As a teacher in the Buckle of the Bible Belt who happened to be a Gay man, I was once approached by some teachers wearing gold crosses on little, delicate gold chains like people wear garlic when approaching a vampire and told I did not belong where I was and needed to go away because this was America and l had no right to be here. This lack of belonging was belied by my having been born in Boston, the son of two U.S. citizens.
A native American in Oklahoma was protesting at the dedication of a statue commemorating the Land Run having been erected on land once the home of his Native American Tribe in whose honor the settlers had named the town after they took the land. He was told by someone in attendance to stop being so negative and just go home. The irony, as white hot as it was, went right by the creator of it.
Recently, over the Labor Day weekend, a video went viral of a woman in Huntington Beach CA going ballistic over a Pride flag that was hanging among many others at a motel by the beach. She insisted that as this was America, “these people” had no right to have that flag flown or even be here. Only flags representing Americans should fly.
One might feel comforted in assuming that these were individuals of unknown education and limited and provincial backgrounds, so, as foolish as their attitude, actions, and words might be, there is a tendency to cut them some slack as they may be uninformed enough to be victims of their own ignorance, chosen by or forced on them.
But what if someone with a demonstrably high level of education and who by profession must be informed makes a similar statement as a member of Congress by stating clearly that anyone who does not think as he and his political supporters do, who have their own thoughts on issues is not American, forgiveness for kindness’s sake is totally out of place and undeserved.
Ron Johnson after claiming the coming election was about freedom complained,
“The press is so unbelievably powerful and the left has infiltrated every institution of this country.”
Apparently, for him, anyone on the left who may have different opinions than he, does not have a right to participate in democracy, and their attempts to participate in it is “infiltrating” American life.
“They started with the college and university system. So they control college of education and journalism and law. And they’ve infiltrated every agency. They’ve infiltrated religions. They’ve infiltrated everything and now we’re seeing the results of that. That’s why our nation is literally on a precipice. We’re at a hinge point in history.”
And continuing his accusation that people with differing ideas are invading areas that are not for them, he continued,
“We have to win this election and we have to win many more because we’ve got to push them out of these institutions and return some normalcy, return the values that made this country great.”
He and most likely his supporters seem of the belief that people on the Left (non-MAGAs) should not be allowed to go to church, college, be employed by those institutions, or even the local, state, or federal government, or vote in elections because their participation, being as it is an “infiltration”, is some form of unpatriotic invasion.
So much for “indivisible under God with liberty and justice for all.”
Of course, one must remember that this is the guy who tweeted,
“What does July 4th mean to me? Freedom,”
from Moscow on the Fourth of July in 2018, the day after the Senate Intelligence Committee affirmed that U.S. Intelligence had concluded that Russia had interfered in the election to help Donald Trump.
The GOP’s big tent is only for those who can get to it, and the wall surrounding it makes that difficult.
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