CARLTON FLETCHER: Heartless governors deserve special section in hell

“You’re on the highway to hell.”

— AC/DC

I don’t know the exact when and where, but centuries ago in parts of England and Ireland, men who were expert at attaching feathers to arrows to help with their aerodynamics — that’s called “fletching,” and the men who practiced the art were fletchers — grew tired of living in what they considered tyranny. They paid outrageous taxes and were forced to worship in the manner of the empire-sanctioned church.

Whoever these fletchers were, at some point they decided living conditions were unbearable, and they made the bold move to come to the new world they’d heard spoken of by their country’s explorers. The thought of picking up what belongings they had and sailing for weeks across oceans to reach this new, uncharted world must have been terrifying in its own right, but they decided to risk everything and make this fantastic voyage in search of a new and better life.

I’m glad they did. Because that bold decision led to me and my family being here today in 2020s America, free from the hardships that existed in the “mother country” in those long-ago days.

I’ve been thinking about those ancestors a lot lately, thinking about what kind of lives they must have been living that led them to decide the best hope for any kind of future for their families and the families that would come after them was to make this dangerous journey on the promise that they would indeed be free, free to live life as they saw fit without the restrictions forced on them by often tyrannical monarchs whose only qualifications for leadership was station of birth.

Maybe that’s why I feel so deeply for the people at our country’s southern border who stare down and endure undreamed-of obstacles as they seek asylum in a land of hope that shines as a beacon of freedom the envy of the world. No, I don’t believe entry into this country should be an open process. There should definitely be vetting.

But I can’t work up the hatred so many Americans feel for poor people who are desperate to escape a tyranny that my ancestors — and yours, because no matter where your folks came from, unless they were native-born, you all are generations-removed immigrants — never imagined. Instead of looking at these desperate people as the rapists and murderers they’ve been labeled by self-serving politicians who spread fear to advance their own causes and outsized egos, I see them as pitiable, people willing to face almost hopeless obstacles in search of some kind of freedom for their families.

Instead of listening to our bloviating politicians, read about the plight of these people. Read how small children are sent daily to pick through garbage dumps in search of food. Read how armed gangs rape and steal indiscriminately, making each new day a literal living hell. If you can’t work up any sympathy for people living such lives, maybe you need to look a little deeper and consider your own lack of humanity.

And so, as these desperate people take superhuman actions in an attempt to at the very least get their children and families out of the hell they endure, they’re now being used as pawns by a–hole politicians who are shipping them to “sanctuary cities” as a joke and to show they’re just as “maverick” as the No. 1 a–hole they so admire. Yes, their admirers who think like them laugh and applaud the grand gestures by these ghouls who call themselves leaders — Abbott, DeSantis, Ducey — even as they treat human beings like chattel, using taxpayer money to transport them across the country and then call news conferences to tell everyone how clever they are.

This country has a sad history with slavery, a dark blot on its collective soul. What these creeps in Texas, Florida and Arizona are doing with these poor, frightened, lost souls who overcame tremendous hardships in a desperate effort to find peace and freedom for their families ranks right up there with the slave masters who imprisoned people to meet their selfish needs. And those who applaud their cruel actions are little better.

I’d like to think there’s an especially hot and endlessly painful section of hell reserved just for these inhuman blowhards when they meet their justifiable ends. If the afterlife is fair, they’ll realize the irony of their situation when they’re transported to their damned final destination with no idea — and no say — as to where they’re headed.