Scott’s Column: The Cruelty

The first really concrete thing I noticed occurred when I arrived for pick-up of my son from the after-school program two weeks ago.  Next to the sign-out sheet were cards for folks to take detailing what their civil and human rights are in case ICE shows up at the door.

Then the next week the after-school program wanted to update everyone’s emergency contact information in case parents were picked up and couldn’t come get their children.  That same day they handed out what their program’s policies are in case immigration forces show up at the school.  And they included examples of what different types of warrants look like, so people would be aware of the differences and what each entails.

This is not normal for an elementary school afterschool program.  But this is the hellscape we’ve now entered.

Then I had lunch with one of my friends, a trans man.  He’s spent his career (and built a business) educating people on trans and diversity issues.  His clients have included government agencies, educational institutions, and corporations.  He’s watched his livelihood dry up in just two weeks.  Eight years ago such agencies doubled-down on such trainings but this time around the cultural vibe has radically shifted.

Had dinner with an immigrant friend.  Finally about a year and a half ago she received notice that she was approved for her green card, but due to backlog, it would probably be two more years before it physically arrived.  It hasn’t arrived yet, and she wonders now when or even if it will.

Another friend found out about a family where the father is undocumented, so he’s quit going to work in order to stay safer.  But the family is now financially struggling, of course.  The friend went to Costco and spent $500 on food and baby supplies and delivered it to the family.

When I picked up my son on Monday, he told me that there had only been 10 children in his classroom that day.  12 kids from immigrant families had stayed home.  My son told me it was because “Trump thinks they should leave the country.”  He then described how his teacher set aside her lesson plans and made space for the kids to talk about the situation and what they are thinking and feeling.  He said one Black girl in the fourth grade class told stories of racism she has directly experienced.  He asked me how the country became like this.

I told him this is not the world I want for him or have worked hard to create for him.  I told him that what’s happening worries and scares me.  He said he wished someone would invent a time machine so they could go back in time and explain to people what is happening so that they might then vote differently.

In his beautiful book A Thousand Small Sanities: The Moral Adventure of Liberalism Adam Gopnik writes that the basic liberal impulse is to reduce the cruelties that we see.  The moral heart of this worldview is “a hatred of brutality, a recognition of the primacy of sympathy as  social cement, a feeling for normal frailty and for mercy before justice and humanity before dogma, a desire, so to speak, to systematize compassion and put the brakes on normal human cruelty.”