In the second installment of the Lord of the Rings film trilogy–The Two Towers–the dark wizard Saruman builds an incredible army of Uruh-hai, an advanced breed of orcs discovered beneath the ground around his tower at Isengard. After gaining scouting information from the traitor Wormtail, Saruman sends his great army to Helm’s Deep, a fortification deep within the White Mountains where King Theoden and the people of Rohan retreated to in order to protect themselves and make their stand against Saruman, since Rohan was much too vulnerable and unprotected.

I’ve been thinking about this incredible act in the LOTR trilogy and every part of it–the grueling journey from their home in Rohan to the sanctuary fortress of Helm’s Deep, Theoden’s recruitment of the males among his people who had already seen “too many winters” or “too few”, the arrival of the wood elves, watch the torches of the great Uruk-hai army progress from a distance until they arrived right at the fortress wall, the stare down and the war cries of Saruman’s beasts.

I think of all this, and I think of the caravan.

The caravan I speak of is an incredible group–not army, a group–of Central Americans from Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador who, according to the BBC , have decided to flee their home countries to escape persecution, poverty and violence. With the help of a former politician sharing the caravan’s mission on social media, the caravan as a whole has grown to nearly 10,000 people–Hondurans, Guatemalans, Salvadorans, Mexicans and more. In response, President Trump has sent 15,000 troops to the Texas/Mexican border, and it’s been reported that other local “militias” have also made their way to the border. Seeing all these developments just keeps bringing my mind back to the siege at Helm’s Deep, except the caravan is most likely not coming to devour man flesh and blood, and the border has already had plenty of vulnerable weaknesses

I sit here thinking, reading, writing on a rainy day in Herndon, Virginia, and I keep asking the same question:

What in the hell is the freakin’ solution?

While trying to find my way in the first chunk of years in my adult life,  I worked in a town called Marshall. This town in Fauquier County, Virginia, full of rural land, great farms and mountains, the local library and community center the primary source of high-speed internet for most, even in the new millennium, surrounded by Northern Virginia’s award-winning vineyards. Throughout my ten years of working in this area, and my love of playing the beautiful game of soccer, I was able to connect with of the Central American community in the area, and I look back with great fondness. I remember the 63 year-old Salvadoran and discussing his adult sons, Barcelona and Lionel Messi often before he jumped on the treadmill  for his two-mile run; I remember engaging with some of the Mexican customers at the community center for Volleyball or when they were hosting a gathering, and then playing against them on the soccer fields the following weekend. I look back on conversations with my aunt and godmother from Richmond who recently passed, and how one of her adult sons hired a young man from Honduras, who in turned sent what he earned to his family back in Honduras because of the high poverty rate and significant lack of employment. One quiet weekend at work, I sat with a young man from Mexico who was fearful of being deported after a traffic violation, while working towards gaining citizenship.

I am not without empathy or love for others all over. I hear the stories of some of the people and families of this epic caravan–where they’ve done all they can or all they can think of to make things work, but still come up way short because of the state of their nation–and as an American, husband and expectant father, it breaks my heart because I can see it and understand it.

But there are a couple of things that I don’t understand. One is what do the people of this caravan expect once they get to the American border. Salvation? Utopia? Paradise? A revolving door? Coverage of this event has been so incredibly widespread that they should have at least some idea of what kind of gathering is taking place at the border.

A couple of weeks ago, we had someone come to our apartment to look at the hot water heater, and determined that the system around it needed to be repaired. There were two options: either my wife or myself stayed home to make sure the engineer could access what he needed to access, or we could leave the back door open for him to access.

We went with myself staying home for the repair, because the thought of just letting strangers into our house when we’re not there is just not a good decision. Growing up, you’re instructed to never talk to strangers. With everything that’s happening throughout the world today, we think to ourselves that we really can’t trust anyone.

The same should be applied for this caravan. These aren’t 10,000 of our closest friends. We have little to absolutely no idea who any of these people are. Many are trying to escape violence and crime, but based on reports and interviews with people within the caravan, violence and criminals are well within the large collection of bodies. When I hear or see some of these news anchors or reporters addressing President Trump on camera, claiming that these people are not coming to terrorize or murder or rape and pillage–that they come in peace–I wonder: how the hell do they know that? Did CBS interview each of the nearly 10,000 participants of the caravan? Did NBC perform background checks on everyone? Does CNN know because the people in the caravan told them so? Could the people they spoke with actually be lying? The same kind of lying that  CNN accuse the president of doing while the president makes the same accusation against CNN via ‘Fake News’? As someone who worked in journalism, none of those news agencies would ever devote time to vet 10,000 people for any reason in a short amount of time. With such a large group, there’s no way of knowing without any thorough investigations or processes.

The second thing that I don’t understand is how this has become yet another political weapon. From what I’ve seen, our nation has been in a violent civil war of politics and the people of the United States have become more divided than ever–not since the actual Civil War–over the last three administrations (Trump, Obama, Bush Jr.), to the point where our leaders in Congress, the Senate or the House don’t even care about solving issues or dangers, not even the 10,000 plus people rushing to the border. Their only goal is to hate the other, no matter what the cost or how they do it. Only in government and politics do we ever see that where there is significant progress in any way, shape or form–whether it’s immigration, the economy and job market, community development and outreach, etc.–there is always someone on the other side willing to stop at nothing to tear it all down. That’s why I take everything I hear, read or see with a grain of salt. I don’t rush to conclusions or blindly follow a party like many do on Election Day. Like a trial jury, mediators or attendees to a debate, you need to listen to both sides of any argument in order to even get a grasp of finding the solution or coming to the right decision.

Junot Diaz–a professor of creative writing at MIT, fiction editor at the Boston Review, a board adviser for Freedom University and Pulitzer-Prize winning author (as well as an immigrant from the Dominican Republic and regular donor various Democratic party campaigns and is anti-Trump)–came to Virginia Tech as part of the universities writers series while I was an English undergrad. One thing he said between readings from his novel and short stories collection has stuck with me all these years:

“We’re developing writers here, but what we really need to do is develop readers and thinkers.”

We have failed to do that. In fact, sometimes I wonder if that’s something we are doing intentionally and, as a result, it’s leading us to Helm’s Deep. To showdown between two sides desperate and hungry. What frightens me is that one person from one side will fire and kill one from the other, intentionally or accidentally, but thus beginning an act of carnage to which the world has never seen.

I hope and pray that we may all calm down and see through the fog of our politicized anger and hatred, and come together to find solution the right solution and make America the great land that she was destined to be.