Sins of Our Fathers, Opportunities for Healing
What a sorrowful, sordid state our country has descended into. We have Republican presidential candidates openly and enthusiastically endorsing water boarding and other vile acts of torture in secret prisons outside the watchful eyes of Ladies Liberty and Justice, without Habeas Corpus,without presumption of innocence, for as long as some agent of the government determines you to be a threat or useful to the security of the nation or “read” (government).
We have borrowed billions of dollars from foreign and domestic bankers to fund decades of wars across the globe, resulting in incalculable human suffering, because we didn’t want to fund them, being assured civilization itself was at stake. Every horrible act of the imagination has been used to evoke a state of fear and loathing making our freedoms, morality and human brotherhood the willing price for our security.
Our families and neighbors in the armed forces have had their noble desire to serve a larger good paid back with the callous, cynical machiavellian plots of global hegemony that would have made the old Imperial Courts of Europe blush.
The bankers drive up the cost of housing in a bubble through blatantly illegal, predatory schemes, leaving millions of us homeless or losing their families lifetime investments in ashes.
Then the bankers are bailed out in an unprecedented largess from our Treasury to be paid by our children and grandchildren.
We then have our nations credit worthiness downgraded by the bankers forcing us to pay more for their (our) money which we borrow in the future and in payment on our spiraling debt.
Retiree’s have to go back to work in an economy that has no use for them or give up there dreams for a few years of relaxation or to reflect on their lives. (“no estate tax “doesn’t mean much for their families when there isn’t an estate left and bankruptcy laws have been rewritten for the bankers).
Now we are told we are indolent for considering medical care a just fruit of a lifetime of labor, or the pittance paid by Social Security for living and burial expenses in our old age.
I don’t have a degree in economics but this is a sucker’s game and you don’t lose $20 dollars in the back of the bus you pay with you and your children and grand childrens’ lives.
Hell, Satan only asks for your first born, or so I’ve heard (sic). These people are insatiable in their unnatural desire for wealth and power at the expense of the harmony of our society and it’s relation to the
Earth . We too have allowed ourselves to be led down the path of consuming fools in their nightmarish vision of life that knows no peace, personal or planetary.
Would we could rewind history and have come as brothers and sisters, rather than plundering, genocidal conquerors of the indigenous civilizations of the Americas, perhaps we could have listened better to each others best ideals on life, ecology and social responsibility learning a better path.
It seems our shamelessness has no bounds. we are now targeting our immigrant communities for the problems birthed by Wall Street. They have become the whipping boy of the day, a time honored tradition the many waves of ancestor’s have had to endure.
The Xenophobic laws enacted in Arizona and Alabama are not worthy of the best ideas embodied in our Constitution and Declaration of Independence. There are now children afraid of going to school or getting vital health care, parents fearful of going out of the house lest some minor incident could result in deportation and the fracturing of their families.
There are already many thousands of such wounded families which we must endeavor to make whole. There are untold thousands in our prisons and jails throughout the country who are here for no other reason than to labor at hard work to provide food and housing for their loved ones. They pay taxes, provide critically needed labor and enrich our lives in a myriad of ways.
Our nation pushed the indigenous peoples of North America further and further west abrogating countless treaties , promises and common decency in the lust for land and treasure. We annexed half of Mexico and our vigilantes are surprised to find Mexicans here. The racist deluded ideas of Manifest Destiny are part of our heritage too and it falls on our generation to right the wrongs of our forefathers as they expropriated the land and lives of the peoples of the America’s. The Mexican’s coming to work here and working here already are among the indigenous people of this continent, no resort to legalisms can change that and what we must do if we really do believe in the “Inalienable rights of Man”, rights not granted by President or Parliament, King or Congress, but intrinsic to our being.
Immigration reform is one small step in doing this. These indigenous peoples “immigrants” as they are called need to be fully integrated as fully functioning members of our republic if they choose and if not honored and respected in word and Law for the hard work and enrichment they provide to us.
Our laws include our traditions as well as statutes, treaties and conventions. Let’s make the Universal Declaration of Human Rights a document with real meaning. Let’s abide by the Conventions and Treaties on the Rights of Migrants, Refuges and Transnational Labor, Let’s abide by the Geneva Convention and subsequent additions not just because they are part of our laws but because this is who we are striving to be. Prove me wrong, take it upon yourself to welcome an immigrant family to our “Imperfect Union”, share your traditions, hopes and dreams and learn form theirs as well Ask them to help us make this a “More Perfect Union”, such that God’s face will shine with joy and we can have the blessings of liberty, equality and brotherhood.
We can do this,
We have done this before,
It is the right thing to do,
It will make us a stronger and more vibrant nation,
Worthy of being called: “Land of the Free and Home of the Brave.
God Bless,
Gregory Zensen
713 Fillmore St.
St. Louis, MO 63111
314-735-6753
gregzensen 