Constantino Brumidi
Apotheosis of Washington, U.S. Capitol rotunda.
The Progressive was the first to report on Trump aide Steven Miller's hate-filled, there-is-no-such-thing-as-a-good-Muslim website that he curated a few years ago, so my expectations were pretty low when I heard he was the chief wordsmith of last night’s State of the Union address.
For a moment, though, I was surprised. I thought Trump, with his carefully orchestrated parade of heart-tugging “please stand up” audience members, was pulling off a great speech, one of the greatest State of the Union's ever given.
Like a bloated jug of milk left to winter in a summer cabin, you could feel the pressure building inside the strangely soft-spoken Trump.
Yes, he applauded himself with a steady metronome clap-clap-clap-clap of 132 beats per minute right into the microphone (which fits exactly with "I-would-walk-five-hundred-miles" by the way). And yes, everyone should be amazed that without really passing a major legislative initiative until a month ago, he's been able to take the "carnage" Obama left him and spin that into a claim that there’s "never been a better time" to be an American. Overall, though, I was genuinely taken with the positive and unifying tone of the first third of the speech.
However, like a bloated jug of milk left to winter in a summer cabin, you could feel the pressure building inside the strangely soft-spoken Trump.
Enough Mr. Nice Guy. It was time to take the cap off and let the rotten hate of Trumpism come spewing out.
First, he laid down the law that, “In America, we know that faith and family, not government and bureaucracy, are the center of American life. The motto is ‘in God we trust.’”
If you, like most Americans, thought the United States’ founders unanimously adopted the Latin term "E Pluribus Unum"—"From Many, One"—as our motto back in 1782, listen up. There's a new sheriff in town.
Speaking of police—and while we're talking about how Americans do things “in America”— Trump also established that “we celebrate our police, our military, and our veterans as heroes who deserve our total and unwavering support.”
At least he found a good synonym for totalitarian: “unwavering support” is a much less terrifying way of putting it.
Trump then had Preston Sharp, the twelve-year-old boy who took the initiative to honor veterans’ graves with flags on Veterans Day, stand up. The President proceeded to conflate the boy's honorable act with NFL players declining to participate in the national anthem to protest the unwavering support of police officers that kill unarmed African Americans at twice the rate as unarmed whites.
“Preston’s reverence for those who have served our nation reminds us why we salute our flag,” Trump exclaimed. “Why we put our hands on our hearts for the Pledge of Allegiance, and why we proudly stand for the national anthem.”
Next up, the vitriol turned to Hispanic immigrants, dwelling on the Hispanic gang MS-13, how they recently brutally murdered two teenagers, and how they were in the United States via “glaring loopholes in our laws to enter the country as illegal unaccompanied alien minors.”
What he was saying was gin clear: Dreamers aren't like us. They're not Americans.
To those not familiar with Trump lingo, when he says “illegal unaccompanied alien minors” he's referring to his debunked assertion that when President Obama instituted DACA in 2012 for so-called Dreamers, it “helped spur” the surge of minors that crossed border in 2014.
And he once again conflated Dreamers with not only the 2014 minors, but also violent MS-13 gang members—even though less than one percent of Dreamers have ever been incarcerated, far below the rate of their native-born neighbors.
Then, the coup de grace: “My duty, and the sacred duty of every elected official in this chamber, is to defend Americans, to protect their safety, their families, their communities, and their right to the American dream.”
“Because Americans are dreamers, too.”
What he was saying was gin clear: Dreamers aren't like us. They're not Americans.
Not even the twenty-six-year-old medical student that has been here since age seven, or the twenty-five-year-old that came to the United States as a two-year-old on his mother's back and was recently one of the heroes battling the Jolly Mountain fire this past fall in Washington. Like the 1.4 million other Dreamers, the President told them, you're not Americans.
Geez. Trump really wasn't kidding when he pushed the venerable E Pluribus Unum out of the way for the 1956 theocratic motto that better fits his needs.
But, just because that's the motto Trump is bellowing, doesn't change the sentiment that Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, and Ben Franklin had when they agreed on E Pluribus Unum back in 1782.
It was also the sentiment of President Obama back in 2010 when spoke at University of Indonesia and said, "In the United States, our motto is E pluribus unum — out of many, one. Bhinneka Tunggal Ika — unity in diversity…our nations show that hundreds of millions who hold different beliefs can be united in freedom under one flag.” (That simple statement caused an uproar among tea party U.S. House members—including then-U.S. Representative Mike Pence—who demanded that Obama issue a correction stating: "By misrepresenting things as foundational as the Declaration of Independence and our national motto, you are not only doing a disservice to the people you represent you are casting aside an integral part of American society."
But Obama was right and they were wrong.
Out of many, one. That's our motto.
And we can't let Trumpism change that.