I started today as I do most days, by listening to the news on the radio. It was largely the usual except for the lead story, which was President Trump calling Nigeria and other African countries "shit holes," from which we should allow less immigration in favor of countries like Norway. Note the quotation marks. As reported by some people who were at the meeting with six senators who wanted to share their plan for immigration reform, DACA in particular, that was the phrase he used and that was how he used it. Apparently, he said something pejorative about Haiti too. Of course, there was outrage from a few Republicans, and from a senator from out west whose roots include some Haitians, but it seems to have blown over just as quickly as it blew in.
But as if that weren't enough to make me fear for our country, there was an interview with a state official from Kansas who oversees the Medicaid program there. The subject was whether Kansas would request permission to require work from Medicaid recipients, as our illustrious president ordered that states could just yesterday. The official's response to the question, while rife with casuistry and bogus claims of all other kinds, was remarkable for his claim that work would give those people freedom. The thought struck a cord in me, and I immediately knew why. It's not just the absurdity that chaining a poor person to an odious, underpaid job equates to freedom in the mind of a public official with the power to affix that chain. It's not just the rejection of the notion that no one should go without healthcare for want of money. It's mainly that over the gates at Auschwitz and Dachau as well as at other concentration camps, Hitler had the phrase "Arbeit Macht Frei" emblazoned. The translation is , "Work sets you Free." To put it politely, I found that official endorsement of a slogan on which enslavement of "undesirables" in the name of ethnic purity to be a little chilling.
We have a president who insults other nations wholesale...who apparently thinks that anyone on Medicaid should work at least some minimum wage job before getting healthcare, even if the job is deplorable, and thus severely underpaid. At least one of our states officially agrees, and the fact that the idea that work makes you free never rang a bell with them seems ominous, at least to me, but in one sense, it's good that this is all coming about now. We have an election in November, and it serves the greater good for voters to have the opportunity to think about these people who don't mind sounding like Nazis, and apparently thinking like them too, before they vote for them. Those ideas aren't populism. They're elitist tyranny. What people have to realize is that it could be coming to their towns too.
As to President Trump, as if his resorting to ethnic slurs wasn't enough, the immigration deal in question was bipartisan. Just a few days ago with many witnesses including the news media who broadcasted the event on the evening news, Trump vowed that he would support any deal that was put on his desk. He said he would sign anything without reservation, even if it excluded something he wanted. Yesterday however, he said he wouldn't sign the deal propounded by six senators, three senators from each party working together. Yesterday, he apparently forgot that he had agreed to a sort of comity with his colleagues in our government from congress. Yesterday, our president vowed to disavow a commitment he had made just days earlier...again. So now, we not only have a president who wears his bigotry on his sleeve if not stamped on his forehead, we have a president who cannot be trusted to keep his promises, which the coal miners in West Virginia and the Carrier workers in Indiana already know from experience. It's not surprising that Trump had such praise for both Carrier and himself when Carrier, which got $7 million in tax rebates and other considerations to keep the plant and the jobs here rather than in Mexico. In that our president does business the same way that Carrier does, in that they are birds of a feather, why shouldn't they demonstrate their affiliation on the campaign trail. It's good for all of us. Before we vote, we should know who everybody is, despite any fulminations to the contrary. I mean, Trump can't campaign on the fact that he's a liar, can he? The "king of debt" is one thing, but the King of Liars?
Your friend,
Mike
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