Family separations depraved
The depraved policy of separating children from their parents at the border has been widely condemned. Defenses of President Donald Trump’s policy by some Republicans were ludicrous.
Telling workers not to hug the children was barbarous. Waving a Bible at an evil policy does not make it any less evil. The United Nations should send in troops to liberate the detained children and reunite them with their parents.
Peg Cruikshank
Corea
World is watching America
Growing up in Bucksport during the 1940s and 1950s, before and during the coming of TV, we had no way of knowing how people of color were being horrifically abused elsewhere in our country. The few early television programs that existed did not tell of it. Not until the civil rights movement of the 1960s, reported by local stations of the fledgling ABC, CBS and NBC networks, were we shown the truth.
Once seen and known, it could not be unseen or unknown. There was no avoiding the question of what kind of a people or country we would be.
Now, with instantaneous eyewitness images made possible by the internet, shock and shame again challenged us to argue, question and do something about what religious leaders of all faiths called immoral — the government taking of children from their parents as they cross our southern border seeking safety from threatening conditions they have fled, asking for help.
Privileged leaders who allowed this seemed to have either lost their capacity to know how they and their children would feel under similar circumstances, or do not believe these people are worth the same protection they and their babies are. There are, after all, observable racial and class aspects to what is being done in our names.
But in 2018, all Americans are watching. The whole world is watching. It will be told throughout history that we did this.
Patricia Ranzoni
Bucksport
Choosing our next leaders
I appreciate Matt Gagnon’s columns and read them to try to understand the conservative viewpoint. I agree with his recent remarks about how we vote for people with whom we identify, people who are like people we know or like us.
But there is a problem with responding to candidates or anything only on an emotional level though. In order to be fully informed, we need to engage the rational parts of our minds as well. Wisdom is a combination of both aspects of ourselves overlapping. If we respond to other people only emotionally we are ruled by our feelings (not a great way to pick a partner or make an important decision), and if we only use our reason, we can lack compassion, empathy and heart.
Qualities that make a candidate familiar (as Gagnon describes the similarities between his father and Gov. Paul LePage) and possibly also trustworthy and responsible to one person might inspire fear or disgust in another person. My father, for example, was thoughtful, kind, hard working, expressive and loving. I find LePage and President Donald Trump shockingly abusive. Gagnon might find someone like my father or former President Barack Obama weak and ineffective. Our emotional responses make it hard to see any of the positive qualities in candidates with whom we do not identify.
We can use our cognitive capacities to question ourselves about our emotional reactions. Then question our candidates on their records. With our combined emotional and rational minds, we might make wiser decisions about who we chose to lead us.
Lisa Kushner
Belfast
Families belong together
The other night, I sat at my computer flooded with guilt at the things I am not: I am not an attorney, I’m not fluent in Spanish, Mam, Q’eqchi’ or K’iche’, and I am not a politician. I’m usually proud of the choices I’ve made in my life, but right now, they seem to have been the wrong ones. They left me looking on, horrified and powerless, while children were cruelly and unnecessarily torn from the loving, protective arms of their parents.
But I remember the things I am: I am a mother, I am a constituent, and I have a voice. I placed calls this week to both Sen. Susan Collins and Rep. Bruce Poliquin to demand that they act with other congressional leaders, regardless of party affiliation, to end the policy of family separation. I then donated money to RAICES, an organization in Texas dedicated to paying the bonds of parents so that they can be freed from custody and begin searching for their children. I found my power, however small, and I began to use it.
The Trump administration’s policy was a disgrace. The life and well-being of a child should never be used as a political pawn. I urge everyone to find their power, whatever it is, and use it any way they can to call attention to the atrocities taking place at the U.S.-Mexico border. Families belong together.
Aubrae Filipiak
Bangor
GOP unrecognizable
The disastrous policy of taking children from their families was a decision that did not come from President Donald Trump alone. It came instead from a wing of the GOP that stands against traditional GOP policies and advocates for a cold, hard politics of fear, manipulation and lies.
For this reason, it is time for Sen. Susan Collins to quit the Republican Party. The GOP has become, in the last few years, unrecognizable as the party of small government, independent thinking, family values and fiscal responsibility. As it stands now, what Trump represents is what the GOP stands for — he is the de facto leader of the party.
If Collins now quits the GOP and joins our other senator as an independent, she may be able to save her reputation. If not, she will go down as the cowardly appeaser she currently seems to be, unable to stand on a moral platform based on human rights and true family values.
Nico Jenkins
Blue Hill