This isn’t a rant against either Trump or the Republicans. This is a cautionary tale for Democrats, liberals, and progressives who can’t stand Trump, his sycophantic cronies, the spineless Republicans that are too timid to stand up to him, and his deplorable know-nothing base.
On re-reading my previous diary, Partisan Politics Is NOT the Problem—The Problem is the Republican Party; I noticed I emphasized a quote by then Vice-President Richard Nixon: “You must not be afraid of ideas… After all, you don’t know everything!” I found Nixon’s reprimand of the Premier of the Soviet Union, Nikita Khrushchev intriguingly apropos. However, I overlooked the truth in Khrushchev’s rejoinder: “You don’t know anything about communism—except fear of it!”
Khrushchev was right; sixty years ago the only thing all Americans knew about Communism was their fear of it. Fear so profound, that the Red Scare propelled the opportunistic tyrant, Senator Joseph McCarthy, to a position of such power that even the popular president, Ike Eisenhower, didn’t dare take him on. McCarthy’s witch hunts rooting out alleged Communists resulted in little more that exploiting fear to destroy thousands of innocent people’s lives and careers—all in the name of stopping Communism.
America is guilty of worse sins that those of McCarthyism; slavery and the genocide of Native American Indians comes to mind. Nevertheless, McCarthyism, which was so thoroughly un-American, the real shock is that neither the Republicans nor Democrats dared to try to stop it—as anyone who dared to try was himself branded as being a Communist.
So everyone during the 50’s was anti-Communist. Both Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan rose to political power riding the anti-Communism bandwagon. The difference was Reagan was a true believer; he really believed that Communists had infiltrated Hollywood, and as head of the Screen Actors’ Guild, tried to root them out. Nixon was smart enough to know there was no domestic Communist threat, but shrewd and evil enough to exploit those fears by claiming his political opponents were soft on Communism in order to propel himself into political power.
One day in the 60’s I saw a book in the public library with a title so intriguing I never forgot it: The Only Thing Worse than Communism, is Anti-Communism. In other words, as bad as Communism could be, what needed to be feared was fear of Communism. The fervor against Communism was so great that it led our country into the Viet Nam War, as both Democrats and Republicans vied to prove it was their party that was most anti-Communist.
Ironically, what was so terribly wrong in Communist countries wasn’t communism; it was ruthless tyranny. The closest thing that comes to true Communism that I know of is living in Israel on a communal Kibbutz.
Today Russia is the antithesis of Communism. It is hard to imagine a supposed ideal of equal distribution of wealth, when Putin and a few of his supporting oligarchs own virtually all of the country. Even China, which tried to foster Communism, soon discovered Capitalism works better because it creates more wealth. Are things equal there? Hell no. Underpaid workers who cite Marx’s call for workers to unite, face harsh repercussions. Last time I checked China was a totalitarian regime where people lack basic freedoms.
Today it seems oddly passé to even bring up Communism. Politicians soon had to find a new bugaboo to scare voters into voting for them. Even as Nixon was opening up diplomatic relations with Communist China, he was opening a new Pandora’s Box to scare Americans to vote for him and other Republicans: Drugs.
The War on Drugs is and was a colossal failure. Yet for decades, Republicans and Democrats alike, competed to convince voters that their party was more anti-drug than the other. True, Nixon and Reagan both stoked fears launching their own War on Drugs; telling voters only they could protect their children from this deadly scourge—by enacting drug laws so Draconian one could get more time for dealing drugs than for murder. But what did the Democrats do in response? Nothing but parrot the Republican talking points and claim they were just as tough on drugs as their political opponents.
Of course, all his is recent history. Just as the futile War on Drugs replace the Crusade against Communism, thanks to the egomaniac who currently occupies the White House, we have a new threat to fear: Immigration.
Immigration is the new Communism. Instead of using common sense and saying we need to eliminate vast quantities of deadly weapons of mass destruction, one Republican Senator recently suggested the problem was illegal immigrants crossing the border to kill helpless Americans.
Of course, Democrats rightly say that Trump’s Wall is no solution to the problem. But the Democrats are starting to perpetuate the new myth that Trump’s Wall is simply a bad approach to solving a serious problem: immigration. In other words, a wall is no way to protect our borders, but by golly, who dares say we really don’t need to protect our borders?
I will. I say we really don’t need to protect our borders. Borders do not keep out terrorists. Borders do not keep out drugs. Borders do not keep out guns. Borders do not keep out diseases. All of the above are already here. Building a wall to keep them out is like closing your doors and windows thinking it will keep air out of your house. Protect our borders from what?
The answer is protect our borders from immigrants.
Immigration is not a problem. It is a solution. Maybe if we stopped immigration 527 years ago, when European diseases wiped out more Native Americans than guns, protecting borders from immigrants was a good idea. But it galls me that so many in America think it’s wonderful that their ancestors immigrated to America, but are now afraid to death of new immigrants.
We should thank God we live in a country where people want to move to; rather than live in a country people want to get out of. Throughout history people have moved from one country to another searching for a better life. I don’t know enough of world history to know if this is true for all people, but I know enough of the history of the Jewish people to know that those countries and empires that welcomed Jews thrived, and those countries that persecuted, killed, or expelled Jews declined. The Moorish empire of the Saracens welcomed Jews. Thus, the Middle East was a haven of learning and commerce when Europe was still stuck in the Dark Ages of ignorance and squalor. After the Christians conquered Spain and took it from the Moors, they tried to exterminate the Jews who were still living there. The Spanish Inquisitions was one of the darkest pages in World History. Even worse was the Holocaust of Nazi Germany where Hitler exterminated six million Jews. The Jews originally were in Germany because at one time Germany was one of the most enlightened and progressive countries in Europe.
Now some historical scholars claim that it was the presence of Jews that made these countries thrive. As a Jewish person I think such claims are unfounded. What made these countries thrive, including our own, was a mostly open-minded attitude about immigration.
Immigration made our country thrive. Shiploads of Irish landed on the eastern seaboard as there was no way to protect the border. Although at the time anti-Irish immigration ran rampant, no one today doubts that the Irish contributed greatly to our country. In the 1920’s laws were passed trying to restrict immigration from people from Southern and Eastern Europe. One could have argued then that the Italians brought organized crime, but today no one regrets Italians coming to America.
Now I am aware that Trump specifically wants to prevent brown immigrants from coming across the southern border. In other words, keep out the Mexicans and other Hispanics from Central and South America. To me this seems ironic. If the United States didn’t want Hispanic people in our country, why did we fight a war with Mexico to acquire the lands the Hispanic people had settled?
Every culture has something positive to contribute. What makes America really great (It’s not Trump!) is that America has incorporated the best features of cultures from around the world through immigration. Meanwhile Russia faces a crisis of a shrinking population. No wonder; people who live there, want to get out; and anyone not living there doesn’t want to get in.
So the next time someone, even a Democrat says, “Of course, we need to protect our borders?” Just ask them, “From what?”