Lessons & Reflections from the National Butterfly Center

If you’re from Texas, you know Jerry Jeff Walker. And if you know Jerry Jeff, you know Redneck Mother, ranked by Rolling Stone among the 100 Greatest Country Songs of All Time.

The catchy, sing-along refrain asserts, “Up against the wall, Redneck Mother; Mother, who has raised her son so well. He's thirty-four and drinking in a honky tonk, just kicking hippies’ asses and raising hell.” Written by Ray Wylie Hubbard in 1975, this critical jab at the bare-knuckled-brawling, wrapped-in-the-flag, “God, mom and apple pie” crowd deserves an encore.

Today, White Nationalists are not afraid to march in the streets carrying torches and chanting NAZI slogans. Children are murdering their classmates at school. Unarmed immigrants are summarily executed on our southern border by a growing, military police force operating inside the United States, making this a good time to take a hard look at the cancers in our culture… This leads us to the diseased halls of Congress.

Last week, I visited Washington, DC, in conjunction with the Borderlands photographic exhibit by Krista Schlyer and the International League of Conservation Photographers. We had scheduled meetings with the staff of many legislators, a reception sponsored by Senator Martin Heinrich, and some unexpected opportunities to share our experiences and opinions concerning current political events.

For example, I darted into Senator Jeff Merkley’s office to literally CHEER for him! His now-famous visit—broadcast live on Facebook--to the detention center in Brownsville, where authorities denied his request to tour was already beginning to gain traction on the national scene. Now, the whole world is aware babies stripped from their asylum-seeking mothers (who may have committed a MISDEMEANOR offense) are being held ransom in “tender age centers”, thanks to Trump’s punitive, zero-tolerance policy.

With few exceptions, our meetings in DC were as heart breaking as the thought of toddlers “processed” without their parents and held in chain-link kennels.

Time and again, staff speaking on behalf of our nation’s elected officials told us, “We will cave. There will be more funding for Border Wall. We cannot resist this tyranny, this rule by extortion—not if we hope to get anything we want, too.”

At one visit, staff for Maryland Senator Chris Van Hollen explained his vote for the 2018 omnibus spending bill was not a vote for the 33 new miles of wall that will be built in Hidalgo and Starr Counties, but a vote for protections for federal workers, who comprise an enormous percentage of their constituents.

In other words, his vote was a compromise.

Only, two months later, President Trump undid the deal by signing THREE executive orders making it easier for the federal government to fire employees.

Shamelessly, I asked the senator’s staffer, “How’d that work out for y’all?”

If you read my blog regularly, you know I’m a fan of Aesop, The Brothers Grimm and Uncle Remus.

Fairy tales and folklore teach us fundamental lessons, like the fact that men are to be judged by their deeds, which are always born of their character; and many of the axioms illustrated by Aesop and others come from observations of wildlife.

As we enter another budgeting and legislative session, I think all of our elected officials would be wise to abandon virtues, like trust, for the next two years, and remember the Tale of the Scorpion and the Frog instead:

A scorpion and a frog meet on the bank of a stream and the scorpion asks the frog to carry him across on its back.

The frog asks, "How do I know you won't sting me?"

The scorpion says, "Because if I do, I will die too.”

The frog is satisfied, and they set out; but in midstream, the scorpion stings the frog.

The frog feels the onset of paralysis and starts to sink, knowing they both will drown, but has just enough time to gasp, "Why?”

Replies the scorpion: "It’s my nature...”

I know many of the staffers we visited said they fully expected to trade a DACA deal or immigration reform for Border Wall funding—or, they confessed, whatever Trump demands. However, hope for DACA seems to be fading, as kidnapped and incarcerated children, shivering under ‘space blankets’, take center stage.

“Set them free!” legislators plea. But I have yet to hear one proclaim, “The United States’ Congress will not negotiate with terrorists.”

Shame on the self-serving cowardice of our congressional delegates and the evil brilliance of our president, who talks of "animals" that would "infest" America, as he once again, demonstrates his terrible twist on the art of the deal.