America – What Beacon of Light on the Hill (#285)

Today’s America has become the poster boy of intolerance, racial, religious and ideological division and hate, boldly stoked daily, publicly, by its elected President.

His division-mongering hate is being eagerly picked up by the white supremacy believing crowd that turned a recent rally into a throwback to the glory days of Hitler, standing at the podium while the adoring crowds chanted hateful, spiteful slogans about the Jews, who they then allowed to be slaughtered mercilessly by their ‘superior race’ ideology fuelling superiors, the Hitler inspired Nazi Party. Hitler was the inspired, adored leader, and the Nazi Party adherents were the enablers.

Today Trump is digging deep to tag anyone who opposes him with the most inflammatory label he can think of. And, most of all, like Hitler with Jews, Gypsies, and any other undesirables, he is labelling them as unpatriotic, harmful to the country, exploitive, sabotaging foreigners, racially different and the cause for America’s many shortcomings and ills, and therefore not belonging, and  therefore to be got rid of from America to their lands of origin; in other words, to be de-Americanized. And, just as Hitler had the Nazis to enable him to carry out his hateful agenda to ‘Make Germany Great Again’, this time, Trump has the Republicans as his uncritical, silent, or chanting hate-spewing enablers.

This election cycle, at the recent political rally, the chants from Trump’s supporters of ‘send her back’ were about targeting an elected woman of colour, Ilhan Omar, who had had the audacity to criticize a racist President and his hateful policies.

But this was not the first time that Trump had gotten his supporters at his rallies to chant hateful slogans, as in the 2016 election campaign Trump had whipped up the crowds about a woman who had dedicated her life to serving the causes of women and children, and later served the country as a globally admired Secretary of State, with outrageous and blatantly false allegations of impropriety and criminality, till the crowds had roared ‘lock her up, lock her up!!’; as Trump would stand at the podium smiling beatifically, swaying and basking in their hateful cries.

The America that had positioned itself at the front of the line of all the countries that were Democratic, progressive and free, now is firmly and voluntarily at the back of the line, stripped of its decades old veneer of civility, tolerance, acceptance and ‘equality for all’ reputation, and is now openly revelling in its exposure as the nation of the ‘true Americans’, who are presumably all white, and all others not real Americans, but some kind of foreigners in disguise; and who can either live unquestioningly and submissively in America – or, they can all go back ‘home’ to where they came from, even if they are born in the US, or are nationalized Americans. As the prominent Republican, Senator Lindsey Graham, described the ones objecting to this hate stoking President, and his division fuelling Presidency as - ‘unpatriotic, socialists, communists, America haters’.

Trump’s America daily displays its inhumanity towards the less fortunate, in the lack of empathy for the migrants, caged in concentration camps in deplorable conditions, or towards its own poor and disadvantaged, stripping them of social programs and any semblance of healthcare; and in the flaunting of its laws as officials of this administration now regularly refuse to obey summons to testify to Congress, or any of its Committees.

Trump’s America’s open disregard for the values that are enshrined in its famed Constitution, particularly on equality, make a mockery now of its claims to being the greatest of Democracies. Its reputation now lies in tatters internationally, as all nations look askance at what once was the ‘beacon of light’ in a dark World, become the leader in turning back to its darkest self.

Ronald Reagan, one of the most admired and loved President of the United States, and fondly remembered and respected by the World, had said - "America is a shining city upon a hill whose beacon light guides freedom-loving people everywhere".

And in his farewell speech - 'I've spoken of the Shining City all my political life. …In my mind it was a tall, proud city built on rocks stronger than oceans, windswept, God-blessed, and teeming with people of all kinds living in harmony and peace; a city with free ports that hummed with commerce and creativity. And if there had to be city walls, the walls had doors and the doors were open to anyone with the will and the heart to get here. That's how I saw it, and see it still.'**

Well, Ronald Reagan unfortunately is long gone, as his America - the ‘Shining City on the hill, a beacon of light to all the World’, and Trump has shut the doors and snuffed out the light.

**https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/America_is_a_shining_city_upon_a_hill#cite_note-2