By Sid Schwab / Herald Columnist
Independence Day. May it trigger a desire for freedom from the cult of MAGA for enough people to restore America’s greatness. May those waving Old Glory do so while shedding the chains of Trumpism, weighing them down, unrecognized. May they join in furthering the day when America regains its defining goodness.
Pride, according to Christian teaching, is a deadly sin. I’ve never been proud of things over which I’ve had no control. I’m tall. It has given me undeserved advantages, for which I’m not proud. I learned to be a surgeon; I think I did a good job of it. Should I be proud of not being bad? I’m not. No more than having never robbed a bank.
I’m glad I was born in the USA, but, having had no part in it, it’s not a source of pride. Nevertheless, for all its faults, I admire how, as it evolved, America hasn’t denied them, but has worked, if imperfectly, to correct them. Until about 10 years ago, I believed our democratic republic was the most moral, ethical, generous, and productive form of government there’s ever been. I’d bet our founders had pride in their product. Then again, most of them were deists, not Christians.
Because it all happened without me, I’ve never felt proud to be American. If I ever had, though, I couldn’t now. For the same reasoning as pridefulness, I shouldn’t feel shame on this day of celebration, either. I didn’t create, nor would I ever join MAGA. So, not ashamed. Deeply disappointed. Sad. Embarrassed. And very, very worried.
It’s not just the unkindness into which America has descended, as if on a down escalator, at the hands of Trump and his punitory cabineteers. It’s that so many Americans — a people I’ve always considered generous, welcoming, and mostly moral — are not only fine with what we’ve become: they’re proud of it.
At every Trump rally, “Proud To Be An American” is played while the congregants sing along. Their pride must be real, but for what? Clearly not for America’s eventual commitment to civil rights for all; they’re glad to see it disappear at the hands of ideologically blinded court justices. That, except for Native Americans, we’re a nation of immigrants is obviously not a source of pride. Nor, incredibly, are our world-leading institutions of higher education, or the advances in science, technology and medicine for which their American creators, until Trumpism, were admired gratefully, worldwide. MAGA loves his attacks on them and his attempts to dictate what’s taught.
Are they proud to see immigrants, following the rules, outside courtrooms awaiting hearings for citizenship, snatched by masked, unidentifiable men, sent to prisons abroad? Does it shake their belief that immigrants are “moochers” when it’s workplaces being raided? Does pride burst forth, knowing children are starving and, according to a study in The Lancet (tinyurl.com/lancet4u), millions of people will die as a result of ending USAID, America’s world-leading beneficence? Not in me.
Did our nation’s lifesaving generosity mortify them? What fireworks are best to celebrate Trump’s undisguised corruption? (New York Times, no paywall: tinyurl.com/grifter4u) Are they singing their pride for handing world leadership in research and development to China? Or for America’s role in the resurrection of measles? Do they agree with J.D. Vance that millions of Americans losing health insurance under Trump’s just-passed Big Bogus Bill is “immaterial”? (Daily Kos: tinyurl.com/2Bimmaterial)
Maybe not. Endungeoned within news sources that ignore those horrors, they probably haven’t heard those things. So they require no proof the election was stolen, that Democrats want to change their children’s gender, that they plan to replace caucasians with illegal, brown voters. They accept that migrants who fled danger to come here decades ago and have made a better life for their families deserve unadjudicated deportation.
Perhaps not all set out to believe Trumpism’s falsehoods, but they chose news sources that provide nothing else. Telling them diversity in a population destroys it, equity of opportunity diminishes theirs, inclusion of people not like them means exclusion of them. So they find nothing ominous in Trump’s banning of words and books that refer, even obliquely, to those values.
MAGA pride must include seeing reporters who told the truth about Trump’s paltry bombing of Iraq accused by Trump and his belly-baring Cabinet of “demoralizing” the troops who carried out the raid. Like all Trumpish phantasms, they believe it.
On Independence Day, they’ll profess pride in America, founded on free speech and the right of assembly, happy that, under Trump, those rights no longer apply to liberals; glad that institutions designed to rebuff authoritarianism are caving to his autocratic threats. Who can be surprised, though? Their movement was founded on Kenyan birth and “Lock her up.”
Surely, many under the spell of MAGA retain reachable decency. What will it take to bring them back? They could start by watching this: (Adam Kinzinger: tinyurl.com/2freeyourself). And, to understand the appeal, hear this: (Instagram: tinyurl.com/2cult4u).
On July Fourth, I’d be proud of those who break free.
Email Sid Schwab at columnsid@gmail.com.
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