Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness...Despite Everything Else

I love my country. I am honored and humbled to know that circumstances allowed me to be born here, the daughter of a US Army retiree, descendant of men who fought in the Continental Army in the American Revolution and on both sides (ugh) of the Civil War. My lineage includes whalers, farmers, teachers, musicians, slaveowners, and abolitionists. We have all valued our lives as Americans, the liberty afforded us as Americans, and been able to pursue happiness with minimal limitation. I was taught to value these principles for all people, and because of this, I value the lives of the men and women who put on the uniforms of our armed forces and volunteer to lose their lives for the freedoms granted to us by the Constitution, shaped as it was by the ideals underlying “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” in the Declaration of Independence. I value the words of those who speak out against the worst devils of inhumanity that keep people from having those Constitutional rights; they do so in hopes that the better angels of our humanity will ultimately prevail. Like them, I believe that “the moral arc of the universe is long, but it bends toward justice” as Theodore Parker said and Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King made famous.

Among the worst devils of our inhumanity is fear. Sadly, fear is a tool of those who would impose the most un-American of regimes upon us and our current president exemplifies this. He is a menace to global peace and national security. He and his cabal of xenophobic advisors have subjugated an entire political party that now condones behavior its very best leaders, particularly its military hero leaders such as Teddy Roosevelt and Dwight Eisenhower, eschewed as un-American. The id-driven display in Washington, DC, later today is certainly the lowest point in our 21st century presidential history, the lowest since the assassination of John F. Kennedy, and it may even be the lowest since the assassination of Abraham Lincoln.

I don’t remember much of the Nixon impeachment proceedings. I do remember the network TV coverage that preempted Captain Kangaroo. That made me into an activist; I dictated my first letter of outrage to our local CBS station in Omaha at the tender age of 4. I know from studying history that those proceedings were the result of outrageous abuses of power and criminal activity by a president who did not believe he was accountable to any law, even the Constitution of the United States. 

Nixon, it turns out, was a two-bit petty criminal compared to his current successor. 

I have appreciated the careful building of evidence and step-by-step procedural claims being made by the House of Representatives as it collectively tries to exercise its Constitutional authority for oversight. The lessons learned from the unnecessary impeachment of Bill Clinton (yes, perjury is a crime; he could have been sanctioned or charges could have been filed after January 20, 2001) have been taken to heart by the House leadership. I can no longer wait, however; as much as I fear the elevation of a “Christian” nationalist/dominionist to the office of President of the United States, the current occupant MUST be removed and along with him the sycophantic hate whisperers who create and shepherd through the bureaucracy the abhorrent policies now being carried out in my name using my tax dollars.

Yes, I speak of the dishonorable “there are good people on both sides” false equivalencies that empower white supremacists and religious bigots to act openly.

Yes, I speak of the withdrawal from the Paris Climate Accords.

Yes, I speak of the abnegation of the Iran Nuclear Weapons Treaty.

Yes, I speak of the abrogation of multiple trade deals that have caused havoc in multiple sectors of the US economy (and, not incidentally, the economies of many of our closest trade partners).

Yes, I speak of the weakening of our position as the leading nation among peaceful allies.

Yes, I speak of the gleeful subjugation of people from around the world who come to the borders of the United States seeking a better life away from violence and poverty, only to be thrown into detention centers where they cannot even exercise their rights to seek asylum. The Inspector General of the Department of Homeland Security has said that the conditions in refugee detainment facilities are inhumane: 

• “For example, children at three of the five Border Patrol facilities we visited had no access to showers, despite the TEDS [Transport, Escort, Detention and Search] standards requiring that ‘reasonable efforts’ be made to provide showers to children approaching 48 hours in detention.”¹ 
• [A]lthough TEDS standards require CBP to make a reasonable effort to provide a shower for adults after 72 hours, most single adults had not had a shower in CBP custody despite several being held for as long as a month. At some facilities, Border Patrol was giving detainees wet-wipes to maintain personal hygiene. Most single adult detainees were wearing the clothes they arrived in days, weeks, and even up to a month prior. Further, although TEDS standards require agents to remain cognizant of detainees’ religious and other dietary restrictions, many single adults had been receiving only bologna sandwiches. Some detainees on this diet were becoming constipated and required medical attention.²

We’ve crossed the line from oversight needed to judgment necessary. This administration has implemented policies far worse than those implemented by the previous administration, which I opposed then as too harsh. Human beings have been caged, prevented from bathing, kept in filthy clothes, and denied access to adequate toileting facilities, clean water, and food as scare tactics. Children are being asked to care for each other because those same children have been ripped out of their caregivers’ arms as punishment for escaping conditions in their homelands that made this treatment seem like a better idea. And this is being done with MY tax money in MY name. Oh, no. It’s time for impeachment proceedings. NOW.

All of the other reasons to impeach are still valid, of course. If the involvement of the Russian government in shaping the results of the 2016 election was a threat to liberty (it was, and yes, there was both collusion, a non-legal term, and conspiracy, a legal term—go read the Mueller report!) and the ongoing efforts of the administration to constrict the rights of LGBTQ Americans and people of color through policies and unjust court rulings are a threat to the pursuit of happiness (those are, because the government should be protecting individual rights to employment, housing, equal standing before the law, and a host of other things!), then this horror show on the border is a threat to life itself. Overcrowding in detention facilities is a threat to the lives of the asylum seekers and refugees who still, despite everything, see the USA as the shining standard of human flourishing. Lack of access to clean water for drinking and bathing is a threat to their lives. Living in tents in the brutal Texas summer or in those same unheated tents in the windy though often somewhat temperate winters of the Rio Grande Valley is a threat to their lives. Separation from mature caregivers is a threat to the lives of minors—and the trauma of separation will be a threat to their pursuit of happiness should they live to adulthood. 

These concentration camps on our southern border are a threat to life for all of us. Yes, there are slim chances for a catastrophic outbreak of contagious diseases (as one international health expert noted, typhus and dysentery are non-discriminatory killers). But the bigger threat is to our way of life as Americans in the United States of America. I keep hearing people say, about this and other ongoing crises such as the treatment of people of color by law enforcement, that “this is not who we are.” If that statement is to be true, then the only way it will become true is for us to work together to change what is happening now so that it no longer happens. It is time for us to reckon with all the imperfections in our society that led to this moment so that we can become the nation we like to think we already are.

I encourage everyone to read Frederick Douglass’ “What to the Slave is the 4th of July” and to listen as James Earl Jones reads excerpts. It is an indictment of a country that is not yet what it promises to be and at the same time a plea for those promises to be extended to everyone, particularly those on whose backs the country was built. Douglass gave this speech eight years before the first shots of the Civil War were fired; sadly, much of what he said in 1852 is still relevant, if in different ways, today. We knew this before January 20, 2017, but since then, we have been unable to ignore the malignant tentacles of slavery and, more important, its root causes of fear, hatred, and economic advantage that still shape our country today. I am not so naive as to think that ending the term of the current president early will resolve anything without much more soul-searching and the hard work necessary to remedy the ills. But I do think that reckoning with the grossest abuses of this administration can be a helpful first step toward becoming the nation Douglass saw in the distant past and the distant future. And from that step, we can take the next, and the next, and the next, until we truly are the nation we think we already are.

That is my patriotic wish for today. God bless America! And God bless the dream of America as free, equitable, and unafraid of all who seek to live here, partner with us, and make a better world.

¹Department of Homeland Security Office of the Inspector General Management Alert, “DHS Needs to Address Dangerous Overcrowding and Prolonged Detention of Children and Adults in the Rio Grande Valley”. 2 July 2019. https://www.oig.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/assets/2019-07/OIG-19-51-Jul19_.pdf. Page 6. Accessed 3 July 2019.

²Ibid., pages 8-9.