Immigrants are our great strength, not a source of weakness

In a response to a comment challenging an answer on Quora, I wrote the following comment.

My answer began with the words, “There is no DACA problem.” Apparently, you didn’t get the point, which is that the entire Trumpist critique of our system of immigration is flat-out wrong. If there is no problem, then I don’t need to spell out regulations to fix it.

Trump’s plan makes basic assumptions that are false. Your comment repeats those assumptions:

“So now we must secure the [border].”

This conclusion ignores the fact that no terrorists have come across the Mexican border since Pancho Villa did it in 1916. At that time, the US army easily repulsed the invasion forced and posted 100,000 soldiers to protect the border from further incursions. Given the current increased mobility of US military units and technical improvements for discovering fleeing adversaries, it would seem we have plenty of resources already available to protect our southern border.

Battle of Columbus (1916) - Wikipedia

Trumpists are acting as though Mexico had already declared war on the US, but this is not true. Our relations with Mexico had been completely peaceful and cooperative during the previous 100 years. Trump has antagonized the Mexican government and American citizens of Mexican heritage, thereby worsening relations with Mexico to build support for his southern border wall.
Even if we were at war with Mexico, building a wall along our Southern border would be a symbolic gesture at best. Walls were last an effective military measure during the 100 Years War.

How Castles Work

Trumpists apparently admire walls and believe that they have been effective at repelling invaders or keeping neighboring nations from entering a country illegally. They look at the Great Wall of China and believe that it served the purpose of repelling invaders, but it did not. The Mongol armies, for example, invaded China in 1276 and subdued the entire country, having passed through the area supposedly protected by the Great Wall.

Mongol conquest of China - Wikipedia

Trumpists don’t seem to care about actual facts. The 9/11 attackers were not Mexicans, nor did they attack over the Southern Border. Fifteen of the 19 terrorists were Saudi Arabians and the rest came from countries in the Middle East. None had entered the country by crossing the Mexican border. So the $20 billion wall Trumpists are proposing would have done absolutely nothing to prevent the 9/11 hijackings.

How the Terrorists Get In

Trumpists believe they can control terrorists by reducing immigration. But to do so would destroy what has always been a source of strength for the US. Furthermore, they believe that Muslims have committed most acts of terror in the US, but that is not even remotely true.

In Opinion: Terrorists do not come from the seven countries named in Trump’s Muslim ban order

Therefore, I do not support any of Trump’s proposals to exclude immigrants on the basis of race, religion, or country of national origin, primarily because none of these proposals address the actual causes of terrorism or the people who commit these acts. Trumpists’ rationale for these beliefs are based in large part on a flawed list of terrorists released by Attorney General Jeff Sessions.

We have got to stop basing foreign policy decisions on blind prejudice and faulty data. We must start trusting immigrants to do what immigrants have always done, become good citizens and improve the nation in every way imaginable.

Trump's new order

Trump tries to squirm away from another attack, or rather series of attacks. The focus of these attacks seems to be serious investigations into the Russian interference in the election. Trump is calling for an investigation of the Democrats, because they wire-tapped Trump tower. He apparently got the idea after reading an article in Breitbart that accuses Obama of trying to sabotage Trump’s election.

He still doesn’t understand where the attacks are coming from. He understands they are getting ever closer to the truth, which is that Trump himself was at the center of the Russian conspiracy to defeat Clinton. It has been admitted that Flynn and Jared Kushner met with the Soviet ambassador in Trump tower, but only for a brief, courtesy call.

Unfortunately for this lie to cover up the truth, reporters had the lobby of Trump tower staked out at all times, so the ambassador would have had to enter through a back entrance. So this meeting between top Trumpists just before the election was not a courtesy call, but a negotiation to decide what Trump would do in exchange for Russian sabotage of the democratic candidate.

By now we all know, or should know, at least a part of what Trump promised in exchange for Russian support:

• An end to EPA interference in the fossil fuel industry. This is important since the rest of the world has agreed to reduce their dependence on Russian oil.
• An agreement that Russian steel would be used to build American pipelines. Trump signed an order today that enforces just that.
• Doubtless other things we haven’t found out about yet.

Trump’s biggest mistake has been to assume that once he controlled the presidency and the congress, no one would be left to oppose his will. He overlooked the fact that people in the intelligence community, spies if you will, would act to preserve American democracy. And they have been acting by releasing, bit by bit, every piece of the espionage puzzle that makes it perfectly clear what the Russians have been up to, and that every member of the Trump White House was part of the conspiracy, up to and including Trump himself.

Right now, Flynn is gone. Sessions is still Attorney General, but it is not known how long he can last after lying to Congress. Lying to Congress is perjury and is punishable by 5 years in prison. It’s not even barely conceivable that a man can hold the highest legal office in the US after he lies to Congress to conceal his involvement in a conspiracy to take over the government with the help of a foreign government. That is what is called a coup and can’t be tolerated in a Democracy.

Republicans had to resort to a coup to take over the government because they realized they could not win a fair election. So they sold out their country for wealth and power.

What happens now? The Constitution did not foresee this vast a conspiracy. The Framers always assumed that American property-owners were honorable men and would never desert to an enemy en masse, as they have obviously done. If the word “honorable” implies “honest”, it is becoming clear there is not a single honorable man in the Republican Party.

What can be done to rectify the situation?

I suggest the Congress should appoint ex-President Obama to take over the government until a new election can be run. In the meantime, he can begin to undo the terrible damage the Trumpists have inflicted on the government and the country.

The USA is now in extremis. We must act before it is too late.

The Problem of Trump

Donald Trump is functionally illiterate, and certainly lacks sufficient literacy standards for the office. Time and again he indicates that he is ignorant of important foreign policy documents, like the START treaty with Russia, limiting strategic nuclear weapons. Trump hadn’t heard about the treaty but told Putin he thought it was a bad idea. The START treaty, like many other issues, was debated in depth by people who cared about the proliferation of nuclear weapons and had good reasons for wanting to control them.

Trump had no idea what they were talking about. He just wanted to kill the treaty because Obama had negotiated it. The major reason for the treaty is to limit the possibility of nuclear war. Trump has no idea why that is important to do. He was apparently sleeping in a cave during the nuclear crises of the 1950s and 1960s, doesn’t know why the Cuban Missile Crisis happened, and is even ignorant of why there was a thing called the Cold War, because he is a strong admirer of Vladimir Putin and the Soviet System that he represents.

The USA is founded on simple principles that have been admired and copied all over the world for more than 200 years:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed (US Declaration of Independence, 1776.)

Trump does not understand how important these rights are, or how vital they have been in creating a world where human rights are respected, where women and children and those who are physically weaker than others can still expect to be treated fairly and live happy, fulfilled lives. He doesn’t understand it because he didn’t read about it in school or because he wasn’t paying attention. Certainly he had the opportunity to know these things.

Trump is like someone who was born yesterday. He has no clear vision of why the world is like it is or how men and women of good will have been trying to improve it since the Age of Enlightenment. He has been born into a world that is free and well-regulated by enlightened governments. He imagines that freedom has always existed apart from the governments in which it thrives. He believes so many false things that it would take many volumes to explain them all.

The question is, will Trump’s ignorance destroy the civilization that has been so carefully built by wise and industrious men and women? Just now, the answer to that question is open to doubt. So you see, it is absolutely essential that all of us who know the truth or even a small part of it should shout it from the mountaintops so that even Trump and his fellow oligarchs can hear it. As Martin Luther King said,

We must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools.

Recently, Trump protested because a reporter said that Martin Luther King’s portrait had vanished from the Oval Office in the White House. Trump values that portrait, he says. Although he may value the portrait, he does not value what the portrait represents. King’s portrait remains in the White House but his ideas and his spirit have been carefully erased from government web pages.

Trump and his kind may succeed in erasing the words from the walls, but they will never succeed in erasing them from the hearts of men and women everywhere.