A significant portion of what made President Trump contemptible for so many Republicans in 2015 and 2016 wasn’t just his garishness or clear disdain for constitutional conservatism. It was his very misunderstanding of what makes America great. Trump’s answers to the question always relied on outcomes, like our wealth and our power, not our founding principles and the promise of opportunity.
Most disturbingly for me was his Europeanized approach to tribal politics.
While Trump’s opposition to immigration has softened somewhat as he’s actually been forced to govern, his early campaign rhetoric was indistinguishable from that of the Front National in France. While many in the French far-right simply spout blatant racism, many others point out a legitimate issue that’s overcome all of Europe: assimilation.
I lived in Paris during the Charlie Hebdo massacre, after which Trump formed his presidential exploratory committee. At the time, critics excoriated Fox News for their coverage of immigrant-dominated “no-go zones” in France and the U.K. While Fox’s handling of the matter included some specific factual errors — their map of no-go zones in Paris was actually just pulled from a map of income disparities — what critics failed to acknowledge was that portions of the Ile-de-France region were becoming increasingly unsafe and divorced from French culture, law, and order. Even the Independent and the Guardian later did investigations into regions like Sevran and La Chapelle, which have become increasing dominated by immigrant men and where women have become invisible.
France, the Front National may argue, is for the French. Since May 1968, the country has slowly severed its ties to its republican values. A nation where politics is dictated by citizens’ immutable characteristics rather than principles is one increasingly difficult to assimilate in.
The United States was founded on ideas not native to any color or creed. Anyone can come to embrace and embody the values of liberty, self-reliance, justice, and equal rights, regardless of origin. In fact, it’s the very people who come to this country knowing that it doesn’t promise equality of outcome but a guarantee of equality of opportunity, those who take the original American risk to bet on themselves rather than on an infantilizing government to become the best versions of themselves, who make America great.
At least, that’s what I think. Democrats have made it abundantly clear this week that they differ.
As Democrats scrambled to defend Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., for her relentless and unrepentant anti-Semitism, a few settled on a truly horrific defense: that she’s an immigrant and that’s all you can expect from her.
“Ilhan Omar is a refugee from Somalia. She comes from a different culture. She has things to learn,” said Rep. Jan Schakowsky, D-Ill., of Omar, an almost 40 year-old sitting United States Congresswoman and mother. Omar has been in this country longer than I’ve been alive.
We’ve seen this talking point repeated not just by any old members of the House, but by Speaker Pelosi herself.
“I do not believe that she understood the full weight of the words,” Pelosi said of Omar. “I feel confident that her words were not based on any anti-Semitic attitude.”
Is Omar a member of the national legislative body, or a dumb little refugee who couldn’t possibly know any better? I happen to think that the latter is an evil, anti-American, and racist description reflecting the bigotry of low expectations. Democrats seem fine bringing that view into the mainstream.
We’re increasingly entertaining French-style approaches to both politics and now our treatment of immigrants. Paris and its surrounding areas have become so saddeningly segregated, not just because of the rapid pace of immigration influxes into the country, but because the locals have come to expect so little of immigrants. A culture gradually devoid of principle doesn’t offer its newcomers much to learn and employ to assimilate into. The tale of two cities devolving in France and across great portions of Europe is a feature, not a bug, of countries regressing from a common culture of shared ideological principles.
Just like every other American, immigrants should continue to be expected to take full advantage of the promise of opportunity, not gifted a promise of outcome. And just like every other American, immigrants should be expected to embrace the liberal values that make this country great while still celebrating a diversity of culture and religion.
I disagreed with Donald Trump in 2016 because I know that America is not France, and I know that immigrants are integral to, not incompatible with, the greatest nation on Earth. The question is why Democrats are now taking the same position, that immigrants cannot be fully American.
