Trumpism will survive Trump
A quote from a Canadian journalist is floating around the net, sometimes paraphrased. It’s best to get the real thing. It’s by David Cochrane, host of CBC News Network’s daily “Power & Politics.”
“America isn’t the way it is because [Trump is] president. He’s president because America is the way it is.”
Three Catholic cardinals don’t address the way America is directly, but:
Three U.S. Catholic cardinals are urging the Trump administration to use a moral compass, saying U.S. military action in Venezuela, threats of acquiring Greenland and cuts in foreign aid risk bringing vast suffering instead of promoting peace.
Cardinals Blase Cupich of Chicago, Robert McElroy of Washington and Joseph Tobin of Newark, N.J., warned that without a moral vision, the current debate over Washington’s foreign policy was mired in “polarization, partisanship, and narrow economic and social interests.”
“Most of the United States and the world are adrift morally in terms of foreign policy,” McElroy told The Associated Press. “I still believe the United States has a tremendous impact upon the world.”
The statement is ironic insofar as it concerns Donald Trump, an emotionally damaged man who asks forgiveness for nothing. Miraculously, he did not turn to stone after telling The New York Times this month that the only check on his power, his only moral compass, is his own morality. In fact, he has none. Cruelty is his compass. Especially against non-white, non-Europeans. They all have targets on their backs in Trump’s second administration.
The U.S. conference of Catholic bishops in November issued a “special message” condemning the administration’s profiling and targeting of immigrants in the name of border enforcement:
We are concerned about the conditions in detention centers and the lack of access to pastoral care. We lament that some immigrants in the United States have arbitrarily lost their legal status. We are troubled by threats against the sanctity of houses of worship and the special nature of hospitals and schools. We are grieved when we meet parents who fear being detained when taking their children to school and when we try to console family members who have already been separated from their loved ones.
Cupich’s moral compass is shaped by his experiences growing up in Nebraska and serving for a decade as cardinal in Chicago. He told MS Now’s Rachel Maddow Monday night that Chicago is “the immigrant city.” The church celebrates mass there “in 26 different langauges.”
The target of the cardinals’ plea, Donald Trump, grew up in an affluent neighborhgood in Queens, fathered by a man known (and prosecuted) for his own prejudices.
America is the way it is because so many of us, like Trump, were carefully taught to hate all the people our relatives hate. Thus, Trumpism will likely survive Trump, Cochrane concludes.
One wonders if the United States will.