Letter to the Editor: Shutdown, Shut Out

As a person who grew up in an era of unprecedented opportunity for social mobility and economic prosperity, I developed an optimistic view of my fellow and sister human beings’ capacity to behave in a humane way toward others.

That optimism is threatened as I see how quickly the Party in power during the past two years has turned its members against the interests of  fellow and sister citizens who hold government jobs so that they can justify their support of a fanatical president whose commitment to a wall on our southern border flies in the face of history. Ambitious walls of former times – in China, Roman Britain, the western coast of Europe in WWII and East Germany, to name a few – are now tourist attractions. Fences of this kind do not make good neighbors, nor do they stop people from crossing them for long.    

How quick they have been to to see the “caravan” of families with children as marauders at our gates when they are simply fellow and sister human beings whose lives at home drive them to seek asylum elsewhere where they might work without fear in jobs that need to be done. In other times, members of this Party might well have admired these seekers for their ingenuity in depriving “Coyotes” of the opportunity to rob and rape them as they travel frugally on foot together for mutual protection.

The speed at which they have turned against our fellow and sister human beings to shut down the government of, by and for the people, and to shut out people who are coming to this land for the same reasons their own forbears came, is breathtaking – like a punch in the gut, a clot in the heart or the lungs, a death knell for our country.

Let us repair the state of our union by reopening the government and acknowledging our role in destabilizing the countries in our hemisphere. Let us not turn against our species for any reason! It is not in our human interest to allow this to happen.

Estella Lauter

Fish Creek, Wis.