They came packed in boats – rain-drenched, wide-eyed, every color in the crayon box.
MAGA’s nightmare.
Except for the blazers, in dazzling colors. Except for the well-fed and athletic builds. Except for the joy, the anticipation as the River Seine delivered them to glory on the Olympics’ glittering opening night in Paris.
Oh. Never mind.
Except that by Donald Trump’s demographic bleatings, that was a River of Poison.
Sure, if we could just pluck out the fair-skinned from those boats: the fencers from Finland, the divers from Denmark, the lifters from Luxenbourg. They’re not poisonous.
But accept no one from “shithole” countries like, say, Belize, or the Dominican Republic, or Laos.
Except that if our policy were suited to Trump’s Wonderbread idea of desirable people, we wouldn’t have Simone Biles, or Suni Lee, or Hezly Rivera, each a member of the gold-medal American women’s Olympic team.
I said American. Sure, Biles is part Latina, her grandmother from Belize, Guatemala’s impoverished next-door neighbor. Lee is Hmong (of Laotian emigres). Rivera’s parents are Dominican. To judges of excellence, all of this results in no deductions. But MAGA uses a whole other numerical system.
All of this is to say that anyone who offers to lead this country who says immigrants are “poisoning the blood of our country” — sentiments straight from Hitler’s mouth — should not be leading our country.
He shouldn’t be a police officer. He shouldn’t be a schoolteacher. He shouldn’t be a meter reader. He shouldn’t be in any position to serve the public.
Trump apologists will say the “poisoning” statement was meant for “illegals.” That’s not how he phrased it. And what’s the difference, anyway? They’re all strivers. For an undocumented father, a roofer’s gig might be the gold medal. For an undocumented mother, changing motel sheets in a land of freedom and opportunity might be medal-stand stuff.
So they’re here illegally? What has America done in the last 30 years to make it possible for strivers to get that wish and, hence, to serve our economic interests?
Nick Fuentes, the archetypal white supremacist Hitler fan who notoriously supped with Trump at Mar-a-Lago, has called white Christian males the “secret sauce of America.”
Bull-loney.
Immigration is America’s secret sauce. Without it, whom would Donald Trump marry and discard?
For generations, conservative entities like the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) and Hoover Institution pointed out the economic boost that immigration provides.
“The economics are clear,” writes James Pethokoukis for AEI. “American businesses and workers overall benefit greatly” from liberalized immigration policies.
He called Trump’s anti-immigration policies as president, including a freeze on new work visas, “an exercise in self-harm.”
There’s no question that with its low jobless rate and the service jobs that go wanting, the United States would benefit from looser, rather than tighter, immigration policies.
Denver voters this fall will vote on allowing noncitizens to be police and firefighters. Knowing the scramble to staff crews during fire season, this makes sense.
But Trump is not interested in something that not only helps the economy but is a humane response to human needs. He’s interested in inflaming his followers.
Presidential historian Timothy Naftali has a word for Trump’s finely honed cudgel: “othering,” getting his class of voters to fear or detest another. It’s something, Naftali told The New York Times, that makes Trump “a particularly poisonous political player.” Amen.
And race is only one means of doing that. Trump knows his base can get enraged by the mere existence of gay, lesbian and transgender individuals.
What do they have to say about Diana Taurasi, Breanna Stewart, Jewell Lloyd and other lesbians central to the astounding successes of women’s U.S. Olympic basketball?
They say, “USA, USA.”
Then they return to their hypocritical attempt to make enemies of others based on bogus surface distinctions.
We are all on this floating spheroid together. Those who seek to divide us based on race, religion and gender don’t want a better world or nation. They simply want to rain on “others’” parade.
Longtime newspaperman John Young lives in Colorado. Email: jyoungcolumn@gmail.com.