If Donald Trump’s shock election for the world’s mostpowerful office had been seen as an accident and as a recipe for disaster bymany, he has done everything to justify those fears over the past three andhalf years.
Not a day passes without the President casually throwingaway all the love and respect that the United States has achieved as the globalleader and the world’s most vibrant democracy and, above all, as the ultimateland of opportunity.
America has long beckoned dreamers from around the world,attracting the best, brightest and the boldest. It has always been viewed with hope by all those who have beenoppressed, rejected and persecuted in their own lands. The final land of refuge.
For what is America if not a nation of refugees andimmigrants? From the Christians and Jews facing persecution in Europe in the16th century and 20th century to the Irish refugees fleeing famine in the landof their birth, America has offered its welcoming shores to everyone.
The ancestors of Trump himself, like so many other whiteChristian communities, now ruling the land of the free not long ago came fromEurope, from Germany to be precise. Hiswife Melania Trump was born and grew up in Slovenia, moving to America only in1996.
Yet the President sees no irony in telling the multiculturalmelting pot of a nation that he governs, in a succession of tweets, that fourDemocrat Congresswomen of colour in the House of Representatives – AyannaPressley, Rashida Tlaib, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Ilhan Omar should “goback to their home countries and help fix the totally broken and crime-infestedplaces from which they came.”
In another tweet later, he added: “So interesting to see’Progressive’ Democrat Congresswomen, who originally came from countries whosegovernments are a complete and total catastrophe, the worst, most corrupt andinept anywhere in the world (where they even have a functioning government atall), now loudly and viciously telling the people of the United States, thegreatest and most powerful Nation on earth, how our government is to berun.”
Trump accused the women lawmakers of “spewing some of themost vile, hateful and disgusting things ever said by a politician” and added,”If you hate our country, or if you are not happy here, you can leave!”
What is most bizarre and breath-taking thing about thiswhole business is that with the exception of Somali American Ilham Omar, knownfor her combative spirit and speaking for the voiceless and oppressed in andoutside the US and who came to America as a refugee at the age of 9, all threetargeted by Trump were born and brought up in America.
So either the President is ignorant, as he often chooses tobe, or he is deliberately fudging facts and obfuscating to misguide thefamously informed Americans, as he again often chooses to do. With the 2020re-election battle fast approaching, Trump is clearly queering the pitch intrying to once again woo his support base of white working-class Americans.
Whatever be the case, his deliberate attempts to promotediscord and division among various sections of society, on the one hand, andhate and bigotry against the people of colour and Muslim Americans areunconscionable.
What is even more absurd is that within hours after the USHouse of Representatives in an unprecedented vote condemned the President – thefirst such resolution to be passed in more than a century was passed with 240votes against 187 — for his “racistcomments that have legitimised fear and hatred of New Americans and people ofcolour,” Trump was back to the same shenanigans.
After tweeting “I don’t have a racist bone in my body,” thePresident addressed his supporters at a campaign rally in North Carolina onWednesday, again attacking the women lawmakers calling them “hate-filledextremists.”
He singled out the outspoken Ilham Omar as his supporterserupted into chants of ‘Send her back!’ It reminded many eerily of those whitesupremacist rallies. The Democrats were quick to condemn the spectacle of hateaccusing the President of endangering millions of American lives. Apparently, this will once be the patternahead as the 2020 polls loom.
Clearly, Trump thinks he can win once again only by usingthe self-same, tried and tested tactics of ‘divide and rule.’ Hate clearlywins. And we saw it most recently in yetanother great democracy. Indeed, acrossthe world, including in Europe, tyranny is on the march using hate and bigotryand demonising religious and ethnic minorities to capture power.
In America, at least, the opposition Democrats and thevibrant civil society including the media are resisting and fighting back inevery way possible.
The ordinary Americans are being told that their leader’sattacks on religious and ethnic minorities are not just petty and puerile, theyare profoundly un-American. They do great disservice to the lofty ideals andprinciples that inspired the founding fathers of America and helped build anamazing country that continues to inspire people around the world.
The ordinary Americans are fighting back to save Americafrom the tyranny of hate and bigotry. For America is beautiful and it is worth saving. It is a dream that must be protected.
As Palestinian American author Fawz Turki says in a powerfulpiece, “America is unique. There is notnow and there has never been a country like it in human history. Unlike othercountries around the world today, including those in Europe, in which since thesecond half of the 20th century, countless asylum seekers have found refuge butfound no genuine opportunities for integration. This land is known as a ‘nation of nations’, namely, a nation made up ofpeople who come from every cranny around the world.”
Turki goes on to argue: “Unlike other nations, it has shownitself superbly adept at assimilating immigrants. Hey, that’s how America makesa living. We are all Americans, ordinary, level-headed Americans will tellyou.”
This is what the American dream and America is allabout. It’s celebrated by the iconicStatue of Liberty that has welcomed generations of new arrivals on America’sshores.
The inscription on a bronze plaque on the pedestal of theLady Liberty says: “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearningto be free.”
The soul-stirring lines are from the famous sonnet by EmmaLazarus, herself the daughter of Jewish immigrants from Portugal. Indeed, thewhole poem is worth reading and re-reading and sharing today, and not just by Americans,when many of us are turning on the weak and vulnerable amidst us. Watching the Americans fight back to protecttheir ideals, I often wonder if we Indians would ever muster the same courageof conviction to protect our own.