The MESSAGE of this separation of children makes it an EVENT. A Foucauldian CUT in strategy.
Actually it is an excellent strategy. for accomplishing what the state wishes to accomplish. Now I look at it genealogically:
Those entering illegally may also have been considering using their children as kinds of hostages. Taking them creates problems for the US that they probably don't want to have. Maybe it will help if we take them?
BUT it continues separation as a PRECEDENT for obedience to the STATE, as it has genealogically in the past when it was done for the same reasons.
Sparta did it to raise warriors. The Catholic church did it without doing it but "give me a child until s/he is 6 and they will be mine forever. Hitler did it with Hitler Youth and if you have ever met any of them as middle aged adults they will tell you it was the happiest time of their life, the most free.
Ok now we did it to Native Americans. I once had an Inuit patient - depressive and alcoholic. His story was that he was one of 7 - 8? - brothers. His father had a wonderful family, large and cohesive and they would have done very well in their community. But all the children were taken and sent to US schools. My patient told me that they were not allowed to speak their own language and any infraction meant they would have to walk - run? - the gauntlet where they ran naked in the cold and were whipped as they ran to the end of it.
So separation means that children will not speak their parents's language and will be adapted into the ruling culture by the foster families - schools in Native American experience. And this is the MESSAGE! The content is irrelevant as McLuhan tells us so empathizing with the terrified and distraught parents over the loss of their children WILL NOT BE EFFECTIVE.
All it will do is make you feel better at expressing your feelings of injustice about it. It will not help them.
At the same time the parents who wish to enter illegally with their children are put in a catch-22. They want their freedom to make a new life. But they risk losing their children - biologically their DNA. This is a sort of Sophie's Choice alternative.
Different potential immigrants will feel differently maybe? It may present them with a choice they secretly wish for. It may not. We cannot know. But this action has been made in The Order of Production of the State and it is being criticized in the Symbolic Order of Exchange and Death.
Or to look at it and read it through McLuhan who has told us not to use moral justifications to oppose a state decision that frightens us and sickens us. Capitalism wishes these immigrants to come in illegally. It means really cheap labor. These were the ones used for ripping out asbestos, for doing demo, the dirty and health dangerous jobs the unions prohibited without stringent restrictions that were very costly.
The CONSEQUENCES for the STATE that Trump's decision will continue for decades, forever. These children will have a variety of experiences from great to horrific. Certainly someone who was a Jesuit careful thinker as Jefferson might have considered the future waves that would come from kidnapping Africans and putting them into slavery in a country founded on the freedom for all.
We are still paying for their actions and will continue into infinity it seems. The same is going to be true for Trump's action.
AND THIS IS WHAT THE OPPOSITION MUST CONSIDER OPPOSING AND FORBIDDING IT ON!
It's horrible consequences NOT Oh those poor people losing their children.
That is true but it won't work.
Liken it to slavery where children were separated and sold to others. We did it before and the long term results were so horrible we are still suffering from them.
If I think genealogically - FOUCAULT - about issues more comes up for me to think about, so I am sharing that here.
