11/25/21

By Josh Rubin

I remember someone saying that the older we get, the harder it is to feel the simple joy of holidays. The losses have heaped up and surround a celebration with memories of a life that, over time, has had its share of tragedy. There is no place to look where one or another of those tear-stained memories can’t be seen.

The problem is made even worse for those of us who have decided that the least we can do is watch, that is, to witness. Witnesses of the crimes against migrants, it seems, are being presented with a special burden this season. The world, even absent the sadist who ran our country for a few years, has doubled down on a policy based on inflicting pain, under flimsy cover of disincentivizing the free movement of people away from hunger toward our border. We are firing both barrels at once now, determined to demolish hope: Title 42 appealing to the worst of lies, that the disease that threatens us is carried by the poor of the world, and turns people back, do not pass go; and, oh my heart, an imminent revival of the deadly policy called Remain in Mexico, that built camps of prey for the unholy alliance of cartel and institutional corruption in the border cities of Mexico, and is poised to do it again.

Not just at our borders, but at all borders. Across the world, people who have shifted place for all of the time there have been people are blocked from doing so by a regime that insists on its privilege, and finds strange ways to justify its inhumanity. The problem, as they see it, is that the borders are too easily penetrated, and hope too nourished. They must reinforce despair. How else to keep them out?

Thirty-one drowned, attempting to cross the English Channel in an inflatable raft, trying to get around one of those borders of privilege. Oh, my friends, the water is wide, so wide.