"Cheating and lying aren’t struggles. They’re reasons to break up.” Patti Callahan Henry, Novelist
July 30, 2014
By: Linda Case Gibbons
Not long ago a gigantic wooden statue was rolled across the border into Mission, Texas. It was 40 feet high and fashioned in the image of a giant baby. Very cute!
"What’s it for?” a man asked. "Yeah, what is it?” someone else asked.
"It doesn’t look threatening,” the citizens observed, walking around the huge structure. "It’s a child. What harm can it do?”
"Yeah,” a voice in the crowd shouted. "Our president rolled it over the border himself! If you can’t trust your president, who can you trust?”
That sounded right.
"I remember something like this. A guy in a poem said, "Beware of Greeks bearing gifts,” a woman in the crowd said. "That was about a big wooden horse, though.”
"Well, what the heck does that have to do with anything?” someone yelled. "There are no Greeks around now! And besides who reads mythology anymore?”
The problem was that the residents in Texas had been fighting for so long that they were battle weary.
They had said, "Help us!” again and again to the federal government. "Tell them to go home. You’re killin’ us here!”
The "them” they were talking about were illegal immigrants who boldly crossed their borders and had been doing it for years. But after a while the locals became numb about it.
Sure, they asked about immigration, pleaded and voted about it for years and all they ever got in response was derision! This from people who were elected to serve and protect them and their border, the ones who were supposed to know what to do!
At some point even derision seemed pretty good, because most of the time they didn’t get any response at all.
But as things got worse, they realized there was a lot terribly wrong with their government. Not enforcing federal immigration laws already on the books was only one of them.
They admitted that over time they were wrong. They had accepted what was unacceptable and became blinded to what was happening. But they never thought they’d be set up by their own government!
Yet that was exactly what was happening. They were the ones ending up having to pay the exorbitant cost of supporting all the extra people coming into their state and it was bankrupting them.
"Nancy Pelosi was right,” they said. "This is immigration without representation.”
"But,” a rancher said, resting his foot on the base of the structure, "lots of federal officials say everything is fine, that they’ll take care of the problems on the border. At least that’s what they said.”
That’s true. That is what they said.
And Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) did appear to have a handle on the situation. Why, just recently he had time and felt comfortable enough to switch his attention to the border problems in the Ukraine.
It is "cowardly,” McCain said, "not to help people who are begging for our help to eject people who are invading their country.” The words should have reassured them, but instead it confused the citizens.
They knew Sen. McCain had been an Arizona senator since the ‘80s and the people in his state were still "begging for help to eject people who are invading their country.” That didn’t look so good.
"Well, what about House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.),” someone said. "That woman can really tug on your heartstrings, especially when she talks about Jesus.”
"I always reference the Conference of Catholic Bishops’ statement in which they say baby Jesus was a refugee from violence,” they remember hearing her say. She wanted the illegal kids to stay -- just like Jesus.
"These are children coming over the border. They are children. What would we do if Moses had not been accepted by the Pharaoh’s family?” she said. "You understand my point, historically we have a challenge and we have examples of humanitarian assistance that should guide us.”
"Huh?” some of them said. To be truthful, they didn’t understand her point. No one did.
And they would have preferred she use the federal immigration laws that were already on the books for guidance instead of the Bible, but they figured her heart was probably in the right place.
Right?
After all, didn’t she wash the feet of an immigrant in a Catholic service the day before Easter? Sure, she may be a staunch supporter of abortion, and yes, the head lawyer at the Vatican did say "no communion for you, Nancy,” because of her stand on that issue, but she did quote the Bible when the time was right.
They’re all trying, and isn’t that all that counts?
Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.) said she is trying, but adds hopelessly, there’s really nothing that can be done. If the Republicans pass a law to stop the children from coming, she says, Harry
Reid wouldn’t introduce it anyway.
"Hmm. That kind of leaves us on our own,” someone said. And one thing they knew for sure, the situation was getting worse.
Ranchers finding dead bodies only yards away from their front doors. Bodies floating in their majestic Rio Grande. Border guards, people they knew, becoming sick and carrying diseases home to their families.
And the citizens of Texas were afraid they’d get sick, too. And that they’d be killed.
"No, no,” said the president. "Don’t be selfish! It’s about the children,” he explained. And he pointed at the giant Trojan Tot that he rolled over their state border. "You’re against children if you don’t want them to stay.”
"But you didn’t ask us!” they shouted.
"It’s a humanitarian crisis,” he said. "You have no choice.”
Our elected officials in Congress nodded in agreement then went on vacation they were so upset.
As the Texas citizens watched, a little door opened in the Trojan Tot and a couple of hundred children poured out.
The kids got onto waiting buses and planes. Some were coughing and some had fevers, but they weren’t checked for that. And in a twinkling of an eye, the government whisked them away, dispersing them to all parts of our country.
"But where are they going?” the citizens shouted.”Who are they? Where are they from? You didn’t tell us anything! ”
"We can’t,” the president said crossly.”That would be an invasion of the illegal immigrants’ privacy.”
"Hmmm. Maybe that Trojan Tot isn’t so good,” the crowd murmured. "Maybe we’ve been played for fools!”
So they cracked open their history and English literature books and found the story about the wooden horse. It was in Virgil’s Aeneid, an epic poem about the conquest of Troy.
"The Greeks had fought for ten years trying to conquer ancient Troy,” they read, "but the 20-foot-high walls surrounding the city foiled their attempts. One day a Greek general named Odysseus came up with a plan.
"The Greeks pretended to sail away and left a giant wooden horse outside the city gates as a gift to Athena. The citizens of Troy rejoiced and pulled the horse within the city gates. Out poured the Greek warriors, overrunning the city and that was the end of Troy.
"Alas, it was a ploy used by Greek warriors to infiltrate the city with enemies and conquer Troy.
The plan used by the Greek general involved a horse and a lie.
Our president’s involved children and a lie.
"But Nancy Pelosi visited the border and I remember what she said,” one Texan interjected. "She said this looked like a crisis, but it was really an opportunity, a gift because of the spark of divinity in each of these children.”
"That’s beautiful, I think,” another person said, wiping a tear from her eye. "It’s so quotable. I can’t remember such a quote from the president.”
"Yes,” someone replied sadly. "All I remember about the president is that he likes pie.”
Do you like pie?
Hold the line, America.