This is Ilhan Omar, a bright and brave thirty six year old American politician. She was elected to represent Minnesota's fifth district in the US House of Representatives.
Born in war-torn Somalia, her family fled to America when she was a small girl. In spite of the odds stacked against her, she has risen through local, state and national politics to become a significant voice on the left of The Democratic Party.
But for Trump and his evangelistic redneck followers, she has become a convenient hate figure. On Wednesday in Greenville, North Carolina rabble-rousing Trump had his supporters chanting, "Send her back! Send her back!". This spectacle was as chilling as it was racist. Trump has turned Ilhan into a target for right wing lunatics.
What do they mean by "Send her back!"? She is a US citizen who deserves admiration and applause. She is living proof that anyone can make it in America - even a Muslim woman from a refugee camp in Somalia.
Indeed, isn't Ilhan genuinely from "Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free", now living in a land that proudly boasts that it provides "liberty and justice for all"?
"Send her back!"? Wouldn't it be better to send Trump back to his maternal family's humble cottage on The Isle of Lewis or back to Kallstadt, Germany where his father's family came from? After all, Ilhan Omar surely better reflects the true values of decent American society than a draft-dodging playground bully who demeans women and is so demonstrably self-obsessed.
These are my true thoughts. Like them or lump them.
It is indeed chilling to see such an unedifying demonstration of the mentality of the Leader of the Free World.
ReplyDelete"Free World"? I don't know what that means any more.
DeleteI like the quiet passion and conviction with which you write.
ReplyDeleteThe whole saga is shameful. What is even more shameful that he gets away with it. And why doesn't he (and his kids or anyone else emotionally attached to him) die of that same shame? If I agreed even with a fraction of what he rambles and tweets (which, just to clarify, I do not) I most certainly would keep those thoughts to myself. Since we are on shame: What about those people who facilitate the man? I hesitate to put this in writing but there was a time (think Kennedy x 2) when the CIA would have long jumped into action.
As an aside, and on a personal note: I find Trump's connection with Germany mildly irritating. I know it's irrational but there it is.
But then, sigh, what of the English homegrown specimen of one Johnson? Why is his rise too "facilitated" in a so called democracy? Whenever I call family or friends from the motherland I always hope that they won't bring up this Brexitscheisse at some point in the conversation. Invariably they do. Asking a million questions. As if I have anything to do with this mess. Or could explain it. And let's not forget, and I won't not least that during the last European election I was turned away from my polling station. To me it's an outrage, humiliating, and the cavalier attitude May took on the issue ... actually I'd rather forget about May. She blighted my life once before when she was in charge of the Home Office. I was thrown into a scenario that even Kafka would have found difficult to put on the page. Dear YP, if I have told you that snippet out of my biography before please do forgive me and write it off to that episode having shaken me to my core. Whatever next? Deportation?
By way of free association: Remember "Uncle Tom's Cabin"? It was that book which, for the first time in my childhood (I must have been about nine or ten), alerted me to rascism of the "coloured" kind. Which gets me going on my beloved Golliwog. He was a blow up doll, made of black plastic, with big white eyes and big red lips. Decades later (recently) I related this somewhere on the internet. All political correctness hell broke loose. Come again?
Anyway, whilst I am NOT sorry (I don't apologize for my existence) to take up so much of your comment box I do know that sometimes I do fall foul of blogging etiquette. But then you seem to be the patient, and forgiving, sort.
U
Thank you for another interesting response Ursula. My son, Ian, lived with a good friend for several years. He was of Afro-Caribbean heritage. He had a cuddly golliwog in his bedroom and a Robertsons' golliwog T-shirt. He laughed about the racist propriety of the issue.
DeleteInteresting point you make about the way that JFK was sullied and undermined and possibly killed by the CIA... and yet they seem content to allow Trump to weave his dirty right wing magic.
Just commenting in support of what you say. It reminded me of fascist rallies.
ReplyDeleteIf only onlookers in the early nineteen thirties had been able to see where those rallies were leading.
DeleteI REALLY hope this is the final death knell for this misogynistic, adulteress, draft-dodging, multi-bankrupt, white supremacist, lying, schoolboy bully and failed excuse for a business man. Please America, do the right thing at the next elections!
ReplyDeleteYou can say what you like about Trump but he is a very cunning s.o.b..
DeleteI wish with all of my heart that Treaders was correct but there seems to be no bottom to the hell which Trump has come to represent. I have no idea why the Republicans seem to have no spines or moral compasses at all but that is the fact of the matter. There are no words to express how horrified many of us here in the states are.
ReplyDeleteWhere are the decent, wholesome Republicans - prepared to call out Trump? Their silence is deafening.
DeleteTreader, Trump may be adulterous, but he is not, as far as we know, an adulteress. The subject of gender fluidity will be addressed further in my next book, Flaccid Penis, Itchy Scrotum.
ReplyDeleteSounds like a fascinating read Bob. I guess you have had to do plenty of research.
DeleteHa ha, I should have proof-read I guess.
DeleteAmen!
ReplyDeleteAwomen!
DeleteYou are completely correct.
ReplyDeleteI'm sure the Isle of Lewis and Kallstadt wouldn't want Trump, either.
He could be parachuted in. It might give him a sense of what it was like to be a G.I. in Vietnam.
DeleteExactly!
ReplyDeleteThumbs up to you Lily.
DeleteI agree with you . Absolutely. I have just finished a book by Phillipe Sands, called East west street. It's a book everyone should read. Google it.x
ReplyDeleteOkay. I will Christina.
DeleteI fully agree with your true thoughts. We need more people to stand up and speak loudly truth and justice.
ReplyDeleteI know this is just a blog in a small corner of the blogosphere but I think it's better than saying nothing.
DeleteYou are far more than just a blog in a small corner. I've been reading your blog off and on for several years, and I always feel comforted by the thought that there are still thoughtful, honest, educated, amusing people in a world that seems to have become some sort of cartoon version of our worst fears.
DeleteSo, I'm just one old person living in the "US" waking up every day wondering what I can do to preserve civilization, and I think these brief connections we establish on the internet are important. You remind me that my values and experiences still matter, that maybe all will be well and all will be well.
On a less dramatic note, if by some chance we all survive and prosper a little bit, can I come be your neighbor, and visit with your family and talk about vegan cooking, and music, and poetry, and try to figure out where all these total assholes ruling the universe at the moment came from? Yes, it's time to cork the wine and toddle off to bed...thanks for your contribution to preserving some kind of civilization.
This is one of the most uplifting comments I have ever received Kate. Thank you and let's dance!
DeleteI think that Rockall might be the best place to send Trump, he is after all very fond of causing storms...
ReplyDeleteYes, Rockall is a good idea. They could chain him to the top.
DeleteImagine Native Americans would rally and shout "Send them home!" at everyone whose family originally came across the ocean, no matter how long ago and no matter which country they were born in.
ReplyDeleteIf the non-Natives were indeed all sent "home", the US would end up very scarsely populated, and Europe (as well as other places) would become even more crowded than now.
It is a vile and mindless chant. The way Trump's rallies are staged reminds me of a certain other famous leader.
DeleteIt seems there is no end to what this man will say and do. I can honestly say that when he became president it was the biggest shock of my life because no one I knew voted for him and even the polls showed him losing right up to the end. Needless to say, I agree with all you have said!
ReplyDeleteYou are too pleasant and level-headed to be a Trump supporter Bonnie. He won't last forever but how much damage will he have caused?
DeleteMr. Pudding, and while I applaud your post I have to correct one error in your kindly and large-hearted post.
ReplyDeleteThe poem that you quote, the one that contains the line about "the huddled masses yearning to be free" does not, in fact, represent any official or semiofficial mission statement as far as the spirit or the politics of the American people are concerned.
The poem was written by a socialite and part-time activist called Emma Lazarus (1849 - 1887). The only reason her poem is remembered today is because, after her death, her society lady friends in New York City wrangled permission from the City Parks Dept. to bolt her drivel onto the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty. The poem was never voted upon in a open forum by the citizens of the city or the USA, it was never sanctioned by the U S Dept or the Interior of the Dept of Immigration. You might as well be quoting the lyrics to a pop song or the ingredients of apple pie, for all the legal, social, historical, or cultural relevance of that poem.
The Statue of Liberty, as well, was not a gift from France in recognition of our American values; it was foisted upon the people of New York City by an egomaniac who first tired to get the same statue installed in the entrance to the Suez Canal as a lighthouse (in imitation of an ancient Wonder of the World) but the Egyptians weren't having it. So the sculptor, Bartholdi, looked around for a people gullible enough to fall for his hustle, and he hit upon Americans. Grover Cleveland, who was governor of New York at the time, refused Bartholdi's "gift" (it came with a $100,000 price tag) so Joseph Pulitzer decided to sell newspapers by whipping up public enthusiasm for the Statueby appealing to their lowest jingoistic and sentimental feelings of patriotism, and thus was the myth about its being a "gift" from the people of Lafayette born as as symbol of Americnangreatness, etc etc etc. The Statue was hoisted into place in 1886.
From 1886 the Statue was under the aegis of New York State until 1933, when FDR took it over and made it part of the Parks Dept as a National Monument. But by then, that blasted poem had been nailed onto the pedestal and here we are today.
I do not love the Statue of Liberty. It's hokey, and it's fake. It has become a symbol of America only through marketing, sentimentality, shallow thinking, and the cynicism of a guy who just wanted to sell newspapers.
It and that damn poem do not mean anything,anything "real",; enforceable. The poem was never put there by consensus. And no American should be on the hook to uphold the sentiments expressed by it. I, for one, would never want the world's "wretched refuse" showing up at my door. I can barely stand my own relatives.
Thank you.