As a traveler, particularly internationally, I am deeply disturbed by the new immigration policies singularly enacted by the new American President. It is highly likely that as a result of his edit, I will resist the urge to travel overseas for fear of returning to this saddened land after staring, humiliated, into the eyes of the rest of the world.
We have committed a self-inflicted wound by electing a despot, an aspiring unitary President, who prefers to rule by edict and fiat. The very sort of dictator we, long ago, declared our independence from.
By nature, Americans abhor the rule of a monarch or emperor. Well, until they don't, as was proven last fall. I cannot even blame the incoming President. He's doing exactly what he told people he would do. They preferred to ignore his statements and vote for him in the hopes he would "moderate". They have their answer, and by willfully electing this person those who voted for him, or did not choose to vote in the election, have permitted this to occur. What happens now is on them, but it erodes us all in the process. Perhaps even destroys us.
This is not a diatribe of a voter who lost an election. I would be unhappy but sanguine, as I was when Reagan, Bush and Bush were elected. At least the Republic would stand.
I am not so sure any more.
One of the most famous and revered American possessions is the famed Statue of Liberty in New York Harbor. Gifted to the United States by France to honor our ideals and emergence as a true republic in the age of despotism.
Liberty, as the woman depicted by the statue is often referred, holds aloft a beacon of hope to the nations of the world. In her other hand is a tablet representing the rule of law.
Inside the museum at the base of the statue a plaque reprints a poem entitled THE NEW COLOSSUS, which reads:
Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"
The statue and its ideals were rededicated only 20 years ago by President Ronald Reagan, stating as he did so "We are the keepers of the flame of liberty; we hold it high for the world to see."
As you are no doubt aware, our new President has enacted, unilaterally by executive fiat, a series of changes to America's immigration policy to specifically discriminate against a specific religion and its peoples. And through the shrapnel such an edict creates, hurt and impacted millions of innocent people who have done nothing wrong other than to be of a group disfavored by the President.
It is, on the face of it, brutally unAmerican and unpatriotic. The rise of nationalism is predicated upon the insistence we are better than everyone else. Sadly, the actions some would take to prove the claim prove the lie of the assertion. We are not better. We are as afraid and bigoted as those we claim to judge. And when fear is the result of terrorism, the terrorist -- by definition -- have won.
Many, many Americans are embarrassed and deeply wounded by the current administration's disdain and disregard for the very ideals we present to the world as demonstrating our, well, "American-ness". We aspire to lofty goals, and while we constantly fall short of them it has always been in the American character to keep reaching, keep seeking.
Sadly, some of us have given up on that idealism. That pride in America. That very aspiration which dictates we swear allegiance to the flag and Republic, and not to the people in power, particularly the President.
We built our self-image upon our ideals.
At least until Trump.
Perhaps we ought to consider regifting the statue to Canada. A nation who with their words and actions seem now to embrace Liberty's dictates far more effectively than we Americans.
As news reporter and anchorman Dan Rather once stated in a time of previous national crisis:
"Courage."
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