It was during the snowstorms in January when my family managed to meet up for a birthday celebration in sunny California where the temperatures were in the 60s and 70s and the sky was beautifully blue every day. The winter respite was lovely but sobering as well, because I knew we were lucky to be able to take the trip since we are what could be called, in economic terms, privileged. That alone made me feel guilty as we departed.
The guilt persisted as I watched children playing, skateboarding, and having fun in other ways on the beaches. I kept thinking of all the incarcerated children in what are called detention facilities, but which I view as concentration camps. Those kids are eating fowl food, sleeping on cold floors, being denied necessary healthcare, education, clean water, and fresh air. Worst of all they are often separated from their parents, even as infants and toddlers. The older ones draw pictures like the children starving and ill in Germany’s Holocaust camps did. Others have written letters that are now surfacing in social media outlets.
Here is an excerpt from a letter 14-year-old Ariana wrote after being detained for 45 days. “I have never felt so much fear as I feel here every day. I remind myself that once I go back to Honduras a lot of dangerous things could happen to my mom. My younger siblings haven’t seen their mom in over a month. Since I got to this Center all I feel is sadness and depression. … It’s sad to hear that people’s cases are being denied and they are being sent back to countries where they escaped from looking for protection and safety. Serious situations happen here and the officers don’t take them seriously. They don’t care.”
The juxtaposition of exuberant kids and the continuing traumatic news of incarcerated children was entirely dissonant. How could these two simultaneous scenarios possibly make sense?
That dissonance was mirrored and magnified by watching people in museums, parks, restaurants and cafes enjoying themselves as if nothing was wrong or troubling. I felt like I was being jolted back to normal times when we all felt relatively safe, and random acts of violence were not something we had to fear every day. Yet how could we ignore what was going on in our world?
Just a brief glance at the news each morning and evening gave me pause and reminded me of the worries that seemed ever present and inescapable. I couldn’t stop feeling guilty for enjoying myself as day by day the dissonance became more disturbing.
All over the world, while we were enjoying our time together, devastating weather events were a serious sign of possibly unsolvable climate change that could mean global water shortages, droughts that would increase migration, and other events that would irretrievably alter our ways of life and threaten social and political stability.
Added to these possibilities, and exacerbating threats and dangers we now face, is the lack of political will to do what is urgently needed while we still may have time. Given that science is seriously under attack, access to healthcare and public health preventive measures, no matter how sick people are, weaponized education mandates, while shutting down environmental protection via the EPA, disaster relief by FEMA, along with the absence of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), which all rely on scientific experts across all sectors
is a recipe for disaster.
As The Other 98% noted in a Facebook post in December, “What’s being spun as bureaucratic reshuffling is actually a brazen assault on research that keeps people safe and economies functioning in a world facing escalating climate chaos.” The Facebook post which focused on relevant issues and pending crises that require scientific research and activity concluded with this warning: “It’s about whether we choose to prepare for the world we are living in. …This is our planet on the line, and our democracy too.”
To expand upon this focus on the threatening absence of research I would add that the travesties we’ve witnessed and worried about, ranging from ICE murders to the threat of a cancelled election, all because of our current inept and inhumane powerbrokers in government who are acting in collusion with their financially privileged and deeply corrupt cronies.
Since I am by nature a worrier, I have sleepless nights about all of this, but it’s something we all need respite from, and we shouldn’t feel guilty about how and where we find it. I’m trying to drop the guilt while recognizing the disturbing dissonance we are living with in these dark days. I hope others are seeing that as well.
Returning home from my respite there was plenty of ice, but it wasn’t unexpected or alarming. It’s ICE, and everything it represents, that gives me restless nights, along with the deep and disturbing dissonance that prevails.
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Elayne Clift writes from Brattleboro, Vt.