Trump's Genius of Cupidity

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,

With conquering limbs astride from land to land;

Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand

A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame

Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name

Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand

Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command

The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.

“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she

With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,

I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

--Emma Lazarus at the Statue of Liberty, Ellis Island

Of course, I shook my head and smiled ruefully when I hear Dick Durbin's recitation of Trump's expostulations, "Why do we need people from these shithole countries?" and "Do we really need more Haitians?"  and "Why can't we have more people from Norway?"
(Has anyone asked the Norwegians?)

I knew he was saying what a lot of people are thinking but most people have a filter on what they say.

Later, I started thinking about things I hadn't thought about for years, and I couldn't understand why, at first.

When I was a medical intern, fresh out of medical school, I was poor, came from what we might now think of as genteel poverty, or at best, modest middle class circumstances, but I was entering a promising apprenticeship, which I had been assured would be the next step toward the gravy train: the medical profession.

I had taken on faith a lot of stuff: for four years I had memorized meaningless things, spent countless hours at my desk studying and learning organic chemistry, comparative anatomy, calculus, physics which had about as much meaning for me as memorizing Latin poems or Greek. But I had done it and sure enough, I was rewarded by being admitted to the next phase of absurdity, medical school, where more of the same with more assurances the reward is in sight. Then internship, and more stuff to do, only more repulsive this time.

I loved that wonderful movie, "The Karate Kid" where the aspirant kid comes under the tutelage of a karate master, an old coot who makes the kid wipe and clean his wooden backyard fence, but in a very particular way, with circular arm movements. Finally, the kid rebels and screams, "I wanted to learn karate, and all you do is make me wash your fence!" Then the master shows him how everything he had done, all those circular motions with his arms are part of the circular exercises of karate moves. It was all relevant, after all!

We all kept telling each other, all the medical students, that medical school was like that: We'd understand someday how it all had actually been part of making us medical karate masters, not simply cleaning other people's fences.

It was a lie, of course. We had been used, exploited. If we had really been taught what we needed to know to practice medicine or  surgery, it would have taken half the time and we would have been better trained.

But we awakened to this in stages, and each person at different times.

One of my fellow interns finally bucked and refused. His resident told him to find some toenail cutters and to cut the toenails of a patient. This intern, George, simply refused, "No way. I'm not cutting anyone's toenails."  All the other interns looked at each other thinking, "Uh-oh, George is in trouble."  Each year along the three year training sequence, they cut about a third of the young doctors from the program, and George was insubordinate.

We all had to do stuff  we hated: My favorite was "disimpacting" constipated patients whose colons, from rectum up miles north, were packed with stool, and you had to put on a rubber glove and stick your finger up the rectum and haul out yard after yard of stool until the patient could actually have relief. 
The smell was enough to knock a buzzard off a shit wagon, as they said then.

But we each accepted these interminable, disgusting tasks. We were used. The older, more experienced doctors had done their time and were at home in Westchester.

So what does that have to do with Donald, the Slithole President Trump?

Well, he was like George, who simply said "No."  Trump is insubordinate. You will ask how can a President be insubordinate? He is at the top. But even the President is supposed to bow to certain gods--the idol of racial tolerance is right up there with patriotism, respecting the flag and honoring our valiant servicemen and veterans.

What we didn't know back when, was George had already got an ophthalmology residency in his pocket and he was back in Baltimore after a year of abuse;  he escaped and got trained as an ophthalmologist and made more money in a shorter time than any of us and he retired at age fifty four. George had said, "Stick it in your ear," and he he walked off, unscathed. 

George got indoctrinated into a certain way of thinking, just like the rest of us. He was told the exploitation was necessary to improving ourselves.  The ruling elites who ran medical schools and training told us to jump and we asked how high. We did not question enough. George was not fooled.

Now we have Mr. Trump, who was born rich. Trump never had to slog through any apprenticeship, never had to fear he'd be cut, never had to do everything he was told to do.  He could listen to prevailing authority and say, "Screw that!" He don't need no frigging system. 
And all those lowlife people living in trailer parks are watching him and they don't care if he was born on third base; all they care about is he is sticking it to the man.

In fact, there is much about immigration which should be examined.

From SHC

Most of my friends and I accept the idea of immigrants as suffering people who will work harder than the rest of us and build their families and our country and we can all congratulate ourselves about how wonderful we are for allowing them to work three jobs and die young so their kids have a better chance at "The American Dream" whatever the hell that is.

We love that poem by Emma Lazarus and we feel all noble embracing that.

Heart warming, no?

But Trump looks at the other sort of immigrant, the exception to be sure, the MS-13 gang member and he says, "Hell, no. I don't like poor people and if they are going to misbehave or if they are going to even look like that, I don't want them in my club."

He is doing what he was elected to do: He is disrupting embedded liberal belief.

Long Island

His idea of good immigration is not pulling drowning people out of a roiling sea, but inviting Miss Universe pageant nubile creatures over to his house for a party. Or getting smart Indian doctors or Ukrainian computer geeks to come live in America. Why should the Norwegian doctor have to get in back of the line when a bunch of Salvadorans have sneaked in ahead?

Ellis Island

He puts it crudely: Why do we need more Haitians? That is, why do we want to admit more poor people or Black people when we could go for more Melanias? 

But this is what more refined people are saying, in more acceptable phrases, when they talk about eliminating "chain immigration" i.e., allowing family members to come in ahead of Indian doctors who have no relatives already here. They are saying we should put our own needs and desires ahead of the needs of the suffering poor who seek   refuge here.
In fact, the idea of making reuniting families a priority is a relative new idea in American immigration thinking and policy. It dates back less than fifty years. Before that, we admitted people based on country of origin and the preferred countries of origin were, you guessed it, a lot more like Norway than Tanzania.

Now that's what I'm talking about. Good immigrant.

And the fact is, we always do weigh our own needs and desires in this formula. We could not possibly allow every person who wants to come from the Subcontinent or from China or from Central America or from a combination of all these into our country without accepting the fact that we would quadruple our population and we would likely have English speaking people in the distinct minority and Chinese would like become our lingua franca. 
We all accept we want immigration to occur in a way which costs us the least, personally. We're all okay with allowing in poor people,  as long as we don't have to think much about them or see them much, beyond clearing dishes at the restaurant, or working in the factories or the fields.

Out of sight. Out of mind.

And what really upsets all us liberals is we know that what Trump is expressing perfectly expresses what 49% of Americans actually believe. They are quietly, safely, nodding in agreement. Even some of our own liberal friends inwardly agree.

That's the rub.