The recent ugly behavior toward the Central American kids can be described only one way: It's un-American.
As far as I remember, nobody spoke up back and said it was a lousy idea back in 2008 when George Bush signed the law giving special consideration to Central American kids fleeing the violence there. Now it's too late -- either shut your noise-hole or get with reality.
Our public employees are trying to cope with this mess because we have a LAW that requires it, dumbass.
The recent puke scenes of "grown-ups" jeering children have been replays of the 1950s, when TV networks regularly showed us mobs of our white neighbors screaming "nigger" at a couple of black kids trying to get a decent education. (I come from a long line of people named for Jefferson Davis, so spare me your self-righteous mewling.)
And just as U.S. federal policy created the racial hatred in the South, our government is behind the violence in Central America.
As Amy Goodman wrote last week for Nation of Change:
"The United States has a long and sadly bloody history of destabilizing democratic governments in the very countries that are now the sources of this latest wave of migration: most notably in Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador.
"In the 1980s and 1990s, U.S.-supported military regimes and paramilitaries killed hundreds of thousands of citizens in those countries. ... In Honduras, the U.S. supported the 2009 coup d'etat against democratically elected President Manuel Zelaya. After he was deposed, two successive U.S.-supported regimes have contributed to what University of California professor Dana Frank calls 'worsening violence and anarchy.' "
We made the mess and now we treat a bunch of fleeing kids like cockroaches as if it's their fault?
U.S. Rep. Louie Gohmert, R-Texas (whose name may not be familiar to you because lately he's more often referred to in print as "America's dumbest congressman") has said our very existence is threatened by these kids.
Well, since it's Gohmert, I don't think I'll even dignify that with a comment.
Jose Antonio Vargas, identified as someone who came to the U.S. as an undocumented child himself more than 20 years ago, was quoted by Goodman as saying, "The only threat that these children pose to us is the threat of testing our own conscience."
Pretty much. And the people turning out in mobs to jeer the kids only pose a threat to keeping our lunches down.