All day I’ve been trying to think about what to say about Donald Trump’s acceptance speech last night.
Obviously, I have my disagreements with the GOP platform when it comes to the rights of women, to LGBTQ individuals, to immigration, to the environment, to taxation, to separation of church and state, and a good deal more.
But beyond those disagreements, I realized as I watched that Mr. Trump was speaking to a group of people who see the world–and this country–in a fundamentally different way than I do.
He insists, and they believe, that we are desperately unsafe, that crime and violence are all around us, that our government is doing a very poor job of protecting us, and that even the police are powerless to stop the criminals who target us and them. He insists, and they believe, that vast hordes of Mexican murderers and Muslim terrorists are streaming or preparing to stream across our open borders and kill our loved ones. He insists, and they believe, that we have major economic problems and that we spend too much money on our international allies. He insists, and they believe, that America is being or has been stolen from the white Christians who made it great and that he is the only person capable of restoring America to its former glory.
This isn’t my America. This isn’t what I see when I look around.
Certainly we have a lot of work to do as a country; certainly there are many, many things we need to fix, including our politics; and certainly there are dangerous people out there. But in general things are pretty good, and certainly they are rosy when we compare things with the way they were in our not-so-distant past. Thankfully, there is actually less violent crime today than in the past; there are fewer police officers being killed in the line of duty; we are mostly shielded from terrorism, at least in part due to the governmental processes already in place to protect us.
So, as I watched thousands of people on their feet, voicing their approval for Trump as he hollered “We don’t want them in our country,” I realized it might be impossible for me to understand this. I might be in a position where all I could ever feel was fear and revulsion for this sort of thinking.
My family came to this country not so very long ago, survivors of the Nazi Holocaust who moved here from Israel for opportunities for their young children. As I listened to the full-throated approval for a presidential candidate playing on their fear of immigrants and refugees, insisting that THOSE people don’t belong in OUR country, I was reminded of Pastor Niemöller’s most famous quote:
First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Socialist.
Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Trade Unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.I’m not a Mexican immigrant and I’m not a Muslim (whether a Syrian refugee or someone born in America). But I know my world history and my family’s history well enough to know that we must speak out and we must work against this notion that THOSE people make US less safe, take OUR jobs, make OUR country less safe, that THEY don’t belong HERE and that they’re taking OUR country away from US.
We must do this not only so that someone will be there to speak for us when we need them, but also because it is a moral imperative to speak out against the terrible lie that America belongs to a certain group of people and that the appropriate response to feelings of insecurity is to empower the government to lash out at anyone who isn’t part of that group.