The difficulty with life liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

“It’s really difficult.”

The blithe response people have at times given to me in response to hearing about my husband’s deportation and bar from entering the U.S.

How do I respond to that? “You have no idea how difficult that is and was while I was giving birth to our twins and so close to death’s door I nearly tripped through it.” And “no,” people do not come back from death in a day or two. It takes months to a year. Oh yea, and your bills don't pay themselves just because you are sick.

Or do I respond? “Really, it’s not difficult unless one makes it difficult.” What is so hard about getting a husband a Visa to come be with his family during a medical emergency? Are the laws difficult? Yes. Certainly! Are you trying to decide whether my husband should or should not be let in and that is difficult? “If that is difficult, you are sick and have no soul.”

A Visa is a simple small piece of paper that seems to move heaven and earth for some and destroys the lives of others. The stakes of one Visa has destroyed my life. I haven’t allowed it to break me forever but it tempers how I see life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness and the American dream.

Life. It is only important if you align yourself with the invisible elite of the world and become one of them. If you don’t know who the invisible elite are, we have one similarity: I don’t know who they are either, hence the descriptor “invisible.” Yet they will be revealed once everyone else has lost their wealth to these chosen few. It will be a little like the Venezuelan “ruling class” of time past. Their lives are sacred. But your life and mine will suit their needs and ideals as will our deaths. That you are American will matter little more than the American children living abroad who’ve been killed by drone strikes.

Liberty is a farce in this world. Those who are truly free are dead. In this world of surveillance and technological manipulation, no one is free. Not even the elite.

Pursuit of happiness. Usually, the pursuit of happiness is lived out as the attainment of a comfortable lifestyle. How has that been working for y’all since the housing bubble burst? The number one comfort of millions across the U.S. has been taken away with a slight of hand.

The American dream. I don’t see an American dream. Now, I hear people from the far right yammering away about closing our borders. They’ll likely get their wish. But fences are fences. Who is to say that those fences aren’t really constructed to keep people in? The Berlin Wall was erected to “protect” East Berlin from the not-yet-de-fascistized West Berlin. So, which direction did the traffic flow over that wall?