I’ve been trying for days to figure out a way to say something about the United States’ new policy of tearing families apart, imprisoning children, telling the parents their kids are being taken away “to have a bath,” dosing them with antipsychotics to ensure compliance.

I can’t. The sick horror I feel won’t go into words. This is the best I can do, and it falls short.

I know this is not the first such atrocity my country has committed. From slavery to Native American genocide to Japanese internment camps, we’ve done shit like this before, and worse. But that doesn’t make this one any less gutting.

At least there’s outrage. We aren’t yet so numb to unspeakable cruelty that people are taking this lying down. But — some people are. CNN quoted a guy saying “Quit trying to make us feel teary-eyed for the children. Yes, I love children a great deal, but to me, it’s up to the parents to do things rightfully and legally.” Empathy is dead in that man. Whoever he is, he has the shape of a human being, but inside he’s hollow.

We can’t become like him. We cannot let the human soul of this country — a soul we have been trying, slowly, painfully, to build for nearly two hundred and fifty years — be scraped out and cast away. We have to stop this, and then take steps to prevent it from happening again.

It couldn’t happen here?

It is happening. Right now.

We have to make it stop.