What is happening at the southern border of the United States is not a holocaust and/or genocide. Citizens - mind you, legal citizens - are not being rounded up into concentration camps or ghettos to be used as forced labor aiding war efforts, grotesquely experimented upon for horrific purposes beyond scientific and/or outright executed for the simple reason of existing over notions of cultural and racial superiority. Meanwhile, other citizens are not turning a blind eye - either intentionally or naively - to the situation under the false belief that their government would never do such heinous things. With the current situation, there is a public awareness and presence that otherwise would not be if it were a case of bureaucratic deception and state-sanctioned extermination. The reason for this is that we no longer live in an era of unquestionable loyalty to government or its actions, or even beholden solely to mainstream media coverage. Thus, activists, citizens and politicians alike are openly involved in advocating and offering solutions that, under different circumstances, would place them equally in harm’s way of any totalitarian state that deems them a threat.
Separating Families At The Border: The Hysteria Overlooks Some Key Facts (Investor's Business Daily)
The Truth about Separating Kids (National Review)
In reality, a sovereign nation endeavors to enforce its laws and maintain the integrity of its borders against undocumented illegals who neither adhere to nor respect any of these conditions. They are not citizens, either by birth or lawful naturalization completed by millions of legal immigrants - like my Cuban-born grandfather and Irish-born great-grandparents, members of two immigrant nationalities that routinely faced discrimination yet persevered to achieve citizenship under established regulations. They, like multitudes of others, went through the arduous yet requisite process to become naturalized citizens rather than circumvent the system. These measures are not meant to dissuade or hinder any immigrants from being welcomed into and embraced by the country, but to serve only as the means for honoring and recognizing the requirements of citizenship. Even in a world bent on and consumed by globalization, this is not a hard concept to understand nor an idea archaic in its application.
There is the understood truth, as Benjamin Franklin eloquently opined, that liberty sacrificed at the expense of security potentially endangers the longevity of both. Nevertheless, we also should heed the words of the late John Ireland (1838-1918), archbishop of St. Paul, Minnesota, addressing American citizenship: “Law is order in liberty, and without order liberty is social chaos. The highest test of a people's fitness for free institutions is their willingness to obey law.” As for current global holocaust and/or genocide, I refer you to five prime examples that should demand and elicit more immediate action and outrage: Congo, Darfur, North Korea, Somalia, Syria. You also might study other historical incidents for context - Armenia, Bosnia, Cambodia, Rwanda, Sudan. Leave history to the historians, and the “fake news” propaganda and rhetoric on the ash heap of it - or it not only will be the United States, but all societies governed by the rule of law, burning in the destructive lawless chaos of their own creation.
©2018 Steve Sagarra
In light of recent high-profile tragic deaths, I have listened to and read numerous hot takes about the supposed lack of God in the lives of people who commit suicide. While, even as an unrepentant agnostic, I value the freedom of religious expression guaranteed by the Constitution, I could not disagree more. Depression, mental illness or any other diagnosis one cares to ascribe to possible causes of suicide, faith in a higher power earnestly has little to no domain in the matter. Certainly, no benevolent deity would selfishly command absolute worship at their altar and abandon someone at the time of sincere need because of any purported deficiency on their part to do so. To be even more candid, God, if reasonably existent at all, should not, and conceivably does not, vaingloriously anguish over whether belief in Him prevails among his creations, as much as He is contented to humbly believe in them.
Granted, many attribute all of this to God’s will in the grand scheme as a testament to those who seek Him. Fine, perhaps that is true; my agnosticism (or heathenism, as some may interpret it) allows such an interpretation. But is there a manifestation of God in that last desperate, evidently hopeless moment? A preeminent understanding of Him presented at that moment? In my opinion, God undoubtedly either is or is not present - any lack thereof in the person's life not withstanding. This is not meant to dismiss, disregard or disparage religion as an explanation for the circumstances. Yet, we should not do the same when it comes to psychological, social or other plausible explanations - with the caveat that sometimes there are none to discover - in favor of the former. We do a disservice not only to society by doing so, but especially to those persons inwardly suffering from depression, mental illness or any other diagnosis, while they simultaneously battle any stigma attached to it, that goes beyond an existential scope.
Individual free will, manifested by a moment of clarity and the expression of it therein, always will supersede any external forces’ avowed transcendent providence over our actions, meant to justify nothing less than dogmatic coercion. While the latter may appear to lessen the burdens on our soul, it misguidedly lays responsibility elsewhere beyond our own conflicted psyche and personal situation. As Doyle’s Holmes proclaimed, “once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth.” In this context, we have yet to fully eliminate, let alone understand, the impossible that would allow the improbable, because sometimes the impossible is not easily packaged into a generalized narrative that demands specific answers to satiate the inherent need for closure.
In the end, there is no rationality for judgmental speculation concerning whether living a life with or without faith plays a role. Compassion and understanding for a life lost should be the lone priority, and to the accompanying grieving of those affected by it. A spiritual path may be the calling for many in this world toward the next, but there is no mandate for it to be the sole way to attain purpose for the few or the one. A meaningful life simply is a life lived, and a life lived simply is a meaningful one.
©2018 Steve Sagarra
