What Are We Doing?

Today at her daily press briefing (lol) Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders defended the cruel separation of parents from children by saying “It is biblical to follow laws.”

Two things.

1. No it isn’t.

2. It’s not the law to steal children from their asylum seeking parents and stuff them in prison camps.

The Bible can be vague on certain things. Jesus speaks in lots of parables and word games, but on this, Jesus is explicit and clear:

Matthew 25:35

“For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed meFor I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me.”

Luke 10:27

“And he answered, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself.”

The Hebrew Scripture (Old Testament) is even more explicit:

"So you too should love the resident alien, for that is what you were in the land of Egypt." Deuteronomy 10:19

Furthermore,  it is explicitly not biblical to follow unjust laws, or to hide behind law as a smokescreen for other heinous actions. See: the healing of the man on the sabbath (Mark 3:1-6) and the exceedingly specific woes upon the Pharisees (Luke 11:37-54, Matt 23:1-39).

My point, here, however, is not to argue with the twisted fundamentalist distortion of the Christian scriptures. 

My point here is to ask:

What are we doing?

Kids—eight month old babies, being ripped away from their parents, separated from their siblings, and thrown into an old abandoned Walmart, shuffled past a mural of Donald Trump with a vaguely ominous and nonsensical slogans and given strictly enforced times to run around, eating in mess halls that look like prison cafeterias.

Children  have been “taken “by Border Patrol agents who said they were going to give them a bath. As the hours passed, it dawned on the mothers the kids were not coming back.””

I’ve been blogging into the wind long enough to have no illusions that this will be read by more than six people, but what else can I do? I sit here and I see what is happening and I am at turns terrified and furious. This is systematic oppression of a minority. It is a cruelty explicitly instated at the federal level that is unprecedented in the modern era.

I see people constantly say “This is not who we are.”

But isn’t it?

Isn’t this exactly who we are and who we have been for years? 

I know that we’ve been keeping immigrants, including children, locked up in detention centers on the border for years. Not too long ago, I spent an evening flooding my congressman’s Facebook page with images of ICE detention centers, trying in vain to get the racist entitled old white man to back a humane immigration system.

This is a country of racism—institutionally and culturally. We throw black kids and black men into jails over minor offenses, and leave them there for the rest of their lives. Around 13% of the population of the United States  is African American. They make up 35% of jail inmates and 37% of prison inmates. Back in 2009, almost a full 5% of all African American adult males were incarcerated.

And this is what we do to kids on the border, just because they’re brown.

Donald Trump and his Republican Party continue to criminalize all non-white Christians. They’ve banned Muslims from coming into the country, made social media checks a standard practice, want to crack down on minor drug offenses that inordinately impact black men, they scapegoat Mexicans as murderers and gang members. “Animals,” they say, then get defensive and clarify they’re just talking about MS-13, even though everyone knows they only use MS-13 to mask their virulent racism. In defense of the White Supremacist killing of a protestor, Donald Trump said there were “Good people on both sides.”

There was a time it almost seemed like we were getting better, right? But the sheer hate for a black man being in charge caused the racist underbelly of this nation to erupt and claw its way into the mainstream of American society.

He was born in Kenya.

He’s a Muslim who wants to overtake the nation and throw it into Sharia law.

They cloak their hate in Christ and St. Paul. They dare us to “defy” the leader at our peril. They want to put in place a Theocratic Authoritarian state wherein their conception of Christianity (one that defies all calls toward mercy, service and preferential treatment of the poor) is the law of the land. Where being an immigrant is a crime, where to be Muslim is to be second class, where being black defines you as less worthy of decency and respect.

Listen, I am Catholic. I am not against your faith being an important part of your political life, and informing your views. 

But this is not the same thing. 

Jesus lays it out clearly for us:

34 “Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. 35 For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, 36 I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.’

37 “Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? 38 When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? 39 When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?’

40 “The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’

We are meant to support the broken and battered and beaten. We are meant to share our wealth with the poor, to literally share our table with the outcast.

We dance around these threats of authoritarianism and say “it can never happen here,” but it has happened and continues to happen before our eyes as we sit and watch children ripped away from their mothers at the border. Mothers escaping violence, fearing for their lives, who come to this country because we have told the world: You are welcome here.

The Trump administration is doing damage to a lot of things. It is ostracizing us from our global allies, throwing money away at corporations, flirting with authoritarians abroad.

As a nation, we can come back from economic downturns. You can fix broken international trade relationships.

What is much harder to come back from is this moral rot at the center of this country, the one we have ignored for over 250 years, that has returned to remind us that we are a nation of delusion. 

We are fed American exceptionalism. We are fed the lie that we are the “Greatest country in the World.”

All as we imprison black men at alarming rates. As we lock up children on the border. As we penalize the poor and rip healthcare away from the sick. As they cloak it in lies and twist their religious texts into justification for their cruelty and their greed.

This country is battered and bruised and sick and we all sit here on our phones and our computers. We balk and laugh at the antics of a foolish, racist man and his cronies of racists, oligarchs, and authoritarians. We have ignored the clear signs of a broken political life, content to assume that others will vote for the right person, or lying to ourselves that “all politicians are the same.” These things don’t affect me. They won’t be as bad as everyone says.

What are we doing when we sit and see the horror of broken families, broken because we fed them a lie, and we do nothing? 

What will it take for the dam to burst, for things to be so morally repugnant and unacceptable that we are shaken from our apathy? What will it take me to do more than sit here and type words into the void? 

We are at a moral tipping point. This is beyond politics as we have ever known it in this country. This is egregiously abnormal, and we are lied to at every turn and told we are overreacting. This is beyond political parties and even religious vs. nonreligious. How do we come back from accepting, as a society, forcing severe trauma upon innocent children? All to benefit the engines of war and oppression? 

This is not even the worst of it. Literal camps are coming, “tent cities” built by our government to house kids stolen from their parents. Tent cities in the triple digit summer Texas heat. We'll find euphemisms to avoid calling these encampments what they are. We've seen it before. 

I have no answers. We have sat by and allowed a federal police force to round up and detain immigrants with no due process in inhumane conditions for years.  We have let this fester because it is easier not to think about. Are we too late? 

You can call your representatives—but banking on a Republican politician to care about institutionalizing racism is like asking a tiger to change its stripes. It just does not happen. But what else is there for us to do? 

We can vote -- and the only moral vote to put an end to these deeply racist, deeply dangerous, and deeply immoral policies is one to remove every Trump sycophant and enabler in Congress.

But these heinous attitudes do not end whenever Trump and his kind are out of politics. They are a part of the American fabric. Is there any coming back? Is there redemption for the American soul?

What are we doing?

What are we doing?

Anger, And Everything Else.

In 2000, Lex Luthor ran for and won the presidency. Growing up, it seemed like a ridiculous plot. How could a billionaire criminal, an enemy of every American value, win the presidency?

Life, it seems, is like a bad comic book plot.

I'm angry. And a new day goes by and I think tomorrow I won't be so angry. And I get angrier. Because every day that has gone by this last week  I see more people dismissing Donald Trump like this is just any other election. Like people who are upset, or hurt, or scared are overreacting.

I'm angry that there are so many people unwilling to recognize that this election was a win for racism, religious persecution, and hate. I'm furious that good people put the shortsighted promises of a career conman ahead of basic human decency.

This is not a regular election. People aren't sad because their candidate lost. This isn't Mitt Romney. This is not John McCain. This is not about disagreements on economic policy. Donald Trump and his entire cabal represent the worst of American bigotry. Trump opened his campaign with a sweeping declaration of Mexican immigrants as rapists and criminals. He continued with a promise to ban all Muslim immigrants.

Replace "Muslim" with "Jew." Replace "Mexican" with "Black." Does any of that sound familiar? This kind of speech is intolerable. It is cruel. It is unconstitutional. It has whipped a small but despicable group of people in our country into a frenzy, it has empowered white supremacists to spread their message of hate. And not just in words. But through violence.


I'm angry because today, the Ku Klux Klan is happy.

I'm angry because so many people are incapable of empathizing with those minorities that are the target of these hate groups. Just because your rights are not in danger, just because your world may not change, does not mean these hate groups do not exist, and it doesn't mean the inconvenient truth of racism and hate isn't festering just because you're not looking.

Our country was founded on the backs of slaves and murdered indigenous peoples. We as a society have failed to reckon with it, and that makes me mad, too. Any time some small progress is made, we celebrate, clap ourselves on the back, and ignore the deeply-rooted injustice that still goes on. So for a moment, if you are still not realizing just how incendiary and horrible a Trump presidency is, just imagine you're a Mexican mother who fled a town ravaged by drug cartels to save the life of your daughter and son. Imagine seeing the president of this country--the country that you dreamed would save you--tell you that you do not belong here. That your very presence in society is a crime, and that you and your kids are going back to the town you came from, where you very well may die in the crossfire.

This isn't an abstraction. It's the honest to God truth.


Imagine you're gay, and you are already afraid of coming out to your parents, who may not understand the reality of who you are. Imagine that you wake up and find out that your new Vice President thinks that who you love makes you worthy of electro shock therapy. Imagine your Vice President is repulsed at the idea of you having a family, of adopting a child that you know you would love and care for.


Maybe you didn't know that Donald Trump's campaign manager and top choice for cabinet position was a raging anti-semite who published articles with headlines like this:


I'm disappointed that we have not learned lessons from countries like South Africa and Germany, who instead of trying to pretend that they have just moved on from the painful truth of their nations' pasts, forced themselves to confront it. We are not brave enough as a society to do the same.

So no, you're not a racist. You're not a homophobe. You don't hate Muslims. But your acceptance of Donald Trump and Mike Pence and Steve Bannon means that you are willing to let those things go. And don't you see the problem with that? They have no problem with defying civil liberties for the many non-white, non-straight, non-male people in our country. You have the obligation to be angry, too.


I'm so incredibly angry that a human being who bragged about his wealth affording him the privilege of sexually assaulting women, who boasted that he would walk into the dressing rooms of beauty pageants he hosted to spy on the undressed contestants, who constantly body shames and makes women feel bad for their appearance, now gets four years to remind us of how little he values half of our country. I'm disgusted that little girls who lived through this election now have to grow up knowing that a person who thinks and acts this way gets to be the leader of the free world. I'm in shock that now young boys are getting the message that it's okay to treat women like garbage, because they can still get everything they want without consequence.

I'm genuinely scared that the Republican plan to repeal the Affordable Care Act will negatively affect my quality of life. That one day I won't have my insurance anymore. That I won't be able to afford the medicine that has helped to give me a normal life. That if I need another operation some day that might save my life the doctor will look at me and tell me there's nothing we can do. And I'm furious that you are giving them the chance to do it.

I'm angry at the Catholic Church, an institution that I have dedicated the better part of the last five years to. I'm mad that they spread so much fear over a single issue that more than half of American Catholics voted for Trump--a man who defies every value that Catholics claim to uphold. I am angry that there was no condemnation for Donald Trump's unabashed hatred, while there was plenty of condemnation for anyone who dare step out of line when it comes to their pet issues.

But I'm not just mad at Donald Trump, a sexist, racist, narcissistic lying conman, and the Republicans.

I'm mad at the United States and all of our politicians who have ignored the reality of poverty in this nation. I'm mad as hell that America has the worst income inequality of any major developed country. I'm mad that the gap between the rich and poor is worse than at any point since the 20s. I'm furious that 58 percent of all wealth generated since the '08 Wall Street crash has gone to the top one percent. I'm sick that Americans are working longer hours for lower wages, and countless numbers of our fellow citizens are working below the already laughable minimum wage.

Do I sound familiar?

The Democratic Party ignored this reality. They ignored the very valid and very real anger that, ultimately, won Donald Trump the presidency.

I'm angry that the working class can't afford to put food on the table. That jobs are getting shipped overseas and that as manufacturing jobs and jobs in the coal industry have shut down and automated, there has been no investment in the infrastructure and education that could have helped these communities stay afloat.

I'm enraged that the situation has gotten so bad that the working poor throughout this country were so desperate that they let themselves get manipulated into believing that a man who was born into privilege, who blew his first million, who has never wanted for a damn thing in his life, who regularly stiffs his workers, who proudly shipped jobs overseas, who pays less taxes than the hated "illegal immigrants," was going to save them.

Because, let's be honest, we both know the manufacturing jobs aren't coming back.

I'm sad for every immigrant kid and family I got a chance to briefly know in my time in Los Angeles. I'm heartbroken that their struggles are deemed as less important than traditionally white manufacturing hubs. I'm sick about every LGBTQ friend and mentor I've known in my life who now sees in this country a place of rejection and hate.

I am disconsolate that governors and congressman of coastal states said, "Yes, please," to a man who denies climate change--a catastrophic danger that poses very real threat to their constituents' safety and the livelihood of their tourist industries, and thus, the economy of their states. I cannot believe that our politicians deny science and forsake my future, and the future of any children I might have.


I'm mad at myself for doing nothing but smugly thinking that America was "better" than this. That we were smart enough to see through Donald Trump.

I underestimated the real anger, and real hurt that so many in this country feel. I was as blinded by my privileged place in American society as anyone else. And I was blinded to the depth of hatred of minorities and women.

But I refuse to believe this election is a referendum in favor of the worst of America. Yes, the white supremacists had their voices heard. Yes, they got the man they wanted--a puppet who would do and say anything to grovel at their feet just so he could win and stick it to all those people who never gave him his Emmy. But I believe when they realize that Trump doesn't care about them, when they all realize they got conned by a two-bit carnival barker, they'll feel as sick and angry as I do for the thing that they helped give birth to.

So if you are not angry, if you are rejoicing today--just know that I and all the others like me are not going to "get over" this. I am not going to stop being angry.

And we should not stop being angry.

I am not going to stop fighting against hatred and fear and the blatant lies peddled by this national disgrace. I am not going to stop being a voice for the marginalized, who now risk being even moreso. I will be a voice for compassion, and not just for them--but you too.

I'm going to stay angry, and I won't forget that we are all in this together--and that we must find a way to heal all of our gravest national sins: poverty, racism, sexism, and hate in all its forms. If this election has taught me anything, it is that I can not be complacent in the assumption that things will work themselves out on their own.