So stated Father Gabriel to Aaron in The Walking Dead after he shot a man to whom he had just pleaded to trust them. The man pleaded to be brought back into the fold, even as he confessed to yet more terrible violations of the rules of decent society. As Father Gabriel seemed to acquiesce he killed the man. Right? Wrong? All things being relative, circumstances dictating different truths and necessities? Actions being okay, the situation deemed good, depending upon the reasoning necessary to survival? Questions asked on a TV show, yet also relative to a real life situation.
So we have approximately 3,400 unaccompanied minors being held in not the very best of circumstances, though, mind you, not in cages, not under prisoner treatment, even as all the while the authorities are striving to find a solution, even as the Republican governors of the border states refuse to cooperate, only rant and rave, Trumpian substitutes as they raise the ugly airs of racial bigotry and xenophobia.
Most of these minors are coming from countries where their lives were endangered. Gangs were after them. Family members had already been killed. Life was hopeless, starvation and fear being daily conditions of life. So parents sent their children on ahead, desperate attempts to save them, give them a chance at a life. Not the best of solutions nor the best of circumstances. The situation is not good, and we are not okay.
This situation is an echo to another time when parents were desperate to save their children from certain death. The last chance was to put them on a train, knowing they would most probably never see them again, their own death imminent. This was the Kindertransport movement when a pathetic amount of Jewish children were rescued, sent to England, and the world stood there, head hung in shame as the rest of the children, over a million and a half plus, were killed, slaughtered, in the most vile of manners.
No one is saying the circumstances are totally identical, but these kids, these minors, are also facing existential difficulties and their guardians are desperate, or even dead, so onward these kids come. Our immigration policy over the past four years has been horrid, to say the least. We have been left with an intolerable situation and the correction is difficult.
Under this administration it must be done in a humane manner, contrary to the vile behavior of the Trump administration and the cooperating officers of the agencies involved, and the morally challenged GOP members of Congress who went along with this, denied the truth in front of them.
Yes, these things can happen here and indeed have happened and will continue to happen unless a wider approach is undertaken, until we all realize that this will continue until the situations in the countries of Central America are changed for the better. Not an easy task at all. Perhaps even impossible. But we need to try. Humanity demands that we do so.
Anyone who has been watching this show now realizes that the walking dead of the title are not necessarily the zombies who chase the living in mindless quests for food, unable to satisfy a driving demand within. Frightening, but the walking dead are actually those who survived, almost certainly doomed, alive, just delayed in fulfillment of the truth and inevitable outcome for them all.
The question is if there is any chance at all to truly be okay, as Father Gabriel reassures Aaron. What is okay? What makes it good? Will we be able to rescue the shattered bones of society and live lives where death is not such an upfront threat and influence on life and behaviors? Will we be able to cease being the walking dead?
Make no mistake about it. While we do not have literal zombies hanging around waiting to chew us up, we do have figurative ones who are chewing up the rules of decent and humane society, who are counter to progress, who wish to return to a more savage time.
So on the Ides of March do we need a warning for Caesar? Would it be heeded or disregarded in our own arrogance? Have we become the figurative walking dead as we consume the decency of society, as we forget humanity, as we ramp up hatred, as we turn to right wing extremism?
No, we are not okay, We have a chance now to head down the right path, to be good, to be okay, to put an end to all the walking dead who would devour decency, humanity, truth and compassion. Tough times, hard times, huge problems. With cooperation amazing advances can be made. Do we have the wherewithal for this? Can we resist the pull to become part of the 'herd' of unthinking walking dead or can we stand and do the right thing? Easier to do one thing, but then again, doing the right thing has never been easy, though necessary for our survival. Chomp or build - that is the choice.
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