11/3/21

By Josh Rubin

Barbarians at the Gate: On the Inside

We have watched the border, seen the casual cruelty of those our country posts there, cruelty to people in their liminal, vulnerable condition. We are not surprised at the cruelty of the language, the easy brutality of the words that are exchanged online by the barbarians I speak of. Nonetheless, we are bruised by it, and sickened by knowledge that we ourselves have a hand in it. It is our money and our land and our stranglehold on the wealth of the world that brews the arrogance.

Bodies are “floaters,” we learn, and they encourage each other to think that a father and daughter’s death embrace near the banks was staged for sympathy, far too painful a sight to be believed. I wonder if somehow we should be comforted in some way, that such an absurd proposition unconsciously protects the agents of our policy of deterrence by death, that it is too much even for them to see the truth, that this near-psychopathic denial is resorted to.

Those are the ones in green uniforms asked each day to treat desperation as a crime. They tell themselves stories in order to live, as Joan Didion taught us that we all do. But oh, what stories! that elevate hatred to mask the horror.

And back, much further north, we have the cold calculation of policymakers whose “solutions,” like Title 42 expulsions, are just short of blood libel. All to keep the barbarians at bay. You know the barbarians I mean: the apostles of hatred who stand with guns and armor ready to take away what little democracy we ever had.