I just heard that the list of those invited to Chelsea Clinton’s wedding contains about 400 names.
It would be fascinating to learn what considerations and criteria Bill and Hillary Clinton had when they were making up the list and what emotions they experienced.
I know exactly how my wife and I felt when we drew up the list of those to be invited to our daughter’s wedding. I am sure that we experienced the same range of emotions that millions of Americans experience when preparing to “give their daughter away,” including the joy of sharing such an event with others, the bitter-sweet feeling of seeing your little girl “all grown-up,” along with all the real-life, “practical” considerations of etiquette, family politics, and—for some many of us—the financial aspects.
Yes, I know exactly how it feels to make a list of those to be invited to a wedding.
I would like to know, however, how it feels to compile a list of people—1,300 men, women, children and, don’t forget, “anchor babies”—that will result in human beings to be taken from their homes, humiliated, interrogated, arrested, imprisoned, uprooted, separated from their loved ones, to “be immediately deported,” especially since “[s]ome of the women on the list are pregnant at this time and steps should be taken for immediate deportation.” *
And in preparation to compile such a list, I wonder how it feels to do the “hard work” to “observe these individuals in our neighborhoods, driving our streets, working in our stores, attending our schools and entering our public welfare buildings,” and then to “spend the time and effort needed to gather information along with legal Mexican nationals who infiltrate their social networks and help us obtain the necessary information we need to add them to our list.” *
And after compiling and submitting such a list, I wonder how it feels to make the commitment to “provide your office with new lists on a continual basis and request–no insist–that your agency take immediate and forceful action to the individuals on this list and begin deportation now,” and to promise, “If we do not observe quick action, you will be welcome to explain to the media and the rest of the citizens in the state why you did not perform your duty. We will be listening and watching.” *
If those who call these list makers “heroes” and “concerned citizens” are right, these list makers must feel pretty good.
But not everyone feels the same way. Some call these list makers cowards, informers, vigilantes, posses, and worse.
I don’t know. Perhaps, that’s too harsh.
Just as it may be too harsh to recall other lists and other “list makers.”
Nevertheless, rightly or wrongly, this episode does exactly that. It reminds me of other lists and list makers and I have the same curiosity to know what drove them to make those lists.
I wonder how Nazi informers, collaborators and, in general, “good, concerned German citizens” felt when they were—voluntarily or under duress—making up the lists which they knew would send millions of innocent men women and children to their deaths at Auschwitz, Sobibor, Treblinka and other extermination camps, just because they were Jews. And, o yeah, these Jews were certainly “illegals” according to the biggest list maker of them all, Adolf Hitler.
I wonder how the Spanish dictator, General Francisco Franco, felt when he made a list of some 6,000 Jews living in Spain and handed the list over to Heinrich Himmler, the Nazi architect of the so-called “final solution.”
Closer to home, I wonder how our own government’s list makers felt when they drew up the lists of approximately 110,000 loyal Japanese-Americans who were to be forcefully relocated and interned at ”relocation and internment camps” during World War II.
More recently, I wonder how Joseph McCarthy and his fellow list makers felt when they compiled their lists—their blacklists—of “known Communists,” “subversives,” “sexual perverts,” (i.e. suspected homosexuals), and of several hundred entertainers, academics, lawyers, etc. Lists that resulted in thousands of innocent and loyal Americans being imprisoned, losing their jobs, denied employment, harassed, humiliated—their lives ruined.
Because they are no longer with us, we may never know how these list makers felt. I am sure many of them felt that they were doing the right thing for their country, that they were being patriotic, and that they were “helping law enforcement” and “supporting the Constitution,” just as many of those who support the actions of the Utah list makers believe.
Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estés, a daughter of immigrants and refugees herself, a famous New York Times best-selling author (Women Who Run With the Wolves, 144 weeks) and with credentials too numerous to “list” has written passionately on this immigration issue and on “list making” in particular, here at The Moderate Voice, concluding, “Everyone of the above atrocities and egregious wholesaling or condemnations of large groups of people began with ‘A List.’ Every single one.”
Please read it, and give it some thought.
* From the letter to authorities accompanying the list of 1,300
The author is a retired U.S. Air Force officer and a writer.