Steven Weber, The Huffington Post, June 25, 2007
We Americans have been in foster care for decades now. Every four or eight years we get shuffled off to the next house, headed by a new foster daddy. And we try to adjust to our new surroundings, which don’t look terribly different from our last ones. Maybe there are some new gadgets.
And each new daddy smiles and pats us on the head and bounces us on his knee and tells us all the things that make us feel like we finally belong, that we finally matter and that our real daddy — him — is at last come home.
He has us listen to his pronouncements and his rules and tells us what our previous daddies did wrong and how he’ll help us and love us better than they ever could.
He introduces us to his friends, some of whom it seems we’ve met before, who look at us and smile small smiles. And they have a party and we look at each other and shrug our shoulders and think “maybe daddy’s really home”.
And then things start to turn. He acts strangely. He gets angry. He rants. He waves his hands around. He calls some of his own kids names. He and his friends whisper and look at us and whisper some more. And we begin to hear stories about him, stories that seem to explain his odd behavior.
But then something happens and it scares us and we all do what children are supposed to do: turn to daddy.
Daddy tells us that we should be scared and we huddle, trembling, worried.
And daddy sends some of us out to fight some fight that he says we have to fight.
Daddy says so.