This is America
I urge everyone to force themselves to watch this segment from Chris Hayes’ MSNBC show.
A few points:
(1) Many of the parents who are having young children and infants literally ripped out of their arms by fascist ICE agents — yes I realize they’re “only following orders” –are NOT trying to sneak across any border. They’re presenting themselves at a port of entry and asking for political asylum, as is their legal right to do under American law. Their children are then kidnapped by ICE.
(2) Donald Trump is of course simply lying when he claims a systematic policy of separating young children from their parents is something that predated his administration. The Obama administration’s immigration policy was very bad in very many ways, but it never devolved into gratuitous barbarism and cruelty, which is precisely what the Trump administration is all about, on this and so many other issues.
(3) People who decide that what’s most important at a moment when the US government is destroying families forever by kidnapping — and then often losing all track of! — small children is to score leftier than thou internet debating points are making themselves 100% complicit in this barbarism.
(4) Masha Gessen: