Friday, July 11, 2014

“This is a humanitarian crisis but it's largely the result of the impression that the president isn't interested in enforcing the law"

How a campaign move on immigration is haunting Obama now - Susan Crabtree/Washington Examiner

The Crisis on the Border - Peggy Noonan/Wall St. Journal

No one who wants to help has authority, and no one with authority is helping....

All this gives normal people a feeling of besiegement and foreboding. Is a nation without borders a nation? Washington's leaders seem to recognize what's happening as a political problem, not a real problem. That is, they betray no honest alarm. They just sort of stand in clusters and say things.

There seem only two groups that view the situation with appropriate alarm.

One is the children themselves, dragged through deserts to be deposited here. To them, everything is a swirl of lights, color and clamor, and shouting and clanking. A reporter touring a detainment center in Texas noted a blank, lost look among some of the younger children. Every mother knows what that suggests. Children who cry and wail anticipate comfort: That's why they're crying, to alert those who care for them that something is wrong. But little children who are blank, withdrawn, who don't show or at some point know what they're feeling—those children are in trouble.

The other group feeling a proper alarm is normal Americans, who are seeing all this on TV and who judge they are witnessing a level of lawlessness that has terrible implications for the country....

America is the house that is both falling apart and under new stress. Those living within it, those most upset by what they're seeing, know America has big problems—unemployment, low workforce participation, a rickety physical infrastructure, an unsound culture, poor public education. And of course discord of all sorts—a lot of mad squirrels running around the attic. They know America can't pay its bills. They fear we're living on the fumes of greatness. They want us to be strong again. Watching our border collapse doesn't look like a harbinger of progress.

Here it must be said that those who live comfortable lives can afford to roll with the historical punches. But people who are not affluent live closer to the ground, and closer to the country's deterioration. The rougher America becomes, the more they feel the abrasion. They're not protected.

And they know no one wants to be in charge, wants to seize this thing and take responsibility. The mind-boggling fact is that everyone in charge more or less suggests they're powerless to do anything. And the children keep coming....