Recipe for Peace of Mind
I've often wondered how ordinary people who loved their children, their families, and their friends, could have let the Holocaust happen and supported the people that did it. How do you tuck your children in bed at night, knowing that there are children not far from you being imprisoned, starved, and tortured?
I've been wondering the same thing with the U.S./Mexican border situation. How can people allow this to happen and support the people who do it? How do you tuck your children in bed at night knowing there are children not far away being imprisoned, starved, and tortured?
I've come to the conclusion that they're not looking at imprisoned and tortured children. They have their hands over their ears and over their eyes and they're saying "la, la, la, I'm not listening."
They don't believe the reports. Instead they choose to believe that they're saving children from the monsters who brought them over. After all, all adults who come over the U.S./Mexico border are monsters. They're all rapists and thieves and sex traffickers and they'll steal jobs away from good Christian people.
If you can pretend that it isn't happening, then it isn't happening. There isn't anything to get upset about. The border control will take care of the monsters. You can go back to baking cookies for the PTA, give blood every couple of months, drive your elderly neighbor around on her errands, go to work on weekdays, mow the lawn on Saturdays and teach Sunday School on Sundays. You know you're a good Christian person because look at what you do. You help your neighbor, put money in a beggar's hand, and share the gospel with whoever wants to hear and even those that don't. You are doing God's work. You even take time to read the Bible and watch Christian shows on TV.
You can do all these Christian things because children aren't being imprisoned and tortured at the border, women in border control custody aren't being raped, the president of the United States is a good Christian man with flaws like all of us, that Alexandra woman with three names is a communist and won't last long and deserves to be shot anyway, God is good, and if women would shut up long enough they would see how lucky they are compared to other women in the world in those heathen countries. After all, no one is setting fire to women here.
All you have to do for peace of mind, is keep the people who spread negativity off your social media, pay no attention to the news (it's all fake and depressing anyway), close your eyes, put your hands over your ears, and say "la, la, la, I'm not listening."
Do that - and all is well with the world.
Born in China, Adrienne Clarkson was a refugee to Canada when Japan occupied Hong Kong. Television journalist, film maker, writer, and later on the first visible minority and second woman to become the Governor General of Canada. She was also an advocate for immigrants and refugees.
