As nations go, the U.S. is a young nation, barely an infant at 250 years old. After all, Rome lived to be almost 1,200 years. Israel is 3,324 years old. China is more than 4,000 years old. Iran is over 5,000 years old. Egypt is almost as old as Iran. The American Experiment of 1776 gave birth to a beautiful child. This child was the hope and dream not only of our nation, but of other nations around the world. Yet, since the beginning of this year, our hopes and dreams, our country, our democracy, our compassion as described on the tablet of the Statue of Liberty no longer exists. That tablet, containing the beautiful sonnet of Emma Lazarus reads:
“Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”
That so many millions of people will be kicked out of our country in the coming years shows the folly of those who actually believed that inscription. And that includes my fellow Americans. Half of our nation has bought into the lies about dog-eating immigrants, non-humans infesting our country with the intention of poisoning our blood. Of course, the same sort of people in U.S. society might have said the same sort of things in the not-so-distant past about the arrival of the Irish, the Italians, the Germans, the Chinese and Jews and Catholics who came to America as well. But never has this hatred been enshrined as the basis of our national policy as it is today.
We arose (woke) only weeks ago to find a hideous monstrosity in the cradle of our civilization, instead of our democracy. This supplanted grotesque, cruel, lump of flesh is being variously described as authoritarianism or fascism. But to me, it is nothing less than a changeling.
THE MYTH OF CHANGELINGS
The myth of changelings prevailed in Western Europe and especially Scotland, Ireland and Wales where people believed in fairies. Fairies could be good, even benevolent. But they could just as easily be evil. They were cunning, manipulative, deceptive, bent on punishing humans that they feared and hated. Perhaps the basis of their fear and loathing was the relative beauty of humans when compared to some members of their own race. These fairies would sneak into a human home at night with a sickly, deformed fairy child, leaving them in the crib while whisking away the comely, healthy human baby while the human family slept. The family would likely never see their own precious child ever again. Some researchers hypothesize that the fairies wanted to mate with these babies when the baby reached puberty in order to create a better (hybrid) race than fairies or humans could achieve by themselves. So, human families would put their own child to bed at night with some object of iron and perhaps herbs to ward off the approaching fairies and their “gift.” If the family could stay awake, they could confront the fairies as they arrived, but if the parents succumbed to sleep, they child would be forever lost. And so the threat to our democracy is likewise real. The threat is clear and the the threat is present.
As changelings aged, they were said to become temperamental, belligerent, unpredictable and manipulative, true to their fairylike nature. Many changelings would be ostracized from the community even as the U.S. is being ostracized now in the community of nations. Countries such as Mexico, Canada, Denmark, Panama and Ukraine have been scurrilously attacked by speeches, interviews and posts on social media. We are well on our way of becoming a pariah to our allies.
Perhaps we slumbered as well and did not hear the fairies as they approached? Perhaps we discounted the threat that they posed to our children? There is no way to know how this will all play out in America. But if the recent past is prologue, it cannot promise a happy ending for democracy and the country we’ve all come to love. And the Statue of Liberty will no longer light the way to the City on the Hill.
