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What鈥檚 the worst you鈥檝e ever seen a child suffer?

I once helped soothe a boy in the hospital after he was run down by a careless driver. More than once, I鈥檝e seen kids lose desperate, shattering battles against groups of bullies. I鈥檝e seen my own children cry for breath through the fog of illness.

Our moral imaginations are built from the stuff of experience. How might sustained violence 鈥� and the fear of it 鈥� affect a child? How might she feel when fleeing her home through a journey of constant hardship and uncertainty? How, at the end of all this trauma, might she process听?

If, like me, you鈥檝e lived a life marked only by relatively moderate trauma, your best guesses will always be a projection out from the worst moments you鈥檝e ever seen. That鈥檚 how we generate empathy, one of the noblest human abilities.

Thanks to the Trump 补诲尘颈苍颈蝉迟谤补迟颈辞苍鈥檚 fervor for punishing vulnerable immigrants 鈥斕� 鈥� the country has spent the bulk of the past year learning the limits of our collective ability to empathize. Critically, we鈥檝e also learned the limits of righteous moral rhetoric.

Trump has repeatedly听 immigrants as a group. He鈥檚 stepped up immigration enforcement, including听 taking their children to school. He听 granting legal U.S. status to people displaced by natural disasters in their home countries. He ended the Obama 补诲尘颈苍颈蝉迟谤补迟颈辞苍鈥檚 DACA program, which granted legal status to children brought to the United States without documentation.

Each of these cruelties was a test of our national ability to recognize, feel, and tolerate the pain we were causing children from immigrant families. And while each sparked widespread public condemnation 鈥� even some from House Speaker Paul Ryan 鈥� none have been reversed. Our national system of filtering public anger took the thousands of tweets, letters, phone calls, and protests 鈥� and left Trump鈥檚 policies in place ().

These decisions 鈥� and subsequent inaction from congressional Republicans 鈥� cost young听 迟丑别颈谤听.

Then, finally, after almost 600 days of norm-busting, immigrant-threatening,听 鈥済overning,鈥� the听听听 of听 at听 proved to be a step too far. On June 20, under fire from everyone from talk show hosts to church leaders to Republican officials (!!!), the Trump administration announced that it would cease separating families.

Is it real? It鈥檚 not yet entirely clear. The听 would听 the administration to detain families indefinitely, but it also threatens听. It鈥檚 going to take a while before we鈥檒l know whether this new slapdash 鈥減olicy鈥� is actual, stable, and constitutional. Now Trump鈥檚 muddied the waters further, tweeting Sunday that and send immigrants at the border back to their countries without any kind of court proceeding.

Even if the latest policy changes are real 鈥� are they actually better for kids? Well, that鈥檚 the test of your empathy. Is indefinite detention of asylum-seeking families going to cause less suffering for children than the family separation policy? What a choice to make.听 that the new executive order is laying the groundwork for an even less humane approach to immigration. Here in 2018, with this president and these congressional leaders, sure, it feels kind of like a victory. It鈥檚 as if we鈥檝e spent a year watching the better angels of our nature wrestle with fear itself 鈥� and get steamrolled.

Of course it feels good to see cruelty stagger back, if only for a moment. Lots of us are desperate to feel some relief, to get a sense that the decent world isn鈥檛 collapsing and that some of the most egregious injustices against children are ending.

But it鈥檚 still striking that we got to听 before we hit a national empathy tripwire. It hints at something ugly: American politics and public policy don鈥檛 really make children鈥檚 health and development a priority.

See, punctuated outrages are not the only outrages against children. Ours is a country that tolerates听 of听, relative to other developed nations. It鈥檚 a country that refuses, simply refuses, to have a serious national conversation to meaningfully address police violence against听. That consigns low-income children to underfunded, segregated, ineffective schools 鈥� and听 them when their families struggle to pay for food.

No single person takes a low-income infant and, in a single, tragic moment, shoves him into any single part of our unfair system. No one violently snatches him away from a good school and locks him into a failing one. No. These are big pieces of our social and political structure. They鈥檙e inequities so comprehensive that they vanish from view. They鈥檙e the very air we breathe.

This isn鈥檛 some #WellActually contrarian posturing, where I proudly announce that the brutality of separating asylum-seeking parents from their (weary, vulnerable) children is precisely equivalent to a whole range of suffering. No. There鈥檚 a reason that this particular cruelty raised enormous opposition, even from a handful of Republicans.

But, see, I have also seen children suffer through months 鈥� soon to be years 鈥� of sustained hunger, chronic pollution, and abuse. I have seen slow and sturdy evils up close, and I know a little of how they grind the springs from children鈥檚 smiles, drain the joy from their present, and steal the hope from their future. I have been a teacher, a well-intentioned, hardworking one failing to forestall 鈥� let alone reverse 鈥� their decreasing trust in the basic goodness of others, their country, their lives.

that the trauma of family border separations might well be producing 鈥渢oxic stress,鈥� that is, traumatic experiences sufficient enough to damage children鈥檚 long-term health and development. The research base for these possible developmental links, though, wasn鈥檛 built in the past few news cycles. It鈥檚 grown out of听 on how years of adversity affect children living in poverty here in the United States.

So: if you, like me, found yourself ratcheting between grief, frustration, and rage at the Trump 补诲尘颈苍颈蝉迟谤补迟颈辞苍鈥檚 treatment of families at the border, I鈥檇 first congratulate you. It鈥檚 no easy task to remain sensitive and empathetic amid the cynical toxicity of our present politics. You鈥檙e still human. You still care. But I鈥檇 also ask you to consider extending your laudable, righteous anger in the face of the myriad ways that the United States punishes and traumatizes children living in poverty today.

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