Not in My America — There’s Nothing “Great” About Fear
Trump’s America is not the Home of the Brave
It’s a familiar story: fleeing an oppressive dictatorship or a violent region, a refugee finally reaches a nation where they can be safe. The punchline? This Somali man wasn’t arriving in the United States of America. He was arriving in Canada. And the country he was fleeing? America.
In his words, “America is [the] problem now”.
The specificity of Mohamed’s worry should fill us with shame.
“He’s worried you’re an American police officer”
Not “a police officer”, “an American police officer”.
Somalia is not just a war-torn nation, it is a humanitarian nightmare. Children are forced into armies and threatened with the torture and murder of their families if they refuse. This Somali man is willing to risk frostbite and death just to make it to a better country. Too bad that better country wasn’t America.
I do not mean to simplify the issues facing Somalia or Syria (and the list does not stop there). Our military interventions abroad have not been very successful, and international politics is very complex.
But the least — and I mean the very least — we can do is take in those who survive and escape annihilation and welcome them into our society. It is an embarrassment that a country as wealthy as America is not seen as a safe place to somebody who has seen such suffering.
That we would even consider abandoning that minimum humanitarian duty and turning away those refugees out of fear for the same militants who have made their existence a living hell? Pure, selfish cowardice.
That is not my America. My America accepts the downtrodden and liberates the oppressed. My America stands up for civil liberties. My America is a country of opportunity and prosperity for all people, not just a handful of millionaires and billionaires, but also not just white, straight, cisgender, Christian men.
Sadly, “My America” never existed. Innocents like Mohamed are not being caught in the crossfire. They are the targets of America’s fear.
America has been taking the coward’s way out for a long time. America took the coward’s way out when we interned Japanese-Americans during World War II (and we almost took the coward’s way out by not joining the war at all, despite the clear evil that was Nazi Germany). America took the coward’s way out when we instituted a national surveillance program after 9/11. America took the coward’s way out when we declared liberty for all men yet kept blacks in chains and deprived women of the right to vote.
That is what Donald Trump and his followers mean when they say “Make America Great Again”. They are cowards, and they think America’s government policy should reflect that cowardice.
They’re afraid of immigrants, so they keep them out rather than welcome them. They’re afraid of black people, so they put us in jail rather than help our schools and neighborhoods. They’re afraid of the political and cultural unrest in the Middle East, so they’d rather keep Muslims out. They’re afraid of people who are different than they are (apparently conservatives have more active amygdalas, the portion of the brain which is active during states of fear and anxiety).
But above all else, they’re afraid that America won’t be about them anymore. Ultimately, their fear is a form of selfishness: a desire to preserve the comfort that they have experienced on the backs of slave and migrant labor. They put the “me” in “America”.
They don’t want America to be “Great”. They want America to be “Afraid” because the alternative is that America work for somebody other than them.
They’re not really afraid that Mohamed is a terrorist. They’re afraid that if Mohamed gets access to the American Dream, it will be harder for them. They’re willing to let millions of people in African and Middle Eastern and Asian countries — in black and Latino neighborhoods — suffer in order to protect their quality of life.
Well, I’m not afraid. And if the election results are any indication, neither are a good majority of my millennial counterparts (I’m looking at you, white dudes). We grew up on the American myth of equality. We were told that America had fought over the racism and the xenophobia and the sexism in its past, and we had emerged into a new era where those forces were dead.
And in the last 8 years, we have watched that myth be torn to shreds.
We have watched white America drive itself into a frenzy over the first black president, who — like Mohamed — has brown skin and a foreign name (Hussein). We have watched as his grace and his attempts at compromise were hurled in his face alongside racial epithets and unprecedented obstruction. We have watched them rage at the innocuous principle that Black Lives Matter. We have watched how they demonize Muslims and Mexicans. We have watched how they fear trans people in bathrooms — in bathrooms! And we have seen how they cannot stand the thought of a female president.
We live in one America: young, diverse, accepting, science-based and tech-driven. They live in another: aging, white, intolerant, faith-based and tradition-driven. They are the last gasp of white nationalism in America, one mighty roar for the whole lot of it from slavery through Jim Crow through mass incarceration.
There will be a reckoning soon, as we take over the American institutions of power. Our America never existed. It was a lie previous Americas told us out of shame for their historic offenses. So if Donald Trump and his red-hat lackeys want to make their America great again, they’re going to face a young America who is hungry to make America great, finally.
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