one another for supremacy. Authoritarian dictatorships frequently create stronger militaries, and Democracy can’t fight them effectively.
Instead of fighting each other for control of what Carl Sagan aptly described as a “fraction of a dot,” we should work toward having a global democracy that works for all of us instead of giving all the advantages to the wealthy.
This is not what The United Nations does now. That’s a collection of governments, and participation is entirely voluntary. The UN has no power to enforce its policies. It has little voice in governments who exploit or oppress their own citizens. Its function is mostly symbolic.
I don’t have details for you about how to accomplish this. I’m sorry. I’m not nearly intelligent enough to design such a government. But I can give you some ideas that would help to shape it.
Its purpose must be to help all people. Its representatives should be elected by popular vote. Everyone needs to be allowed to vote without interference or coercion. It should ensure that all people get the healthcare they need. It should ensure that education is freely available. It should see to it that everyone has a warm bed and decent food to eat. A government of any kind that does less is a failure to the extent that it falls short of these goals.
I leave it to better minds than mine to work out the details. And better minds than mine will become increasingly common as education becomes more readily available.
So, how do we solve The Problem of Immigration? We remove all the borders that separate one country from another, and we become one planet composed of one people. We recognize that we are all travelers on this rock tumbling through space. We work together to better ourselves and the rest of humanity instead of trying to create stacks of bits of green linen and cotton that, themselves, are becoming less and less common. We use currency less frequently all the time, and now we are transferring most of our money electronically. There are more and more places that decline to accept cash. I had thought this was illegal, but the federal reserve tells us it’s not.
There is no federal statute mandating that a private business, a person, or an organization must accept currency or coins as payment for goods or services. Private businesses are free to develop their own policies on whether to accept cash unless there is a state law that says otherwise.
Section 31 U.S.C. 5103, entitled “Legal tender,” states: “United States coins and currency [including Federal Reserve notes and circulating notes of Federal Reserve Banks and national banks] are legal tender for all debts, public charges, taxes, and dues.” This statute means that all U.S. money as identified above is a valid and legal offer of payment for debts when tendered to a creditor.
https://www.federalreserve.gov/faqs/currency_12772.htm
This means it’s more difficult for people who don’t have bank accounts to get any help. If I give a homeless person a ten-dollar-bill, they can’t necessarily take it to a coffee shop to get something to eat anymore. Currency is losing its value. The world is becoming much more for those who have, and much less for those who have not.
We need to stop making decisions about people based on their place of birth, their gender, their race, the color of their skin, or their sexuality, and instead we see that there is much more that unites us than divides us. We must recognize that everyone is someone’s son or daughter, just as you and I are, and that hurting them means making miserable not only them but the people who love them. We see every child as we would see our own children, and we grant them the love they have earned simply by showing up on Earth.
Hatred has reigned long enough on Earth. Why not try Love for a while? Let’s see how that works out.
Fred's Thoughts 