Moral Clarity
Haven’t we all at one time or another been in a situation that was morally fraught, where we asked ourselves what we should do?
Some situations are minor, such as seeing someone sneak a steak at the bottom of her grocery cart where the clerk can’t see. Others are more painful, seeing a child being abused by a screaming parent.
And others—others are earth-shattering, liking going along to get along with a totalitarian regime.
I think sometimes of World War II and the people of Germany. Their excuse? “We didn’t know.” That’s all bullshit. I think of Germany especially because I was born in 1942; and I know exactly what would have happened to me if I were in any of the countries Germany invaded. I see it in the evidence left behind, especially in the children’s shoes, so like my own, the Oxford ties, the Mary Janes. Some child wore those, and that child could have been me.
Did everyone in Germany start off as firm believers, or did they become believers once they realized that was the only way to survive, to get ahead? What brought out the butchers in so many of them? How could they allow themselves to commit such evil?
Who knows what’s in a person’s heart, if there is a heart? Maybe being a true believer brought more bread to the table or a higher position on the ladder of German life.
But let’s turn away from Germans and their war and consider what’s happening here in the United States of America, where we have developed our own Gestapo. ICE. Who are the men and women who work for this agency—not that we can see them since they’re masked—and how do they justify to themselves, to their families, to their communities, to their gods what they’re doing in the State’s name?
We’ve all seen the scenes of their inhumanity. Bodies shot, tossed about, rammed and jammed because power has corrupted the people of ICE. They are the colossus of a new civilization with no common decency, no sense of morality. And they joke about it because what’s more amusing than brutally ruining someone’s life, taking mothers and fathers from children, putting people in cages, letting them rot?
I don’t want to hear any argument about illegal immigration. Yeah. So? So people came here illegally, and they made a good life for themselves and others whom they served and supported.
The alleged aim of these roundups was to get rid of criminals, but we all know that was an excuse for racial profiling of the most extreme kind. Driving while Black? What about driving while Hispanic? Or just walking down the street, getting your kid to day care?
How do these ICE agents go home at night? Do they walk in the door with a “Honey, I’m home?” Go see if their children have done their homework? Maybe wonder why their meat and potatoes aren’t on the table yet when they’ve had such a hard day destroying others?
Do they ever look in the mirror and wonder, “Am I doing the right thing?”
Will they ever be held to account for what they’ve done?
Well, we have only to look at the Germans to see our answer to that one.