Freudian Slip?

A question of compassion for the weak, the other...

Sigmund Freud’s Couch, image by Robert Huffstutter, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.

Illinois Governor J B Pritzker, a Democrat, in a letter dated January 14, 2024 to Texas Governor Greg Abbott, a Republican, begs that migrants not be sent to the Upper Midwest in the middle of winter.

As I write this post on January 15 it is 0 degrees at Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport and today’s temperatures range will be from -11 degrees to 2 degrees. The high a week after Governor Pritzker’s plea will be 19 degrees and the low -8 degrees.

The migrants at issue are not coming from Canada, but from the US Southern Border. They are migrating from the South, where Americans flock to escape the wrath of winter. These migrants bring no heavy coats, no mittens, no long underwear, no blankets. These migrants bring only hope and a will to work for a better life. Governor Pritzker’s letter is a plea for Christian compassion, for human compassion.

But it appears that Governor Abbott has other things on his mind. According to an article on the Texas Tribune, it appears that Governor Abbott has experienced a revealing Freudian slip. He said that shooting people at the border who illegally cross to the U S is not appropriate because the Biden administration would charge Texas officials with murder. Is the threat of being prosecuted the only barrier between a trigger finger and the lives of desperate human beings?

There is a stark contrast between the approach each governor takes. One benevolent, compassionate, and the other rather brutal.

What has become of American civility? How can a public official consider shooting migrants at the border?

Governor Abbott sits in the comfort of his Executive Mansion, well heated and provisioned. The migrants at issue have struggled over thousands of miles after abandoning their homes. Some of these migrants are fleeing persecution, some are pursuing better living conditions, some are trying to reunite with their families in the United States. 

Is the US not the land of the free, the home of the brave, and as the Statue of Liberty declares, the land that welcomes the tired and the poor, “…the huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore…”?

Is our best side to welcome the desperate with a hail of bullets or a frigid reception in subzero temperatures?

Can we do any better than this? Is our behavior to be controlled merely by the threat of punishment, or by our moral values?

The migrants may or may not be sent to the upper Midwest under current weather conditions, but how are the words coming out of the Texas Governor to be taken? What kind of heart emits those words?

I just checked, and the motto of the State of Texas is still “Friendship”. According to The Texas State Historical Association, “texas” was the local natives’ word for “friend”. Has political discourse lost its way?

What do you think?

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