This might be the best time of the year. Believe me when I say I’d like to write about spring or planting or baseball. Then I saw a picture.

There was Kristi Noem, Homeland Security Secretary, standing in front of a prison in El Salvador. Behind her, behind bars, were a few dozen men, shirtless with their heads shaved. They are dark-skinned.

It was news for a minute on March 27. Nothing lasts in the spotlight as we are barraged by efforts to redo the government and turn our nation into something different than it was. Sometimes it’s hourly, sometimes it’s minutely. The proponents of this call it “flooding the zone.” In a farmer metaphor, it’s like standing behind a manure spreader with the PTO engaged.

The attention moved on, but I couldn’t unsee the picture. Noem was fashionably attired, looking like she was going out for a drink with friends. I read that she was wearing a $50,000 Rolex watch. I wouldn’t recognize that, but it seems stylish.

Behind her, behind the bars, was a mass of humanity. There was barely room for each of the men to stand. Some were on bunks, much like you’d have animals stacked in crates.

If you knew nothing about that photo, it would be clear the men are meant to be humiliated and shamed. I looked at it for a while, probably longer than most. If you do, pick out a face. See him as a human being. Not an animal. Be human yourself.

We know that most of the men have not been charged with crimes. Being young and dark-skinned is not a crime. Being undocumented is a civil offense, not a crime. The lie about large numbers of immigrants being violent criminals is a lie, no matter how many times the lie is said.

To fulfill a spurious campaign promise, people are being deported. “Due process” is not being followed. Due process means that for everyone in this country, even undocumented, the government must follow fair procedures when taking someone’s life, liberty, or property. Abandoning due process is another huge step that should be acknowledged.

Some are being rounded up because they believe Israel committed war crimes in killing 15,000 children and is guilty of genocide. I believe Israel committed war crimes in killing 15,000 children and is guilty of genocide. If you don’t see this column again, maybe I was deported.

The morning the Noem photo was released, minutes before I saw it, I was reading a column by Dr. Joseph Switras. He is a clinical psychologist in Fairmont. He was writing about empathy, and how critical that is for a child to develop.

Switras wrote, “Psychologists know that for a child to develop appropriate self-regulation they have to develop a healthy empathic concern for other people. To show empathy a person will try to understand what another person feels and why they feel that way. This involves the ability to see what’s going on from another person’s point of view.”

Of course, we are all capable of feeling empathy for those close to us who we like. But what about people we don’t know? What about dark-skinned men in a photo?

Jesus never used the word “empathy,” but it’s all over the words he left us.

In Mathew, “You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I tell you, love your enemies.” Specifically, about prisoners, in Hebrews, “Remember those who are in prison, as though you were in prison with them.”

That photo that sticks in my head, why would our government release that?

They say they want to discourage certain behaviors. Like being young and dark-skinned, I guess. Noem’s countenance seems to say this is a celebration.

I thought about other photographs that haunt my mind.

There are pictures from the German concentration camps after the allies liberated those. Frail, barely alive humans who somehow survived where six million others didn’t. Unspeakable evil could be seen in black and white.

There is the picture of a naked nine-year old Vietnamese girl screaming in agony after being burned by napalm. That 1972 photo won a Pulitzer Prize. It had a part in shifting American support from the Vietnam War.

Millions of people saw those photos and felt empathy for the subjects. They came to be because other human beings did not feel empathy and caused harm to the subjects in the photos.

It is a truism that a picture is worth a thousand words. Those pictures say lots of things. In the news moment that photo of Noem and imprisoned men went around the world, it said to our allies this is America now. These same allies are under economic attack and criticism by this administration.

I can’t see in the souls of Donald Trump, Stephen Miller, et al. But in their public selves there is little evidence of empathetic behavior. They spend a lot of their words and actions despising people and threatening.

Again from Dr. Switras, writing about the consequences of lack of empathy, “The most difficult type of behavior is called the callous-unemotional type. They show little concern or distress about the effects of the things they do to others. They are unconcerned about the effect of what they have done.”

Dr. Switras is talking about children. but children become adults. Some of them even rise to power.

I’ll end with the Bible. I like quoting from the Bible, whose writing is so much better than mine. In Mathew 25, “Truly I say to you, as you did to the least of my brethren, you did to me.”

Shirtless men who are locked up and taken out for a photo op to make some cruel point sure look like the least of my brethren.

— Randy Krzmarzick farms on the home place west of Sleepy Eye, where he lives with his wife, Pam.