What Donald Trump Gets Wrong about American Culture and the Constitution
As our nation approaches its 250th birthday, Trump is misreading America, undermining our values, and attempting to replace our freedom with his will.
Several years ago, a friend from China became a U.S. citizen. To honor that event, I asked her to take me the best Chinese restaurant she could find in Chicago before her naturalization ceremony. And I promised to take her to an American restaurant that was just as good after she took the oath of allegiance.
She found a superb restaurant. A week later, I took her back to the very same restaurant. At first, she was confused. She reminded me that I promised to take her to an American restaurant. I told her that this is an American restaurant, and it is who we are. She thought about that for a minute and then got it.
It’s a lesson Donald Trump never learned.
Donald Trump’s homage to America celebrates the values of those Americans who developed the system of chattel slavery, deployed systematic violence, forced removals, and cultural erasure upon native populations, and exploited the labor of workers from farms to trucks to factories. It is an America whose highest values are to own and control.
Our actual history, the one Trump is eager to erase from schools, libraries, websites, monuments, and memory, is one long, and mostly successful, rejection of those values.
I’m aware that accusing a President of misreading America, undermining our values, and attempting to replace our freedom with his will requires evidence. But that evidence is already in record. Don Moynihan, Heather Cox Richardson, Ahmed Baba, Chris Geidner and many others (even sometimes, me) have made the case. A year into Trump’s second term it is obvious to most Americans.
While Trump does his Triumph of the Will thing in front of a carefully cast audience, millions and millions of the rest of us will be celebrating the promise of the Declaration of Independence, whose anniversary this is. In keeping with that promise, people will come in all sizes, shapes, colors, and with all varieties of faith and political notions. We will show up as we are, not as props for a spectacle.
I don’t use the word multiculturalism to describe the idea that there are many, and different ways to be Americans, because that feels defensive — as if there’s one true American culture and it tolerates others. That’s not right. American culture itself is a fabulous multitude. (Don’t take my word for it. Read Walt Whitman.)
Trump is correct that America is protestant and white. But is also Baptist and Black. America is indigenous, and immigrant, Muslim and atheist. We come small, medium, large, and extra-large. We are every imaginable human thing, and then we invent ourselves anew. We do not need permission to celebrate all that is unique and beautiful amongst our people. And no matter how hard Trump tries to hide the amazing contributions of people he would control, we see them.
Just as Donald Trump’s 250th anniversary political rally at the White House rejects the fundamental essence of our country and rejects the mission our founders undertook to create a more perfect union where everyone is equal, free, and protected, his government undermines the foundations the framers built to achieve that mission.
From the outset, our Constitution separated powers and established the rule of law. In just one year, Trump has eroded the separation of powers and politicized the law. He has turned the powerful government he controls — the one we built — against us. In one executive order after the next, and in the acts of his party in Congress, Trump seeks to replace freedom and the rule of law with coercion and rule by power.
But Americans are up to the task of defending our mission. And when Trump is gone, we will resume the task of furthering it.
John Kennedy told us we choose to go the moon not because it is easy but because it is hard. The framers said nearly the same thing 250 years ago, but their mission was even more bold — “a republic, if you can keep it.”
Mr. Trump poses a great challenge to America. It is a challenge we are willing to accept, unwilling to ignore, and determined to win. And that is something to celebrate as we approach our 250th birthday.
As one might expect, Donald Trump thinks he’s dictator and the government is his property, so he’s busy making the 250th anniversary of the United States all about himself.
Yes, let us celebrate the America that has room for all.