Take my neighbor...puh-lease!

I wonder.  If the Germans in the Nineteen Thirties had had the internet, would they have shared funny tweets and memes saying, "I live in constant fear that the Gestapo will round up my half Jewish Mother-in-Law who lives at 2182 Kurferstenstrasse, Potsdam, who gets off work at 5pm."

Here's the deal, folks.  Rounding up people whose crime is what they "are", not what they "did", never ends well.  Does this mean that our current anti-immigration policies will result in six million dead?

No, it does not necessarily mean that.  But remember, when the round up of Jews, Gypsies and various others started in the thirties, the death camps were not a done deal, or even on the table.

Sometimes things get out of hand.  And the best way to avoid getting to the end of a bad road is to not start down that road.

I couldn't find a pic of "Latina Mother-in-Laws" - yet.
Here's a Japanese American one.

America has a sad history of crappy dealing with "others".  Genocide and slavery were "things" until the 20th century, and for that century racism, exploitations, sterilizations, medical experiments, mass round ups and seizures of all properties were all still on the table.

Korematsu vs. U.S. was the Supreme Court case that dealt with rounding up American citizens of Japanese descent, and it was upheld it as Constitutional.  It has never been overturned.

A bit of fatigue is going to set in now.  Where Trump has done so many silly things we're just going to get tired of reading of it for awhile.  But bear in mind, he's pursuing his goals all the same.

We may be entering into an unfortunate period of history.  So far we've been living in the easy kind of history where we all get to tell our kids, "Oh, yeah, I'd have marched with King!" or "Oh, yeah, I'd have had five Jewish families in my attic!" or "I'd have so helped fugitive slaves get to Canada, see if I'd have feared prison!"

Easy things to say when African Americans have rights, Jews aren't hunted and neither is there slavery.

But what of these "illegals"?  How will your kids see you deal with this issue?  Which side will they see you on?  Oh, is this different?

It's always different.  Some who'd have sworn they'd have aided slaves still turned a blind eye to Jews seeking refuge here in the thirties.  Some who'd swear that they'd have hid Jews had no problem with the firehoses and dogs being turned on the protesters at Selma.

And some won't have any problem with a mass round up of immigrants without papers.  While staunchly claiming their enduring love of Africans and Jews - who for their times were as much "lawbreakers" as any Hispanic or Muslim without papers are now.

Do you have a mother in law who is an immigrant?  Then, like those grudge holding neighbors who called in secretly about those they disliked, you'll really be able to call.

And never mind that you’ll “be able to call", you already can call.  What is being passed off as a joke is actually a reality.  And people being perverse, it's already happened at least once or a hundred times.

Be careful.  Do not dismiss with humor something that should be fought.  Do not soothe yourself with the medicine of laughter as our nation bleeds out morally yet again.