I'm mad as hell

I’m as angry as I have ever been.  I just balled my eyes walking home for ten blocks.  I’m must have seemed like a lunatic to the early-Puerto Rican day revelers.  I probably just seemed like a morose drunk, which I would be if I were drunk.

I wish I were drunk.

I just talked to my Mexican friend who just this year got his green card. That seems like something to celebrate. But then he told me about the experience.

It wasn’t just the fear of leaving his wife, his five year-old son and two year-old son here in the States while he went back to Mexico so that he could come back with a green card.  That process in itself seems a bit cruel and barbaric. Hearing him tell how his son held to his leg begging him not to go and begging him to take him with him belies the fear that has been created in the process. Even a five year-old can tell that something is not right.

But the thing that made me boil was what he told me about the reentry process as his wife and sons waited for him at the airport. The agents made him wait for 30 minutes while he heard them cruelly talk (as if he couldn’t understand; his English is exceptional) about perhaps not letting him enter. Of course, they didn’t have a legal foot to stand on. His papers were in order. But in the current climate, they could afford to entertain cruelty.

And his experience is mild compared to what is happening on our border to the south.

I’m ashamed of America. Merely kneeling during the national anthem is not enough. I stopped the pledge of allegiance years ago. Yet, a sentimental tear would often find its way out of my eyes during the Star Spangled Banner. No more. Not now. It may sound cliché but if this is what we’ve come to, they let’s tear down the Statue of Liberty and especially the Emma Lazarus poem at her feet. It is, to be blunt, BULLSHIT.

There is no conscience in the White House or Justice Department.  It is trickle-down cruelty.

I have offered some assistance where I can. I think it is time for more. I don’t’ know what yet. I will find out.