You Can Have a Trump Flag or an American Flag
But you can’t have both
I can think of nothing more un-American than denigrating our armed forces. It was recently revealed that Donald Trump referred to U.S. soldiers who have died in the line of duty as “losers” and “suckers.” That was the real reason he did not want to visit the World War I Aisne-Marne American Cemetery in Belleau, France, in 2018, not because of rain as he claimed at the time. While Trump denies that he made those statements, they certainly align with verifiable remarks he made regarding the late Senator John McCain and a Gold Star Family.
In truth, nearly every action Donald Trump has taken as president has proven un-American and anti-democratic. It started at the very beginning, during his campaign in 2016, when he attacked the media and anyone who disagreed with him as “fake news.” Sowing misinformation and mistrust in the media is a foundational element in anti-democratic regimes.
Sowing misinformation and mistrust segues into sowing division, and Trump has done plenty of that. After taking the Oath of Office, a president — regardless of political party — is supposed to represent the interests of the entire country. Instead, Trump has consistently favored the states that voted for him in the 2016 Presidential Election. More flagrantly, during the COVID-19 Pandemic, Trump wanted to withhold aid to hard-hit democratic-run states unless they adopted his policy positions and were nice to him.
As of September 2020, more than 180,000 Americans have died of COVID-19. Because the pandemic is not something Trump can control, he has apparently decided to ignore it or treat it as something that has resolved and is in the past. With 180,000 deaths and counting, his son-in-law and advisor, Jared Kushner, called their pandemic response a “success story.”
Donald Trump, who claims he loves the American people, has left them to die largely preventable deaths.
The latest and one of the gravest examples of Trump’s anti-Americanism is the attack on the U.S. Postal Service. In a pandemic that is still raging out of control, many people have expressed a desire to vote by mail, a method that has proven safe and reliable for years in states like Colorado and Washington. While voter fraud is incredibly small, Trump continuously paints a picture that it is a massive problem, especially votes done by mail. It is clear that Trump wants to create confusion and doubt about the results of the upcoming election, particularly if he does not win.
A pride of American democracy has been the peaceful transition of power between presidents. This might be the first election where that does not occur.
A thread through all of these examples is divisiveness. Trump is good at using people’s fears and amplifying them, particularly fear of change. There has always been racial and ethnic tension in Trump’s messages; indeed, it was how he opened his initial presidential bid: Mexicans were rapists. Additionally, an early policy proposal was to institute a Muslim ban, which he would later enact as president. Moreover, the Black Lives Matter Protests (BLM) have given Trump another flashpoint with which to target his base. He perverts BLM’s message as an attack on white people’s privilege, that change actually means a downgrading of their own esteemed place in society rather than a call for equality and justice.
White supremacists and white nationalists have been emboldened under Trump’s presidency. Instead of resolutely rebuking their endorsement, he has called them “fine people.” More recently, he defended Kyle Rittenhouse, a seventeen-year-old radicalized by Trump’s rhetoric who crossed state lines and killed two people and injured a third at a BLM protest in Kenosha, Wisconsin.
The list of Trump’s anti-Americanism reaches well beyond all that I showcased above: from sycophants he’s appointed to key positions in the administration; to collusion with foreign powers to win elections; to the praising of dictators and the dismissal of our allies. He has sent unidentified agents to kidnap protesters off the streets of Portland and hold them without due process. He violently broke up a protest in Lafayette Square in Washington D.C. so he could have a photo-op in front of a church he does not attend. He uses the office of the president to enrich himself and his family, a clear violation of the emoluments clause of the Constitution. Again and again he has shown disdain for anyone who dares disagree with him.
This is by far not only Donald Trump’s fault. He has been enabled and emboldened by Congressional Republicans who decided that Trump’s actions were more important than American institutions and the Constitution. In Donald Trump, Republicans had a person who would help them unravel economic and environmental regulations that stood in the way of their own self-enrichment and aggrandizement. Trump and the Republicans have decided that greed is more important than American democracy.
Donald Trump, together with his Republican enablers have given rise to a fanaticism that is very anti-democratic even as it preaches America first. In college, a professor of mine — an intellectual who fled the 1979 Iranian Revolution— delivered a lecture to my class wherein he stated that America was a patriotic nation, not a nationalist one. Nationalism, he reminded us, can become almost religious in nature, breeding extremism and violence as a means to an end. Patriotism is simply a love for country. People stood for the National Anthem, they said the Pledge of Allegiance, but most Americans were not virulent in their beliefs of American superiority. The last several years are proof of how fast things can change, of how quickly patriotism can turn into nationalism.
Donald Trump is a fascist. Despite the propaganda, he does not love America. His actions and his words have proven this over and over. So, when I see a Trump flag and an American flag whipping together in the wind outside someone’s home, I want to leave them a note that says to choose one. If they really love America, then they cannot love Trump. If it is Trump they choose, then they have to accept that they don’t care about this country or its institutions. History has told this story before: when we opt for fascism and extremism, nearly everyone ends up losing.
