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Lead Time

When I was in graduate school I read Lead Time by Garry Wills and it made a big impact on me. He spoke of the advantage that he had as a (at the time) magazine journalist to spend time on an article and delve deeply into context and impact in a way that does not occur with the daily (and now instantaneously) news reporting cycle. It resonated with essays that Calvin Trillin had written for the New Yorker (collected in Killings) on what happened after a killing and the impact on the community.

This hit me hard over the weekend when I finally caught up with Caitlin Dickerson's piece for the Atlantic, We Need to Take Away Children, on the Trump administration's policy of separating, often permanently, children from would-be immigrants.

I felt as if most of the big parts of the story had been public record but over a period of time; having them detailed factually in a chronology was infinitely painful to me as a parent. It is because of my winning the birth lottery that I was born here; had I been born elsewhere in the wrong year this would have been in part my story. 

Cruelty and sadism are never acceptable ends nor means to an end. A large apparatus of government officials implemented this policy. Nominal leaders tried not to have their names linked to it but never intervened to stop it. A dysfunctional Congress ceded the issue to the Executive Branch a long time ago.

We must stop giving power to sadists; only evil can follow.

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