Baby Jessica and the Great Debasement

[lostnfound]

Old enough to remember Baby Jessica who fell in the well and the whole country watched CNN for 2.5 days the progress of getting safely out. Oh! The humanity of America! The pride of America! We watched friendly helpfulness everywhere, from Andy Griffith to Charles Ingalls of Little House on the Prairie. Even Sergeant Friday showed earnest humanity. It reinforced our belief that we were a nation that cared so MUCH for the individual, and strived to do the “right thing”.

Hell, even the reports of war in Vietnam were papered over with a veneer of debate about the U.S. responsibility to “free the people of Vietnam from the evil scourge of communism.”

Jessica fell into a cage at the border. A couple thousand Jessica’s fell in there with her, or were pushed; and now they are spread across the country, without ID tags. Now their pictures are being taken —just booking photos? — and some of the faces have tears. Vladimir is probably on the phone with Trump now. “Send me the pictures, child.” Vlad can distribute them throughout the world, proof of America’s debasement.

Vlad wants a permanent monument to the Great Debasement. “How’s that wall coming along, child? You want to be a strong Leader like me, don’t you?” When the Trump presidency ends, a new president might give the impression that Normal was restored to America, after a period of Temporary Insanity, but a militarized wall would be a permanent fixture and a habit instilled.

Then the world will see what Vlad wants them to see. The American Dream buried, the image of America burned, America itself isolated and exposed as a weak, scared bully, not some shining city on the hill.

[lostnfound]

1. In America, we imprison the children of trespassers. Like totalitarian states...

In my lifetime, i remember hearing stories of accidental border crossings into totalitarian states —East Germany, North Korea, or the USSR. Hikers or adventure seekers — “accidentally” wandering across a border. The ones that I knew personally who told of their narrow escapes, and the ones on TV, detained by foreign regimes, imprisoned (“not nice places! Not like American prisons!”) and accused of crimes or held without bail or trial. Hikers, or spies?

In 2018, do not cross into the United States from the south, because you might be picked up, and U.S. prisons are not nice places. Your child may be sent away from you, adopted by someone else, maybe, or he may wander off into hot dry vacant land, never to be seen again.

Do the border guards ask, “which of your two children should we send to Tomillo, and which goes to Michigan? Others do not get a choice, but you are pretty, so i will give you a choice.”

All this, for something that amounts to trespassing.