While America may be passing a big mile stone with its 250th anniversary, I can't say that I feel patriotic about this country right now. But then, I've never really been particularly patriotic. When it comes to that subject, I tend to agree with my all favorite movie star, Charlie Chaplin, who once said "The fact is that I am no patriot. Not for moral or intellectual reasons alone, but because I have no feeling for it. How can one tolerate patriotism when six million Jews were murdered in its name? Some might say that was in Germany; nevertheless these murderous cells lie dormant in every nation."
Still, I won't lie, I was feeling pretty good in about America in 2012 when Barack Obama won his second term in office and even some conservative media members said it was time to soften their point of view. And then Donald Trump came along, and for the last ten years I have felt ashamed to be an American. That goes double now that we are in his far worse second term. I know its been over a year since the election, but I still struggle to see how tens of millions of my fellow Americans could somehow forget the terrible events that Trump set into motion on January 6th. 2020.
In his second term Trump has trashed everything good about America. He's attacked freedom of speech, suing news outlets for running negative stories about him, getting Stephen Colbert fired and Jimmy Kimmel suspended. He has used the once independent Justice Department to investigate and make fake charges against his political enemies. And he still refuses to accept that he lost the 2020 election, maintaining without a shred of evidence that millions of undocumented immigrants vote illegally in this country. He's wrecked our once great scientific community, slashing university research spending that has lead to some of our best scientists leaving the country to do research else where. He's also denied climate change, even as we swelter under a heat wave that scientists from World Weather Attribution say would be impossible without climate change. And he appointed vaccine skeptic and unscientific crank RFK Jr to run our Health and Human Services department. He's put an end to the idea that the US was a generous nation, as his slashing of the USAID budget could, according to the medical journal The Lancet, result in the death of hundreds of thousands of people, just to save less than 1% of our federal budget. Those cuts are already being felt in the ebola crisis in the Congo, which may be the worst ebola outbreak ever. Meanwhile his usage of ICE to hunt down undocumented immigrants, combined with a message to legal immigrants and refugees that they aren't' wanted here, has tarnished our image as a country founded by and open to immigrants. And forget America being seen as a good friend to our allies too. Trump has pulled us out of the World Health Organization, threatened to pull us out of Nato, got into a tariff driven trade war with out allies, (before being stopped by the Supreme Court) and has even threatened to take over Greenland and Canada by force. And, don't forget that he lead us into an unpopular war with Iran, without any discussion with congress or the American public beforehand, or any attempt to bring along allies other that Israel. And that war has hurt the entire world's economy, making the US even more unpopular in other lands.
All of this has happened because the Republican congress has just let Trump get away with almost everything, and our Supreme Court has also barely stood up to him. And even when the court does, it's nothing to proud of: Trump's executive order striking down birthright citizenship, which is enshrined in the 14th amendment, was overruled recently by the Supreme Court. But it was only a 5-4 decision, meaning that a near majority of judges on the court are open to overturning what has been a bedrock right since the amendment was first passed in 1886.
Add to that the unprecedented way that Trump has made over 2 billion dollars in one year, mostly from a crypto currency company he started before being sworn in, and you can see the stain that this man has put on the presidency. While some of the damage he's done can be repaired by the next president, it will be hard to win back the good will our country has lost with our allies.
But I will end this essay on a positive note: a short distance from when I live in San Francisco is the Chinese Consulate. Often when I walk by there, I see people protesting by sitting on the sidewalk, (without blocking foot traffic) and meditating. They are practicing the religion of Falun Gong, a religious movement that began in China in the 1990's, which was formally banned by the government in 1999. That banning has lead to mass arrests of people who were just peacefully following their religious beliefs. Every time I think about how much damage Trump has done to the country and the world, I try to remind myself that at least this country doesn't lock people up just for meditating. And I also think about how around half of the people in the world today live in undemocratic countries with authoritarian rule. And I realize that the US, even with all the terrible things Trump has done, could be much worse than it is today. That may not be much comfort, but it's something!
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