Americans must choose between defending their democracy or letting Trump drag them back into dark ages Dear Email, Instead of addressing the “affordability” burdens weighing heavily on Americans, an issue he dismisses as a mere “hoax,” Trump, in a speech he gave in Pennsylvania yesterday, sought to divert attention from his disastrous economic policies and his failure to deliver on campaign promises by attacking immigrants and inciting hostility against them. Trump’s speech was not only saturated with hatred—he described several countries as “shitholes”, and has previously labeled some immigrants as “garbage,” “rapists,” and “thugs”—but it also relied on a crude racist rhetoric divorced from facts, evidence, and objectivity. At one point, Trump asked: “Why can’t we have some people from Norway, Sweden, just a few?” It seems none of Trump’s racist or cowardly advisors bothered to inform him that countries like Norway and Sweden, and Europe more broadly, suffer from aging populations and themselves need immigrants. Without immigrants, America faces the same fate. Immigrants who respect the country's laws are an asset and a source of strength for the United States, not weakness.  For decades, Trump has made racism his path to wealth—beginning with building lower- and middle-income apartment buildings in Brooklyn and Queens, then as a real estate developer in Manhattan. Since announcing his presidential candidacy ten years ago, he has relied on racist and inflammatory rhetoric against minorities as a vehicle to power. And since returning to the presidency earlier this year, Trump has turned racism and incitement among Americans into a formula for masking his failures in governance. This is a familiar tactic of authoritarian regimes in failed or failing states: diverting attention from corruption and incompetence by sowing division. Trump’s racist attacks on immigrants, particularly Somalis and Latinos at this moment, are extremely dangerous and risk inciting hate crimes against them, especially amid the climate of polarization and division gripping the United States. Evidence of this danger can be seen in the threats received by Congresswoman Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, who is a Somali immigrant. Meanwhile, the abusive practices of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) are not only inhumane but also unlawful, extending even to targeting American citizens based on appearance. In Minnesota, Somali-American citizens now feel compelled to carry proof of citizenship whenever they leave their homes. America today stands at a critical juncture that will determine the future of its professed values, democracy, and global standing. Successive administrations have often failed these values both domestically and abroad—for example, in supporting Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza, where Biden’s Democratic administration has been no different from Trump’s Republican one. Yet Trump is now steering America down an even more perilous path, reviving racist and brutal policies thought to have been buried decades ago. America once believed it had cleansed itself of such poisons, but Trump is reproducing them with crude brazenness that exposes their true nature. The choice couldn’t be clearer at this moment: either Americans collectively stand against Trump’s attempts to drag their country back into dark eras and save their democracy, or they allow him to manipulate it and redefine America in his own image, rather than upholding the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. Every democracy is fragile by nature; it can only be strong through a robust constitution, institutions, and laws—and above all, through a people who believe in it and are willing to fight to preserve it. |
