There Must Be Something I Can Do

When a problem comes up, I know what to do. Call the plumber. Call the doctor. These days, though, I'm stumped. We have a big problem in the country right now, and I don't know what I can do about it. It's not unsolvable, it's just unsolvable by me. 

I don't need to tell you what I'm talking about. We all know. Of course, a large number of us don't think it's a problem at all. They think their savior has finally arrived.

By that reckoning, from my point of view, the problem isn't the problem itself, but that half of us think it's not a problem, just the opposite. So we're kind of stuck in a tug of war with a lot of strength on both sides. The other team is stronger, though, and they are pulling us in the direction they want to go. The people on our side are getting rope burn and slipping and falling in the mud.

That makes it sound more sporting than it is. Losing this struggle is going to do a lot more damage than bleeding hands and muddy bodies.

I would be fine if we all put down the rope and sat down to try to work out a way to get along that we could all live with. Talking and trying to get along is just not happening now. To the victor go the spoils seems to be the motto of the team that's winning. And too bad for the losers who can't take care of themselves when the battle is over.

Our government is running roughshod over its weakest and most vulnerable citizens. And it is being brutally cruel to non-citizens who have been living and working peacefully here for decades. Sure, there are bad-actor immigrants, just as there are bad-actor citizens. The solution in both cases is arrest with probable cause, not stopping brown-skinned people on the street and demanding their papers.

I'm neither weak nor vulnerable (yet), but I can't just stand by and do nothing. Wrong is wrong, inhumane is inhumane. Not only is it morally wrong to look away, but, as the famous poem goes, "and then they came for me."

I have no idea what I can do that would make a nickel's worth of difference. I've never felt so helpless.

Marching in the protests and giving more money than ever before in my life to the ACLU have been all I have been able to come up with so far. That and calling a dear hispanic friend of our family who lives in LA and telling her not to go out of her house without her citizenship card.

My actions so far have been so pitifully small and ineffective that it is embarrassing. It's making me wonder if I really care as much as I think I do. I'll confess I have considered a long trip to somewhere else. The problems here always look better to me from Europe. That might help my peace of mind, but it's not going to help anyone else. I don't know if I can live with that.

And I don't know if I can live with the alternative of watching our governance by laws and accepted norms, the source of our freedom and opportunity, become a thing of the past.