The Statue of Liberty Ethic
There were lots of great signs at the Portland No Kings Day demonstration. One said, “Give me your poor, your tired, your huddled masses, yearning to breathe free,” which is of course from the inscription at the base of the Statue of Liberty.
I likely would have had no occasion to reflect on those words, absent Trump’s brutal deportation policies (which the Supreme Court effectively ratified today, dear god) (I’m writing this on Tuesday) and it may not be much of a silver lining in contrast to what’s going on out there in the physical world of detention and deportation and imprisonment and torture.
But I’ll still acknowledge that it is an extraordinary privilege to have been born into a country in which that profoundly aspirational message is our keynote, our credo, and we announce it to the world like it’s the American mantra. This despite our nation’s massive underbelly, hypocrisy, atrocious history of slavery, CIA-led coups against democratically elected foreign governments, predatory economic activities that decimate poorer countries, and on and on. Even against all that horror, there has been another side to this nation’s story, and in a perverse way, Trump reminds us of that.
My heart is like America in some ways. On the one hand, I believe everyone deserves love, but I’m selective about those whom I “let in” and actually care about. I guess countries need borders and people need boundaries. Otherwise, we can’t function well as individual people, or as sovereign nations.
Personal boundaries safeguard our internal peace and security. A healthy, free person maintains dominion over how they are physically touched, as well as emotional boundaries. So when someone tries to intrude on those boundaries (mounts an incursion, so to speak), a person’s verbal, physical, and/or behavioral defenses get activated. By “defenses” I mean: anything in the whole gamut from pushing someone away physically, to saying “I don’t want a hug right now,” to telling someone to fuck off, to explaining nicely to someone that you have less time for them than they might desire from you, to simply avoiding someone. All very natural.
But given that I hold this high-level belief that all humans are equally deserving of unconditional love, I wonder if it’s possible to let people into our hearts without letting them cross our boundaries. Does that even make sense?
What if our hearts could be like the Statue of Liberty? “Give me your homeless, your tired” etc.
Recently I took a long bus ride late at night, and a guy got on after me who was totally raving, schizophrenic, furious, cursing, abusive, and — wouldn’t you know it? – of course he took the seat immediately in front of mine, despite the near-empty state of the bus.
In fact, as soon as he had boarded the bus, before I’d even heard his voice, I knew he was “trouble” (or maybe, rather, “in trouble”). “Uh-oh,” said a small voice inside me when I first set eyes on the guy.
So he’s sitting there in front of me screaming his head off: “FUCK YOU! I HATE YOU! YOU’RE A PIECE OF SHIT! I DON’T GIVE A FUCK!” etc. etc. Waving his arm. He’d apparently hurt that arm somehow and he was blaming the absent person he was screaming at.
I sat there quietly behind him for a few minutes, determining that he was just going to keep on abusing the person who wasn’t there (maybe a woman, maybe someone he’d loved or had hoped to love or to share something like love or connection … I caught some sense of that … and he was also snarling that this person should NOT bother coming to see him in the hospital …), and it occurred to me that I could lean forward and say something softly like “Hey brother, I hear your arm is hurting. I just want to say I’m sorry you’re hurting and I hope you will feel better soon.”
But I sensed that would be of no help and quite possibly unsafe. Still, I figured maybe if I just sat there behind him and didn’t walk away, didn’t separate myself from him, that might constitute some form of energetic support. But after a very short while I decided that was hubris, just an idle, grandiose thought. And clearly it was not doing my nervous system any favors to stay close to this guy’s “field.” So I got up and walked toward the back of the bus (where it was well lit, and I could maybe read a little), and on my way I caught the eyes of two teenagers, a boy and a girl, apparently a couple, and they flashed conspiratorial grins at me as if the whole spectacle was funny.
I took my seat near the very back of the bus, which was about as far as I could get from the guy, though his yelling still filled the whole space. And I figured the least I could do was to pray on his behalf, to Holy Spirit or Whomever, to please ease his pain and grant him some peace. This probably wasn’t a whole lot more effective than sitting behind him and imagining I was somehow supporting him with my presence; it certainly did not quiet him down in the least, but I guess it was at least a way to try and keep my heart a little bit open.
After the guy departed the bus, I walked up to the two teenagers, and I said, “Hey! You know, that guy was in a lot of pain.”
The girl said seriously, “I know.” And the guy nodded too.
It occurred to me that no one on the bus – not the driver, nor anyone else (there were only about five of us) – had told the guy to leave the bus before he eventually got off on his own. That all felt very American, in the best sense. And perhaps very Portland.
One More Thing
This micro/macro borders analogy can go at least one step farther. There are aspects of myself that I sometimes find hard to accept and allow into my heart. For example, the selfish and scared and ashamed parts of me. Parts of me I might like to deport (or rather, I should say, parts of me that other parts of me want to deport) but of course I can’t, they live here; I am powerless to cast them out, so I may as well let them all the way in.
In that respect, I was thinking recently about sugar. A friend of mine tried to go off sugar entirely; this person accomplished that for several days and felt far better physically, but then had a sugar binge and “ruined the whole thing” (their words). So maybe we have to at least grant some small measure of autonomy to all the disaffected parts of our psyche, or else the “bad kid” inside might just go off and binge nihilistically (which could be seen as a kind of culinary equivalent to going off and voting for Trump).
Meanwhile, by “staying” a lower Court injunction against Trump and ICE, the Supreme Court ruled today that, at least for the time being (until the case is “fully decided” whatever the fuck that means), the Trump administration can continue to arrest and deport noncitizens without any due process, sending them literally anywhere, even to countries they’ve never set foot in before, like El Salvador. Just sweep ‘em right up and out, like so much garbage.
In her blistering dissent, Justice Sotomayor wrote: “Apparently, the Court finds the idea that thousands will suffer violence in farflung locales more palatable than the remote possibility that a District Court exceeded its remedial powers when it ordered the Government to provide notice and process to which the plaintiffs are constitutionally and statutorily entitled.”
This news hurts my heart and I won’t try to shut that pain out. It’s okay for my heart to hurt a little, or even a lot maybe. (I’m still figuring it out.)
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