Summertime for Hitler?

 I have no children, but like many others, I was moved by the pictures, and especially the sounds, of kids separated from their parents as part of the current administration’s zero-tolerance policy on illegal immigration. We often miss the impact of these stories until we are hit over the head with dramatic 2-by-4s. Remember the little Syrian boy with the red shirt found dead on a Turkish beach after he fled his country?

The comparisons to Nazi Germany have been made: children separated from parents; detention facilities in scattered and usually undisclosed locations; controlled tours of facilities designed to show that things weren’t so bad, and the head of state using the word “infest” to characterize the influx of immigrants. Of course, there is no real comparison to the Holocaust, just echoes, though rather loud ones.

All that said, I’m also interested in getting beyond emotions and symbols to find out what happens now. The President has rescinded the separation policy, and a federal judge has ordered that families be swiftly reunited. But how much has this ill-thought-out program cost so far, and what will it cost in the future? The question of damages and/or reparations will likely come up. Will we taxpayers have to pay that bill?

Then, will the current Congress, or the new one, finally get down to crafting a comprehensive, workable immigration law that imposes reasonable controls on who gets into our country, but is flexible enough to accommodate legitimate asylum-seekers, the Dreamers, needed seasonal workers, and the professionals we seek to fill shortages in certain sectors?

We did relatively little over the years as we watched Syria devolve, but that was an ocean away. Now we have our own little ISIS-type enclave, or violent groups of them, in Central America to deal with, motivated not by twisted religion but by power, greed, and more than a little misogyny, which women and their children understandably want to escape from. What are we, and other countries in our hemisphere, going to do about this? Can’t we see beyond putting up walls?

Too many questions and not enough answers. But I think we have to remember that most of us, as descendants of immigrants, were born here by sheer luck. We didn’t have to lift a finger to be American. If less-fortunate people born in other places want to come here, and we deem them worthy of staying here, we have to help them become the Americans we want them to be, and to make sure we have a government worthy of not only their respect, but our own.

It's Your Life, Anyway

That’s a play on the title of one of my favorite movies, 1981’s “Whose Life Is It, Anyway?” in which Richard Dreyfuss plays a successful sculptor who is left paralyzed from the neck down following a traffic accident and goes to court seeking permission to die.

I am not opposed to assisted suicide, which has now gained a level of acceptance. We allow abortions, so why shouldn’t similar allowances be made on the other end of life? And typically, it is done with friends and family made aware. But the suicide of those who can easily do it themselves is another thing, as in the recent cases of Kate Spade and Anthony Bourdain, and prior to them, Robin Williams and some others. Folks even get a little angry, as in, “They had everything: money, fame, lovers, and maybe even a sense of accomplishment, so what was their problem?” When it’s a celebrity, especially a beloved one, part of the sadness and anger is related to the fact that their gift-giving has ended. We won’t get anything more from them.

The basic fact is, we don’t really know people. We believe that great artists are telling us everything about themselves through their art – but we’re often wrong. We buy into the mask they present to us, which in some cases only adds to the pressure they are under to keep wearing it. And we get upset when it’s torn off.

The problem with suicide is that the perpetrator thinks that he or she is doing it in isolation. Often, the opposite is true. They have, in that moment, forgotten the positive impact they have had on the lives of others…and what awful impact killing themselves will have on those receive the news after they’re gone. There are people in my life I thought disliked me, whom I have resumed contact with on social media in recent years, Now, they’re telling me how great I was earlier on and even how much they learned from me. I sure didn’t get that impression at the time they were learning it.

I bet almost all of us have toyed with the idea of offing ourselves at fleeting moments. One of the hard parts is finding a painless and un-messy way. But there is one overarching reason that I would probably never do it. None of us knows what’s on the “other side.”  I was raised Catholic and was taught that suicide is a mortal sin. And you know where they say mortal sinners go after death. Suppose the Catholics are right? If what they say is true, whatever your situation is here on Earth, if you kill yourself, you will be in a lot deeper doo-doo than you are right now, and it will last forever. It’s not a chance I want to take.

There She Goes...

Wow. The swimsuit competition gone from Miss America? As an old person who watched the pageant as a child (yes, when Bert Parks was there) and who placed an informal bet with other members of the family on which state would win, it takes a minute to absorb this news.

One moment that stood out to me was in the 1961 pageant, when, as I recall, Miss Michigan’s high heel broke during the swimsuit portion. She simply kicked off the other shoe and walked the runway barefoot. “Who walks in high heels while wearing a bathing suit, anyway?”  she said during her personality interview -- and went on to win the Miss America crown.

Along came women’s lib, and it became much more difficult to defend the usefulness of beauty pageants. But I tried. I reasoned that many of these young women were interested in careers in modeling, the media, and public relations, or even politics, and their gift of beauty gave them a leg up, if you’ll pardon the expression, in pursuit of these goals, through the training, exposure, and scholarship money that was provided by the pageant experience and by the ensuing reign as the winner. The argument sounded more and more hollow with time, but it will always be the human experience that beauty opens doors, and it will continue to do so, unfair as it may seem.

Typical Americans, though -- we turn everything into an Olympic sport, even cupcake-baking. If Miss America remains a competition, will the participants have the opportunity to advance a cause that currently gets insufficient attention? That could be a good thing.

We are indeed in a revolutionary period, much like the French one. First it was sports figures in trouble, Then, Confederate flags and statues were toppled. Then #metoo. Many of our Hollywood and media, and even political icons have been pulled down from their pedestals, and we have to keep the baskets moving to catch all the rolling heads as cultural standards change.

But as we older people live longer, one of the side effects is seeing history dissolve in front of us. And we are all supposed to be clapping loudly. As new generations come along, it seems easy for younger people to quickly make it in leaps and bounds up to the moral high ground. Pardon us, but I hope we older folks get a little extra time to make the climb  -- and to adjust to breathing the air up there when we arrive.