Bill Lynch: The borders between us all

The President has already built his wall – the one dividing Americans|

It’s a lie. The allegation that our borders are critically insecure and that is why we must mistreat immigrants and waste billions of taxpayer dollars on a needless wall is false. It is the false premise being used to keep out people who are desperately seeking safety, freedom and opportunities, as immigrants to our country have done for as long as it has existed.

It is not for our safety that these cruel and un-American actions are taken. It is for reasons far more personal to the man who lives in the White House. It is his blatant attempt to appeal to the worst part in all of us. This dark side is what most religions tell us we must fight as though our souls depended on it. Yet he preaches the opposite, and regrettably some of our fellow Americans, including some elected representatives, follow.

It runs contrary to all I know is right about how our country came to be.

We have taken in the tired and poor, the huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of teeming shores. We welcomed them. Made room for them. And they became one with us, making our country a better place.

We allowed our better nature, our sense of fairness and decency to dominate our more selfish and base instincts.

These are the self-evident truths that I grew up believing about our country. It is also why it is so disturbing to watch the news these days. By avoiding it, I can pretend that it has nothing to do with me.

It’s actually easy to sit here in Sonoma, comfortable in my cocoon, far from the border, in one of the nicest, safest, most beautiful little towns in the entire world and feel smug in my self-righteous, liberal beliefs.

Would I feel the same if those desperately poor huddled groups of brown people who can’t speak my language were camped in the Sonoma Plaza, or living 10 or 12 to a room in an apartment on my block?

Would I feel the same if vacant land near me was proposed for an affordable housing project, allowing working class citizens as well as immigrants to intrude into my place of privilege?

Would I try to keep them out, alleging perhaps that they would “ruin the character” of my neighborhood? Would I allege that they’d overwhelm our schools and health services, and add to the congestion and traffic? Would I impugn the motives of the builders and argue that they are damaging our natural environment?

I might not go as far as to suggest that they are rapists and murderers or terrorists. No decent person I know would suggest that.

No, I wouldn’t be nearly so coarse.

But my determination and efforts to keep them out could be just as harmful to them as a wall and cruel border guards.

Fortunately, I have a choice.

I can allow my basic sense of fairness and decency to overrule those negative instincts. I can find it in my heart, even if it intrudes into my nice little bubble, to do everything I can to make room – to accept fellow Americans who seek a better life in my beautiful place, and immigrants, who are very much like my earliest ancestors were when they came to this country generations ago.

I can support and vote for leaders of generous spirit who believe in inclusion and build bridges, not walls, people who are honest, kind, decent, and capable of sharing through responsible compromise, people with integrity who believe in the American dream and who would rather speak the truth and risk losing an election than lie to keep their power.

Ideals like these are difficult to live with. They have consequences. Accepting compromise and sharing my beautiful little community is just part of it.

The process by which our country has allowed the American dream to be real is messy, chaotic and inconvenient. It costs us all something. It challenges those of us who have it made to allow others the chance to do the same.

I believe that meeting such a challenge is precisely what generations of Americans preceding ours did. And that is what actually made, and will keep, America great.

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