Open letter to S.D.’s congressional delegates: Will this madness and these horrific scenes come to South Dakota?
I don’t know what to say. I don’t know how to comprehend. Weren’t you raised like I was? By good, hard-working, honest people? In this same wholesome and healthy environment? Taught to treat people as you want to be treated? You know. The golden rule we were taught in Sunday school.
You are, all three, descendants of immigrants. John, your mother, like mine, was an immigrant. My mother left Germany after World War II. She lived through the Nazi regime and the bombing and the hunger. She made it through with a young child and when it was over she and my brother came to America. The land of the free and the home of the brave.
Her ship was the French Liberté and she wept when the Statue of Liberty came into view. Would you have subjected your mother or mine to the treatment we’re handing out to other immigrants who have fled horror in search of a life of freedom and safety and dignity?
John and Mike, members of your family fought in that war against the barbaric cruelty of Hitler and the Japanese empire. How can you think of them, and the millions of people of all nations who fought and died to vanquish autocratic rulers, and blindly acquiesce to imposing the same conditions here in our own country? No, more than acquiesce. You accommodate and enable.
This has all gone so much beyond politics. I have to question whether you have any morality, or even souls. The question of “Have you no decency?” seems so trite.
The curtain of law and order and immigration enforcement has been ripped to shreds. To say nothing of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. Nicole Good. Alex Pretti. Little Liam in his bunny cap. So many more beaten, abused or imprisoned.
How can you watch these scenes unfolding in Minneapolis and not feel the urge to vomit or scream and weep in anguish? How can you make excuses based on the Noem and Trump’s blatant lies? Donald Trump, Stephen Miller and Kristi Noem and their ilk trade in fear, hatred, and violence. Chaos and cruelty are the goal. They’ve unleashed a violent and unaccountable force of terror on our neighbors. Fellow Midwesterners. Minneapolis, Mankato, Duluth, etc.
When does it come to Sioux Falls and Brookings and Rapid City and Pierre? Are South Dakotans safe because we’re a red state? The international students at SDSU certainly don’t feel safe.
Minnesota got the “nice” moniker but I always felt it applied throughout the prairie states. Actually most people, I think, are good. Maybe misinformed or misled but, at their core, good. Trump, Miller, and Noem have shown themselves evil to the core. Are you as well? Does not some shred of your upbringing rebel against this? Or are you too far gone? Like them.
Kathy Gustafson, a lifelong South Dakotan who lives in Brookings, is a mother and grandmother who is now retired and concerned about the "Balkanization" of our country. It takes a lot for her to speak out, she says, but she has reached that point.
Photo: public domain, wikimedia commons
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