Map of life expectancy at birth from Global Education Project.

Wednesday, June 20, 2018

Do you remember a guy named Barack Obama?

He's on Facebook. Here's what he posted today.

His tone is measured, his words dignified, he refrains from ad hominem attacks. Here's what he writes:

Today is World Refugee Day.
If you've been fortunate enough to have been born in America, imagine for a moment if circumstance had placed you somewhere else. Imagine if you'd been born in a country where you grew up fearing for your life, and eventually the lives of your children. A place where you finally found yourself so desperate to flee persecution, violence, and suffering that you'd be willing to travel thousands of miles under cover of darkness, enduring dangerous conditions, propelled forward by that very human impulse to create for our kids a better life.
That's the reality for so many of the families whose plights we see and heart-rending cries we hear. And to watch those families broken apart in real time puts to us a very simple question: are we a nation that accepts the cruelty of ripping children from their parents’ arms, or are we a nation that values families, and works to keep them together? Do we look away, or do we choose to see something of ourselves and our children?
Our ability to imagine ourselves in the shoes of others, to say “there but for the grace of God go I,” is part of what makes us human. And to find a way to welcome the refugee and the immigrant – to be big enough and wise enough to uphold our laws and honor our values at the same time – is part of what makes us American. After all, almost all of us were strangers once, too. Whether our families crossed the Atlantic, the Pacific, or the Rio Grande, we’re only here because this country welcomed them in, and taught them that to be an American is about something more than what we look like, how our last names sound, or the way we worship. To be an American is to have a shared commitment to an ideal – that all of us are created equal, and all of us deserve the chance to become something better.
That’s the legacy our parents and grandparents and generations before created for us, and it’s something we have to protect for the generations to come. But we have to do more than say “this isn’t who we are.” We have to prove it – through our policies, our laws, our actions, and our votes.
I won't be so dignified and so measured. If you are a U.S. citizen your government, in your name, is torturing babies and children by the  thousands for the sole purpose of exciting and gratifying its vicious, racist base of supporters.  The man occupying the office of president is the most vile, repulsive, evil individual on the planet. The only just outcome is to lock him in a cage for the rest of his life. It cannot happen soon enough.

3 comments:

Don Quixote said...

BRAVO! The congressional Republicans, the Kochs, Trump, Pence, the freak "conservative" "justices" (including Clarence "Long Dong Silver" Thomas), all of Trump's mutant appointees, make me want to vomit. The current governing party is disgusting, revolting, a crime against humanity. I have eight-year-old students who say very sweetly to me, "I hope Donald Trump dies."

Out of the mouths of babes.

I'm not religious, but I hope the traitors rot in hell.

Anonymous said...


If you were to ask me who was the coolest president or which one I'd like to have a beer with, it would have to be President Obama...hands down. But his smoothness and measured tone doesn't negate the fact that this was also pretty much happening on his watch as well.

My question is: Where were all the bloggers and media then outrage then??

https://www.vox.com/2018/6/21/17488458/trump-obama-family-separate-detention-border

Anonymous said...


https://twitter.com/twitter/statuses/1009574678002839552