One Giant Step Backward for the USA
Here we are celebrating the extraordinary American moon landing achievement of 1969. It was also the time of great advances in civil rights, in health coverage for seniors, the disabled and the poor, and of a nation divided by the Vietnam War and the end of legal segregation – the American version of apartheid.
President Trump and his supporters and enablers this week exemplified the racist, nativist, misogynist past that clings like a filthy stench to his Presidency in his attacks on four recently elected young Congresswomen of color.
Can you begin to imagine President Kennedy, President Johnson, President Eisenhower or President Franklin Delano Roosevelt writing or speaking in such tones or sentiments? Is this the same America that fought the Nazis and Fascists in the Second World War? Is this the America that helped bring down the Berlin Wall and Soviet control of Eastern Europe? Is this the nation built by centuries of immigrants from all over the world? Is this the nation that fought a Civil War to end slavery?
Our President often echoes the nativist Know Nothings of the 1850s, the fascist-sympathizing Father Coughlin of the mid 1930s, the influential white supremacist Madison Grant of the 1920s, and more recently the arch segregationist George Wallace of the 1960’s. He has cowed many in his own party who fear being Sanfordized in their primaries; he has found willing acolytes in others.
It is often politically suicidal to speak inconvenient truths to the leader(s) of your own party. Let’s appreciate that handful of Republican leaders with the political courage to speak out and stand up against this dangerous, racist demagogue.
It is easy for Democrats to criticize the words of the leader of the opposition party, but let’s at least look at his actions that got his whole debate with the Squad underway. He (President Trump) separated families at the border; they criticized him for cruelty to the children and their parents. He had children locked in cages with no showers, no diapers, no toothbrush, no beds, no parents; they called him out and criticized him again for cruelty to children. He pulled out of the Paris climate accords and rolled back many efforts to allay climate change; they proposed the “Green New Deal”. He sought to take away health coverage for over 20 million Americans; they proposed extending coverage to every American. He gave Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman a pass for ordering the execution and dismemberment of Jamal Kashoggi; they criticized him for that. He sold arms to the Saudis for their bombings in the Yemeni civil war without Congressional authorization; they criticized that. He recognized Israeli occupation of the Golan, moved the US embassy to Jerusalem, questioned and undermined the two state solution and cut funding for the Palestinians; they criticized him for that. He played Putin’s puppet at Helsinki and elsewhere; then he called them “commies”. He goes into meetings often ill-prepared, makes up facts, doesn’t keep his commitments and gets eviscerated by the press for his veracity challenges; they go into committee hearings and press briefings well prepared and are amassing a social meeting following and lots of support in their own districts. I understand he is a little thin skinned and does not take criticism very well, but for my money the “Squad” is a heck of a lot closer to American values than is President Trump.
Let’s send him packing his golf bags back to Mar a Lago!
Prepared by: Lucien Wulsin
Dated: 7/19/19