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Terminus, the Roman god of borders and boundary stones, had a motto: I Yield to No One. In the old days, lambs and piglets died in blood sacrifices for Terminus. Today, nations sacrifice human lives in homage to their borderlines.
The most recent sacrifices include the due process rights of 200+ Venezuelans, sent to a sprawling pit in El Salvador from which nobody gets out alive, where warehoused human beings eat with their hands and sleep under lights, on bare metal racks. Meanwhile, Trump walks free, touting meme coins and flying to golf outings.
And then comes Bernie.
Asked on ABC’s This Week whether Trump has done anything well, Bernie Sanders says yeah, making sure our borders are stronger.
Nobody thinks illegal immigration is appropriate, Bernie insists.
Terminus would be delighted. So would the Wall Street billionaires who are keen to sustain the profit potential in Bernie’s outlook.
Whose Side Are You On?
We say something nice about your policies, Bernie, and then, for all your anti-capitalist fire and brimstone, you remind us. At the end of the day you make your diligent contributions from a place of privilege. As put the point:
There is absolutely zero need for anybody to praise Donald Trump for “making sure our borders are stronger.” That is whitewashing what he is doing and reinforcing the anti-immigrant sentiment that Trump has always capitalized on.
It also helps reinforce the development of authoritarianism in El Salvador.
But Bernie’s only gripe with Trump’s border actions involves the sheer numbers slated for deportation.
Shooing away 20 million undocumented people, Bernie told ABC’s Jonathan Karl, will destroy the United States. Not because it will ruin our social fabric or the potential of 20 million lives, but because who else will work in meat packing houses and pick crops in California?
Bernie, why do they work these jobs? U.S. economic politics don’t just enrich the billionaires here. They also oppress working classes to our south. Let’s not reduce people to the jobs they take when deprived of their freedom of choice. Let’s not suggest that the fields and the killing floors are the appropriate places for people who migrate from south to north.
An Airtight Cage
Back in the 1960s, MLK called out the people who “take necessities from the many to give luxuries to the few and leave millions of God’s children smothering in an airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society.” The smothering MLK pointed out hasn’t ended. And, increasingly, an airtight cage of poverty is also being sealed at the national border.
For the past six decades, global heating has weakened crop production in equatorial latitudes. Nothing, Bernie, can stop the movement of people whose children are hungry. Our compromised climate has displaced military violence as the key cause for human migration.
If we’d attempt to evolve as an ethical—and sustainable—humanity, we must think critically about nations and borders, Bernie, and the way they exemplify the airtight cage. The true leader is not the one focused on punishing the desperate. It’s the one who dismantles what’s causing desperation. Here, we can begin by dislodging the settler-colonial conception of the Americas from our platforms. Listen to the migrant’s rejoinder: The border crossed us.
© Counter Punch
