By Gerry Scardo

The Mother of Exiles- our Statue of Liberty – hears the heart broken cries of the little children at the border and sheds tears.

We too are shedding tears, for our country has a leader who reveres dictators as strong leaders. He sees them not for the despots–killers of journalists, opposition, potential opposition, and threats to other countries – they are. He makes over cruel dictators and mocks our countrymen. In his eyes, the foes are now our friends and our country’s long time allies are no longer esteemed.

Here we are between Father’s day and the Fourth of July with breast-fed babies, crying toddlers, and children taken from their migrant mothers and fathers, warehoused in an old building with staff not allowed to hug or comfort them. This effaces the meaning of the inscription on the Statue of Liberty. “Give me your tired, your poor. Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free. The wretched refuse of your teaming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest tossed to me. I lift my head beside the golden door!” means nothing to our leader who has never understood democracy and apparently does not care to know or revere the history of the founding of our democratic government.

James Clapper, former US director of National Intelligence, writes in his book Facts and Fears, “I do not think our democracy can function for long on lies, particularly when inconvenient and difficult facts spoken by practitioners of truth are dismissed as fake news. I know that the intelligence community cannot serve our nation if facts are negotiable”……..He goes on to state, “This was not something I could idly stand by and watch happen to the country I love.”

The tears fall for the pain of the children, the migrants, and a democracy being eroded by the leader, the dark monies as many citizens stand idle not reading, not paying heed to what is going on and not going to vote.