Photograph by Nathaniel St. Clair

There’s always been a wide chasm between what Americans typically think they are and who they really have been over the years. Terms like rugged individualism are advertised while the underlying toil done by the enslaved, by women with no agency…….the almost eradication of the native population—well, it’s actively avoided because the narrative does not fit.

We’ve been surrounded by individuals who have proclaimed through the years that they have to stand tall against government overreach. They have stated that they need multiple guns to protect against tyranny. They feel a few school shootings are needed to protect that holy amendment.

They sit in churches proclaiming the words of Jesus, but conveniently ignore the message from any tales that espouse kindness and empathy. They don’t recall any tables being turned over. Goodness, that sounds like property damage and we don’t like that.

When taken as a whole, this superficial persona they have cultivated has absolutely no substance underneath. A shiny exterior with a core of purulent rot.

They are the ones who sit in their favorite Mexican restaurant and dine while they overlook the toil of the immigrants. They rejoice in the cruelty when they find out the cooks are in hiding and their children can’t go to school (other than being pissed they can’t get their favorite combo plate).

They see that an 11-year-old Hispanic child has committed suicide after fellow classmates threaten “to call ICE on her” and they come up with some nonsense that it’s a shame, but the parents shouldn’t have come here illegally. These same people read The Diary of Anne Frank in school and maybe even cried. How one line can’t be connected to the other is unfathomable.

When notified that many playing by all the rules are being rounded up as they try to go to the immigration offices for scheduled appointments, they mumble that it’s going to be a messy process, that these things will unfortunately happen. This clearly shows it’s not a “law and order” thing for them, whether they will admit it or not.

When confronted with the fact that most likely their own relatives slid into the nation under shady circumstances and leaky immigration boats, they ignore that fact because the stories of their leaving problematic situations in Europe is that of brave migration. It’s a terrible thing to remember when the........

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