Trump, The Squad, and What It Means to Be An American
I know it’s summer and most of you are probably watching the Bachelorette fantasy suite dates. But President Trump’s decidedly savage and race-based attacks on the patriotism of Representatives Pressley, Omar, Tlaib, and Ocasio-Cortez’s patriotism compels me to speak out. And trust me when I say, it takes a lot to make me pause the Bachelorette this close to the final rose.
Let’s get one thing straight right off: Trump’s comments have virtually nothing to do with these women, individual of their policy beliefs. Instead, it is an outright assault on any egalitarian notion of what it means to be an American.
Trump’s overt suggestion that these women weren’t “real Americans ” and should go back to the country from which they came is textbook Trump. His singular aim as President has been to divide the nation into two distinct groups: those that are “real Americans” and those that are “other.” One group, invariably white and male is entitled to power and influence and voice almost entirely based on their race and gender. The rest — black and brown, female and Muslim- are meant to be marginalized, to be second class citizens, to have their voices squelched solely because they don’t meet Trump’s racist, anachronistic definition of what an American is.
Whether it’s racial housing discrimination, Birtherism, the Muslim ban, Charlottesville, family separation, voter suppression, attacks on affirmative action, describing nations as shithole countries or caging children in detention centers, the fact that Trump is racist is beyond any reasonable dispute. And his primary political goal has been to define people of color as less than, not as American as “real American”. As groups of people to be feared and to have their allegiance to America routinely questioned.
Beyond the obvious racial stratification, Trump’s recent comments about the congresswomen reflect a second classic Trumpian ploy: to define patriotism wholly by blind allegiance to the government in power. Now, any thinking person will likely recall that Trump saw no such disloyalty or lack of patriotism when he was disparaging Obamacare, the Iran nuclear deal, and the Paris Climate Accords, let alone cynically questioning the President’s country of origin.
Trump has tried equating the expression of dissent with hating your country and its values before. With NFL players kneeling to protest racially disproportionate policy brutality. With Kavanaugh protesters speaking out against both his alleged sexual assault and his likely assault on women’s reproductive liberties. And now he’s employing the same playbook in seeking to marginalize “The Squad.”
Maybe it’s just my view, but I consider dissent against a government’s unacceptable policies as not only a right but practically an obligation of citizenship. Dissent isn’t un-American (as Trump defines it) but is arguably the truest expression of American freedom. What is more American than speaking out about fairness and inequality or the squalid conditions of our border detention facilities? What is more demonstrably democratic than knowing you are legally free to protest government injustice without fear of retribution? Speaking out against governmental wrongdoing is not anti-American. It is profoundly American. It means you are holding America to a higher standard and trying to make your nation live up to its ideals.
Everything about this episode is meant to create racial division. It’s meant to dismiss non-White Americans as “the other.” And it’s intended to suggest the others should be feared, should be squelched and their voice rejected as less important than those of Trump’s preferred gender and color and nation of birth. Trump is again gambling that he can scare enough white voters with the threats of invading hordes, immigrant rape and Muslim terrorists to hold power for four more years.
But the damage he is leveling on our political system far transcends the next four years. Trump is trying to redefine American identity. Or turn back the clock to a definition that has no relevance in our demographically diverse modern tapestry.
You may like Trump. Or you may not like all the policies or statements of the aforementioned four congresswomen. But this isn’t about that. It’s about Trump’s continual and systematic efforts to create a two-tier caste system, relegating those he declares insufficiently American.
It’s important that we see President Trump’s comments for what they are. It’s important that we call out his racist and cynical motives. And it’s imperative that we keep trying to stop this widening racial chasm that Trump is assiduously and intentionally trying to create. It’s our duty as “real Americans.”