It Irks My Soul!

Donald Trump’s tweets on Sunday represent a malfeasance of office.  His news conference yesterday only confirmed this wrongdoing. He failed to support and defend the Constitution of the United States by railing against four Congresswomen and implying that they were not Americans.  They are natural-born citizens, just as Obama is, but truth-telling is not Donald Trump’s forte. These Congresswomen, representatives of the people of their districts, are accorded by the Constitution, as all of us are, the right to speak their grievances.  They have a right to find fault, criticize, complain, and petition their government, just as Trump did (and still does) during his presidential campaign.   They have a right to complain and to say what they don’t like about America and Donald Trump has no right, and in fact, is misusing and abusing his office, when he says they should leave the country.  Every person of color and every person with a foreign accent knows the “put down” in the words:  “Go Back Where You Came From.”

Trump has made unfounded and unsubstantiated claims about these women.  They “hate Israel,” they are “Socialists,” they “hate America,” they love “Al-Qaeda.” These accusations have no basis in reality and yet Sen. Lindsey Graham repeated those unfounded claims on Fox News, becoming the new Joe McCarthy of our time, calling the so-called Squad a “bunch of communists” who are “anti-Semitic” and hate the United States.  “They stand,” Graham said, “for all the things that most Americans disagree with.”  Who is Trump, who is Graham, to say what “most Americans disagree with?”  It was only three years ago that Graham said in a CNN interview:  “Trump is a race-baiting, xenophobic bigot.”  Two years ago, Graham said, he thought Trump “a kook.” “I think he’s crazy.  I think he’s unfit for office.”  

America has been polarized before—aiding  and abetting that polarization was the use of this very same slogan “America Love It or Leave It.”  It was a common bumper sticker in the 1960’s and 70’s.  The country was divided then over the war in Vietnam and the Civil Rights Movement.  Merle Haggard topped the country music charts with “The Fightin’ Side of Me,” which had this line:  “America, if you don’t love it, leave it.”  It was a time of protest and it was a time of great “government/establishment” resistance.  It was a time of deep division.

Who decides who loves America and who does not?  Who determines what “most Americans disagree with?”  Who decides who can complain and criticize government and who cannot?  Not Donald Trump!  Not Lindsey Graham!  Not wishy-washy Democrats or cowardly, silent and complicit Republicans!  The Constitution precludes such judgment—allowing every person to agree, disagree, argue, petition, and criticize within the law.  To tell somebody to leave because they think differently is a violation of our rule of law—The Constitution of the United States.

There is not one way or the highway! There are many openings
to a brave, new and radiant world.