While I’ve maintained, time and again, that this is a topically open-ended blog by design, it seems whenever I dare stray into the troubled waters of the political issues of the day, I open myself up to the trolls. It’s usually posts about gun control that spawn the most provocative commentary, but when I weighed in, this week, on the immigration crisis that’s been playing out, a reader with the handle of “LSSAH” corrected me on something of a legitimately significant omission.
History buffs of a certain stripe might recognize the reader’s abbreviation –- it’s the name of the Panzer division designated as Hitler’s personal guard. Yes, I know, … how delightful. In any case, before going full-bore into the trolling (which I shan’t be surfacing -– if you’re going to leave obnoxious comments, I’m not going to publish them), this reader did point out that I completely failed to invoke Japanese internment during World War II. It’s a valid point, although George Takei has spoken out, suggesting that even in that particular dark chapter of American history, the families in the internment camps were kept intact. Regardless, it was indeed a point worth, at least, alluding to. As Representative Mark Takano writes today, it left such an indelible mark that President Reagan formally apologized for it in 1988.
One would have hoped we’d have learned from it.
In the past few hours, in the wake of pronounced opposition from even members of his own party, Trump reversed himself and signed an executive order to stop further family separations, although details remain vague, let alone about what happens to the families that have already been torn apart. Apologists are now crowing about how Trump-bashers (like myself) can’t even acknowledge that as a positive step. It’s certainly positive in as much as that it ostensibly halts further enforcement of the draconian “Zero Tolerance” policy, but don’t ask me to give a medal and a high-five to someone for no longer doing something that never should have happened to begin with.
Don’t worry –- back to the non-political stuff after this.
Resist. Vote. Impeach.
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