The Caravan and the Craven

Democrats make health care the main issue of this election. For Trump it’s the “caravan.” Labeling it an “invasion” of criminals, “bad people,” Islamic terrorists; they’ve been literally called lepers.

These are lies. Trump has even lied that Democrats, or George Soros, are funding the caravan. Does anyone actually swallow such crap? Apparently Republicans. Blind to how cynically they’re being manipulated. It’s all to rev up fear, playing like a violin voters so insecure they see refugees as threats. It’s been Trump’s shtick from Day One when he called Mexicans rapists.

The “caravan” consists of fellow human beings. Victims of such hardships and horrors they’re on a desperately risky, pain-filled journey trying to escape them. People who have nothing, weary and hungry, sleeping on the ground, mothers and children, preyed upon at every step; that’s why they band together.

And what will America greet them with? Guns and bayonets. More soldiers than we’ve got fighting ISIS.

This is how we make America great again? Great like in 1939 when it turned away the St. Louis, a ship carrying 900 Jewish refugees, forcing them back to the Nazis who murdered them?

Give me your tired, your poor. Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.

Another Trump applause line is “law and order.” Yet he now proposes to shred the Constitution with an illegal executive order revoking its birthright citizenship clause. He claims legal scholars endorse this.* Another lie. He said no other country has birthright citizenship. Another lie; at least thirty do.

More cynical pandering to hatred for immigrants. But if being born here doesn’t confer automatic citizenship, what makes your citizenship secure?

The Fourteenth Amendment unequivocally says anyone born here is a citizen. Only a constitutional amendment can change that. It was enacted to make clear that the ex-slaves (freed by the Thirteenth) would now be citizens, with equal protection of the law. The Fifteenth Amendment gave them the vote.

The noble generosity of spirit in these amendments is breathtaking. Slaves had been the most despised of people, forced to suffer the utmost degradation. Lifting them up, and embracing them as equal fellow citizens, America showed its supreme humanity.

Trump and Republicans show supreme inhumanity. They call themselves Christians. Where did Christ say poor suffering refugees are to be repulsed with guns? These Republicans, professing to love the Ten Commandments, violate the first of them by worshipping a false god, immolating on his altar every Christian principle. For their great sin they deserve the fires of Hell.

I lift my bayonet beside the golden door.

* When Paul Ryan disagreed, Trump slammed him, saying he doesn’t know what he’s talking about. Ryan deserves whatever he gets from Trump.

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