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The America I grew up in is unrecognizable. Yesterday the United States voted with Russia, North Korea, Iran and other authoritarian countries against condemning Russian aggression in Ukraine and calling for the return of Ukrainian territory.
Deporting immigrants indiscriminately, declaring they are all criminals and disparaging gay, lesbian and trans people while cutting programs for the developmentally disabled; ostracizing minorities and women while betraying friends denies and destroys the humanity of one another.
The name calling, the dismissiveness, the dehumanization, misogyny, racism and xenophobia demonstrate a national soul that is no longer giving life, no longer serving, only taking, no longer building up, only tearing down. Nothing for those who have been dealt a bad hand by life.
We are a country broken on the inside with a spirit that is crushed. This dehumanizing is used to garner power. It gives authority and influence to the most outrageous and proves the end game is always victory over others or at the very least crushing our opponent’s spirit into submission. This disease has infected the soul of America.
The “rule of law” has been turned on its head by throwing open the jailhouse doors to 1,500 lawbreakers but alleging the law keepers are guilty of wrong doing. The scapegoating of black and brown people and using immigrants as political pawns feeds ideological bloodlust and the need to vanquish enemies. Soon we are all participants in the unwinnable game of determining who is not worthy of human dignity.
Unless we value the dignity of all people, human decency will be absent from the soul of America. We will fall victim to tyrannical rule and America as we knew it will be dead.
– Hanson, of Elkhorn, is a member of the Walworth County Democratic Party.
