Begin the end...

Today saw the beginning of the end… the start of a period that could be the most fundamental challenge to the American ideal since our nation’s founding.  I know that sounds like a hyperbole but, if anything, I believe it to be impossible to overstate.  Today President Trump began a two-day exercise to dismantle the American ideal.  Today’s act was the signing of two executive orders that target undocumented immigration to the US largely aimed at Mexico.  He starts with the building of a wall on the southern border, the building of detention centers to house immigrants awaiting deportation and then increases the forces to enforce his new grand vision.  In addition, he sets up a set of guidelines that will allow for the federal government to punish any state and local municipalities that are deemed to not be cooperating with the new administrative actions.  And if that was not enough, tomorrow he is widely expected to implement a complete halt to allowing refugees into the US and will implement a travel ban from “Muslim-majority” countries.  As much feigned outrage there was from even within his own party when he suggested this during the election, I’m sure it will be met with utter silence this time through as the GOP is too busy trying to create lists of legislation they will push through to notice the White House burning down any notion of the American Ideal.  This is what acquiesce looks like.

Ronald Reagan, for all his faults, knew how the American Ideal, American Exceptionalism worked.  It did not come from within.  It came from the perception of the outside world that America held the high ground.  That America, with all her internal flaws and challenges, would lead and those that followed would prosper.  America was the land of hope for those suffering through oppression albeit in Soviet Russia, underdeveloped Africa or in the oppressive tyrannical monarchies of the Middle East.  America was the light.  America was the rule of law and the moral compass.  America was, as Reagan put it, “The City on a Hill.” 

Our response to 9-11 began to chip away at that ideal, where we began crossing the very lines that we fought to establish.  Military led revenge became the policy of choice but without the commitment to rebuilding in the light of victory.  The results were, in our attempts to feel safer, we sowed chaos.  We took an area of the world that struggled to maintain any sense of stability let alone progress and pushed it into the abyss without even considering how to pull it out again.  Even how we conducted our ill-considered campaign was contrary to our own standards.  We adopted the very techniques that we often tried failed states and dictators for employing.  We created an infrastructure to hold people in such a way that we would not have to consider their rights.  And now, we are going to close our borders to those most in need from the destruction we have reaped.  Oh, it is a much easier narrative to accept if we frame it as Islamic fundamentalists charging after us and our way of life.  Much easier to say “we don’t know what is going on” or even to just blame them because they hate us.  No causality in sight (at least to do with us) and clearly no responsibility.

So here we are.  We will just bar the doors, build a wall and turn our back to a world that once looked up to us.  We will no longer be the beacon of hope, will no longer hold the high ground.  If Trump is to be believed, we no long desire to be the City on the Hill.  You can’t lead when you only think of your own best interests.  You can’t win when you always demand surrender.  “Give Us Your Tired, Your Poor, Your Huddled masses…” was as much of the American moto as anything else.  It is the ideal that brought us all here in the first place.  It is our collective history.  America can be great again but not until we remember who we are and be willing to pay the costs of being “on the hill.”  Unless we do that… we will lose, huge. 

And we can’t hope for a change in direction without the application of resistance.