hardest thing to learn during recovery is….. some of your misery is your own fault. you have to actively choose to stop wallowing in your own pain & start to recover. that means stop being self deprecating, start taking care of yourself, start eating healthy, start taking your hygiene seriously, even if it’s hard. & it is hard! but you must.
Republicans are claiming that in 2013 the Obama administration pepper sprayed migrants in the exact same manner that border agents deployed tear gas (in a crowd including children) in the present.
First… not really.
Second, if someone did something wrong in the past, that does not make it right in the present. And even if there is some hypocrisy afoot, that still does not make what happened okay.
In 2013, during the Obama administration, a group of 100 migrants rushed the border throwing rocks and bottles at border agents. The migrants were then pelted with pepper balls in an effort to diffuse the situation. This was an unexpected occurrence. There was no warning and very little time to prepare a plan of action. The Obama administration was not involved in this action. Barack did not go to the Situation Room and order people to shoot pepper balls at migrants.
Fast forward to the present… we’ve known about the migrant caravan for quite some time. Not only have the border agents had time to prepare for this, but now military troops are there for supplemental support. This was not a surprise. The Trump administration was fully aware and everyone involved knew there were many children among the migrants.
It is also well known that tear gas is very bad for children.
“Children are uniquely vulnerable to physiological effects of chemical agents. A child’s smaller size, more frequent number of breaths per minute and limited cardiovascular stress response compared to adults magnifies the harm of agents such as tear gas.“ –American Academy of Pediatrics
Pepper balls and tear gas are vastly different things.
Pepper balls are small projectiles that break apart on impact and release a small mist of pepper spray. They are a more individualized weapon similar to a paintball. They can only affect a small radius and dissipate very quickly.
Tear gas is meant for large groups. It is usually dispensed from a grenade-like canister. It can also be shot as a projectile. These canisters are much larger than pepper balls and can seriously injure people on their own. Once the tear gas is dispensed, it expands quickly into a large fog. It lingers for a long period of time and can be pushed away from the intended area by wind. After it is deployed, there is no controlling where the cloud of gas will go. Which means using it in an area with children is a bad idea.
Neither pepper spray nor tear gas are without risk. Both can cause permanent injury. They have been commonly used by law enforcement and border patrol for decades. Perhaps the Obama administration should have reassessed how these substances are used. I have no issue faulting him for that. However, what makes this situation unique is the irresponsible way the tear gas was used. They had plenty of prep time and knew this was a possible circumstance. They knew there were children close by. They used tear gas anyway.
These two events are not comparable. Even if they were, the 2013 story was not known by many people. You can’t say we didn’t act appropriately outraged about something we were unaware of. If mothers and their children were affected by the pepper balls in 2013 and I knew about it, I probably would have been upset then too.
Using tear gas on children was a shitty thing to do. You cannot take away my outrage because I didn’t know about a loosely analogous situation that happened 5 years ago.
