Fight Trump's family separation policy. Don't lose your mind in the process.

The administration is acting with deliberate cruelty. But opponents of this policy must be careful not to lose perspective.

Immigration activists.
(Image credit: Mark Wilson/Getty Images, k_civitarese/iStock)

The Trump administration's policy of separating families at the nation's southern border is wildly unpopular, with roughly two-thirds of the country opposing it and a barely more than a quarter supporting it. And among the country's intellectual and political elite, opposition to the policy seems almost unanimous.

However, the word "opposition" doesn't quite capture the prevailing sentiment. More accurate would be furious disgust, white-hot outrage, and sputtering indignation. Coverage of the policy and its human consequences is everywhere, serving as wallpaper online and on the editorial and op-ed pages of the nation's leading newspapers. When members of the administration offer (contradictory) accounts and defenses of the policy, the reaction is instantaneous and ferocious. People see evil, and they're rousing themselves to fight it, 24/7, promoting every story about forced separation of families, every photo of teenagers mulling about inside chain-link cages, every video of reporters trying to get inside a detention center, every heart-wrenching recording of children crying for their missing mothers and fathers.

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Damon Linker

Damon Linker is a senior correspondent at TheWeek.com. He is also a former contributing editor at The New Republic and the author of The Theocons and The Religious Test.