I read this KGMI post on Facebook today. The post mentions a claim that President Trump is housing children in concentration camps and says that Rick Larsen will speak about how families belong together at a local protest. I found this “news” item by KGMI to be both divisive and dehumanizing towards our President and in turn the roughly half of America which voted for him. I realize that KGMI is a business, and as so needs articles that drive web traffic to their site, however it is a sad commentary on Bellingham that KGMI feels they can make money promoting the dehumanization of fellow Americans by local politicians and national political groups.
Dehumanizing others, whether they be Black, Asian, Women, Jewish, Christian, This political party, That political party, or whatever, has been a tactic used far too many times in history. And it has happened at the highest levels resulting in things like genocide and slavery, but it also has been and still is present in political party rhetoric, racial issues, and even in seemingly innocuous things like athletic rivalries between schools, or simple “girls rule, boys drool.” I won’t give myself a pass on this, I’ve likely done it to others over the years, to one degree or another, but that doesn’t make it right.
To the situation here though; I don’t think Rick Larsen is any less human than Donald Trump, nor do I think that Donald Trump is any less human than Rick Larsen. I don’t think that either men want to see children jailed nor families torn apart. I just don’t think that way of other human beings. I also would guess that when you drill past the politics and posturing, they have very similar visions for our borders, North, South, East, West. But we will never ever get things right as long as they/we waste energy dehumanizing each other. We need to work together, yes Rick Larsen, Donald Trump, political parties, dogs, cats, all of us. We need to bring our laws inline with our shared humanity so that enforcing our laws will not violate our humanity, as they are doing so now and on more issues than just our borders. Here’s a thought,
“One day we will learn that the heart can never be totally right if the head is totally wrong. Only through the bringing together of head and heart—intelligence and goodness—shall man rise to a fulfillment of his true nature.”
That’d be a bunch of wise words from the Reverend Martin Luther King, and we’d all be wise to take a moment to ponder those bunch of wise words.
Moment goes here…
Unless we bring our laws, our head, our intelligence together with our enforcement of laws, our heart, our goodness, we will never fulfill our nation’s promise and our true nature as God’s children, i.e. humans. It also means that we need to bring those same things together next time, and every time, we have a conversation with people (i.e. other humans) that don’t share our same viewpoint.