Welcome to the world of “Captain Chaos and the Bomb Chucker.”
Back between the election and his inauguration, the Trumpistas liked to say the reason we liberal losers failed to see his win was because we took candidate Donald Trump literally, but not seriously; while they, in all their know-nothingness, took him seriously, but not literally.
Well, as with the popular vote, looks like the liberals win again. President Trump is moving to act on his entire agenda as he literally laid it out during his campaign. And in doing so he is laying bare some deep truths about the United States.
His ban on Muslim immigration is the best of a hatful of mistakes and missteps Captain Chaos and Bomb Chucker Steve Bannon have unveiled in their first few weeks in office. And in many ways, they are pulling back the veil on America’s long-held delusion that we are the land of the free and the home of the brave, when as often as not we have been the land of the intolerant and the home of white supremacy.
This can only be to the good as the fog-shrouded myth of “American Exceptionalism” has only kept us from honestly facing our past so that we can build an honest future. And this delusion that we built a shining city on a hill on the backs of slaves and hip-deep in Indian blood can afflict liberals as much as conservatives.
The Gazette’s own response to the Muslim immigration ban was typical of many such good-hearted but fuzzy-minded liberal reactions. On Jan. 31, the editorial page was dominated by a drawing of Lady Liberty and the famous, even infamous, “Give me your tired, your poor…” credo, which like many of America’s myths, is a great idea poorly implemented and often despised by many Americans, and more often admired by foreigners.
Lest we forget, America has had a fairly wretched record of taking in refugees prior to Trump. Our response to tens of thousands of Central American children rushing our border a few years ago was the latest new low. We even failed as a nation to bring in as immigrants the many thousands of Iraqis and Afghanis who served our troops as interpreters.
Our suspicion and loathing of immigrants began almost at the moment of conception when the Puritans landed on Plymouth Rock. They were suspicious of and loathed the non-Puritan immigrants who came on the Mayflower with them. They were such sad sacks they could not even fill the ship with their own zealous compatriots, and literally had not struck landfall before they began trying to enforce a rigorous vetting of their fellow colonialists.
Jump ahead to 1940 and even the saintly Franklin Delano Roosevelt closed our borders to desperate Jews fleeing certain death in Nazi Germany. Not only did FDR not increase the quota for Jews, he would not even allow the United States to fulfill the “Jewish quota” already established. You could probably today still find, on some distant melting glacier, the remnants of ashes from tens of thousands of Jews gassed and incinerated because the land of the free and the home of the brave refused to overcome its fears of being overrun by Jewish foreigners who were being slaughtered at home.
So, while Trump’s executive order “temporarily” banning Muslim immigrants might be unlawful or even unconstitutional (though probably not, on both counts), it is certainly not “un-American.” Barack Obama can hardly crow over his.
There will be much outrage over Trump’s future outrages, but let us not pretend he is inventing the “Ugly American” persona.
Rather it is the latest low point in a long series of low points when Americans and their elected officials have given in to the lesser angels of their nature and betrayed the ideals on which the country was founded. But then again, so did the very men who founded the country on those ideals.
Indeed, the only people who have consistently maintained the lofty ideals of our country – that all people are created equal – were only ever the despised and persecuted dissidents and radicals who refused to bend to conventions. The “nasty women,” “uppity Negroes,” “defiant Indians,” “elitist abolitionists” and “commie Jews” have only ever been the Americans pushing our mule-like nation towards the only promise we must keep: E Pluribus Unum.
Now, enter Captain Chaos and the Bomb Chucker. The great service they may yet do this country is to strip back the façade of decency that the great changes of the 1960s forced on our politics, but not conscience. The right-wing had learned to alter is political language, but not its political agenda. Not even the most stringent Tea Partier would dare use the word “n—–,” but they still conspire to strip African-Americans not of the right to vote, but the ability to do so. Just as Jim Crow did.
Bomb Chucker wants to reverse that. He is a white supremacist at heart, but also a revolutionary. When liberals see an outrage – a thousand State Department officials sign a dissent excoriating the Muslim ban, and Trump’s press spokesman tells them to quit if they don’t like it – I think Bannon means to actually do that. To purge the government of, not of liberals per se, but of career employees who are loyal to the post-World War II order this country helped to establish and maintain.
Bannon means to implement a revolution through executive order, and whether he is the tail wagging the dog, or just the master’s snarling cur, we could very well be approaching a rupture in civil society not seen in 60 years.
Bannon wants to pick that fight, and we are going to have to fight it. And that could be a good thing. But very dangerous too. For while right is on our side, a fight is often won by those most willing to get bloodied.
The Democratic Party has not scrapped in a long time. So let’s not look to them. Let’s look to the street. Black Lives Matter, the Pink Hats, the people who flooded the airports. There are plenty who will fight Captain Chaos and Bomb Chucker in the courts and Congress. Our leadership for the fight on the streets has yet to arise. But arise they will.
Meanwhile, those Trump voters will learn that Trump was seriously literal when he promised every word he spoke on the campaign trail. The question is: will they admit they wanted that to be true, or abandon their American Mussolini.
Joe Gannon, of Northampton, is a novelist and teacher who writes a montly column. He can be reached at jgannonoped@gmail.com.