Letters for June 28, 2018

‘Chaos and cruelty’

Re “New dark chapter,” Second & Flume, June 21):

I cannot fathom the levels of anguish, chaos and cruelty unleashed by the Trump administration. The latest example, of course, is the separation of desperate parents and children at the Mexican border. Trump’s reversal of his and Jeff Sessions’ policy of separation does nothing to reverse the ongoing tragedy of babies, toddlers and children virtually disappearing from their parents, including the obscenity of shipping many of these vulnerable children off to other parts of the country.

The consequences of this ugly, punitive policy will reverberate through the generations. Parallels with Nazi Germany are obvious: big lies spoken over and over, vilification of the press as the enemy, terms like “infestation” and animals” to describe human beings. Let us learn from history. Vote in November. Agitate against the madness.

Silona Reyman

Chico

Thousands of infants separated from their mothers’ wombs by Planned Parenthood. Where’s the outrage from the liberals/Democrats? Thousands of infants separated from their parents at childbirth due to a history of addiction or abuse. Where’s the outrage from the liberals/Democrats? Thousands of children separated from their parents due to incarceration. Where’s the outrage from the liberals/Democrats? The liberal/Democrat hypocrisy reeks!

Ken Carlsen

Durham

The horror story at the border continues. Now, we have incarcerated parents locked up with their children. We should bring back the Family Case Management Program, which Trump eliminated after taking office. This program was hugely successful: “More than 99 percent of families in the program showed up for their court dates.”

Yet Trump has preferred jail and criminalization. As anyone who has lost a parent in childhood knows, that trauma stays with a person for a lifetime. Add to that losing a parent in foreign surroundings? Unimaginable.

The U.S. has been bombing and supporting murderous regimes around the world for decades, killing and maiming families from Vietnam to the Middle East. In the past, we’ve offered compensation. Yet last year, the U.S. took in only 11 refugees from Syria. Pitiful. Compare that to the 2 million Indochinese that were resettled in the U.S. over 40 years ago.

Trump separates and jails families from Honduras, which is like a war zone, and has the highest homicide rate of all countries in the world, followed by Guatemala, which is No. 4. We have a worldwide refugee crisis. Time for sensible border policy, not jailing families.

Ed Schilling

Paradise

Is Doug LaMalfa hiding? I’ve called his offices trying to find any staff person paid by us to tell me what LaMalfa thought of the practice of ripping young children out of the arms of their mothers when they have come to our southern border to apply for asylum. No staff person in the national or local offices could tell me what he thought, or if he was doing anything about it.

Many of these asylum seekers are fleeing extreme violence in their Central American countries. Some of them have already had several members of their families slaughtered by members of gangs.

The GOP once claimed it supported legal immigration. Does it still? And if it does, why did Doug LaMalfa stay silent about this hideous practice, which leaves parents terrified and children emotionally and physically damaged.

Congressman LaMalfa, are you afraid of Donald Trump? Since your offices tell us nothing, perhaps you can answer in the pages of this newspaper. Representing your constituents is a dialogue, not a monologue. Please respond. It’s your job.

Karen Duncanwood

Paradise

I am driving with my daughter. She raised her head up from her coloring book to ask, “Mom, can I be stolen too?” She’s picked up on what’s happening on the radio and by listening to conversations in our home. She’s asking about the forced separation of undocumented families at the border.

I want to say, “No, that is impossible!” However, I see parallels between this latest act and those of the past (internment of Japanese-Americans, removal of indigenous children from families to boarding schools, etc.).

I cannot comfort her because this is out of my control.

My daughter is mixed—Mexican-American and white. I fear that I will be asked to provide proof that she is mine, as was the case in May for Lindsay Gottlieb, head women’s basketball coach for UC Berkeley, while traveling with her mixed-race child. Do I need to start traveling with her birth certificate?

“You are American. You were born here, just like your parents and grandparents.” How do I explain forced migration to a 4-year-old? The words do not exist to bring her up to speed.

Ambrosia Krinsky

Chico

I am grateful for the outrage over the obscene incarceration of children separated from their parents during the immigration/asylum process. That obscenity is going to be stopped because of that outrage.

There should be equal outrage over U.S. policies that have created and abetted the Central American violence that is causing many to flee their country.

In 2009, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton supported a coup in Honduras, wanting a government friendly to U.S. business interests and the Honduran elite and its military. The U.S. government then increased funding to the coup perpetrators, the Honduran military. Political violence and assassinations, attributed to state-sponsored death squads, soared.

The historical record shows that U.S. policies and assistance have most often undermined prosperity, stability and democracy in Central America.

Laura Bush called the child separation cruel and immoral. Did she ever call the Iraq War cruel and immoral? Hundreds of thousands of men, women and children have died as a result of unnecessary U.S. military action in Iraq, Libya, Syria and Yemen. That cruel and immoral military action has been unthinkingly supported by most Democrats and Republicans.

Those deaths aren’t as embarrassing as several thousand caged children, so there is no outrage.

Lucy Cooke

Butte Valley

Sorry and goodbye

Re “Bon appétit!” (Letters, by Peter Bridge, June 21):

Allow me to open with something foreign to conservatives: an apology. It’s just a courtesy common to we “liberals.”

Second, don’t bother to pass the salt. I don’t wish to join the growing Amerikan legions of hypertensive and self-righteously indignant … well, conservatives.

Thirdly, I was mistaken to assume anything of you, just like those who assume they know everything about me, including my party affiliation, as a result of my stand on Amerika’s epidemic national health crisis of gun violence.

Lastly, you still insist that white boys are made to commit murder as if it is the natural response to the liberal anti-American indoctrination you assert. Again, in spite of your education, not because of it, you mistakenly seem to believe people can be made to act. No one makes anyone do anything in a free society. Every action is a choice and/or a reaction. Just as I didn’t make you respond to me. You chose. I’m just hoping you don’t also choose to shoot someone as a result of your anger at liberalism.

Have a nice life.

Joe Hlebica

Red Bluff

More POTUS talk

If what Trump does—no matter how illegal, immoral, dishonest or incompetent—irritates the Democrats and progressives, then [Republicans] love and support it.

Given this, I would fully expect the Republican reaction to Trump deciding to create a national waste dump in Yosemite Valley to be, “I used to love vacationing there, but, hey, this will freak out those environmental liberals, so I’m all for it!”

Our national problem isn’t so much lack of education; it’s a lack of maturity and a lack of the ability to weigh problems and potential solutions on their merits rather than on who proposes them (remember, the Republican Congress refused to pass their own bills if Obama supported them).

It’s also demand of instant gratification. Why look at the facts, review the options and weigh the consequences when it’s easier to scream “make America great again!”? It reminds me of two neighbors who both hate hard rock music but don’t get along otherwise. One decides that if he blasts loud electric guitar recordings all day he’ll put up with the hated sounds because he knows how it so irritates the other. Childlike? That’s where we are politically.

Hopefully the next generation will have a bit more humility.

Dean Carrier

Paradise