4/17/21

By Josh Rubin

Many of us are daily urged to tread lightly. We don’t want to empower that dozing beast of fascism by speaking clearly and forthrightly about the rights of people to migrate, we are warned. We are told we should take our cues from the current administration, who are making a show of closed borders and meager refugee numbers, not because they believe in the policies that they are maintaining, but so as not to arouse the xenophobic electorate. They are only lying about poor migrants being a contagion threat because they have to. I mean, you can’t just let desperate people in.

You have to “process” them.

Imagine if there were a hurricane. Or a flood maybe. And we claimed that we were worried about cholera. That’s what happens in floods, right?

But we can’t just pull people out of the floodwaters. We can’t just load boats up with rescuers. We need a system. We have to process them. And we just don’t have time, or the resources. So, we can’t process them yet. Not until we have a system. So as they try to hold onto the gunnels, their knuckles white, we pry their fingers loose. Not now. Later. We’ll tell you when.

And when, pray tell, is when? My bet is that if there ever is a real when, it won’t depend on our processing power. It will depend on how afraid we are of that evil beast.

That fascist beast. The beast of hatred. The beast that is always with us. If people like me, who are the least vulnerable to that beast, cower in fear, how will we ever defeat it?

Defeat it, not appease it.