Amen! ..."the most important things — the things that last and count — are not political or social but personal and human"

Inspirational echo opinion by Michael Gerson, published in The Washington Post.  Thank you Mr. Gerson. 

(Can somebody, anybody, a literate person, please read this inspirational essay to #DonaldTrump?)

One of the stranger elements of the strange Nativity narrative is the way an angel addresses Mary: “You who are highly favored.” As a teen mother, pregnant before marriage and destined to give birth among barn animals, she might have been forgiven for regarding this as angelic sarcasm. Fast forward three decades, and the most favored one will see her son executed among thieves before a jeering crowd.

Michelle Kondrich for The Washington Post

The whole Christmas story is pregnant with enigma and violated expectations. The Creator pulls on a garment of blood and bone. Almighty God is somehow present in a fragile newborn. The deliverer of humankind is delivered, slimy with vernix, in a place smelling of dung. If God can come here, amid the shame and straw, he can come anywhere. If God came here, he has come everywhere.

As we pull back from these events, an odd violation of perspective kicks in. The largest figures of the time — King Herod, Emperor Tiberius — grow smaller. The smaller figures — Mary, Joseph and some random shepherds — loom large. The smallest, most helpless figure blots out sun and moon and fills the whole sky with song: “Glory to God in the highest. Peace on Earth. Good will toward men.”

Many in first-century Palestine — as in every time since — were looking for political deliverance. They had every right to resent the brutal rule of Rome and its proxies. But the Christmas story overturns that expectation. It asserts that the most important things — the things that last and count — are not political or social but personal and human. Instead of influence based on coercion, the birth of Jesus points to a power found in vulnerability, service and humility. Humankind is offered not a new way of organizing society but a new way of being human, marked by compassion, purpose, dignity and kindness.

Imagine if Jesus had been a political revolutionary. Even if he had miraculously succeeded in humbling Rome, he would be a historical footnote — someone on par with Judah Maccabee. 

Precisely because Christ’s kingdom is not of this world, it was not limited to his time. Those who politicize religion are also miniaturizing it. Their faith is as fresh and relevant as last week’s newspaper.

Imagine if Jesus had been a political revolutionary. Even if he had miraculously succeeded in humbling Rome, he would be a historical footnote — someone on par with Judah Maccabee. Precisely because Christ’s kingdom is not of this world, it was not limited to his time. Those who politicize religion are also miniaturizing it. Their faith is as fresh and relevant as last week’s newspaper.

None of this is to dismiss the importance of politics. We are still working out the massive social implications of honoring God’s image in every life. But, in the Nativity story, political figures only appear as tax collectors and murderers. At the center of history lies a domestic drama. The universe held its breath as a baby drew his first. God arrived, not as a conqueror, but as a child in a stable. A teacher on a hillside. A man nailed to a cross. And his achievement — bringing God’s presence to humankind — makes every victory achieved by force look trifling in comparison.

If the Nativity story is true, God is not merely a philosophic or theological postulate. In the scriptures, Jesus is given the name Emmanuel, which is Hebrew for “God with us.” 

In fact, Jesus entered the bowels of human existence for the sake of every human soul. The implications are remarkable. It means there are no insignificant or pointless lives. It means that the events and choices of an average day can carry eternal significance. It means that a journey of meaning and purpose — a life of courage and generosity — can begin from whatever desolate place we find ourselves.

This emphasis on the personal — this glorification of the human — has sometimes been captured in art. Consider the luminous domestic spaces of Vermeer. A milkmaid, a lacemaker or a geographer shines with dignity and grace. A girl with a pearl earring and limpid eyes is as radiant as a Madonna.

Or consider James Wright’s brief poem “Trouble,” dealing with a young woman named Roberta who is pregnant out of wedlock. She is taunted on the street by a boy, Crum Anderson, who says she looks like she has swallowed a watermelon. The poem continues:

Fat? 

Willow and lonesome Roberta, 

running

Alone down Pearl Street in the rain the last time
I ever saw her, smiling a smile
Crum Anderson will never know,
Wondering at her body.
Sixteen years, and

All that time she thought she was nothing
But skin and bones.

None of us — no matter what (the evil)...Crum Anderson says — is merely skin and bones. We are skin and bones and the life of God within us. Even lives that feel relentlessly ordinary or hopelessly broken are vessels of divine purpose. We are embraced, elevated and dignified by God’s astounding humility.

This should be a source of hope. I am not speaking here of optimism, which is more like a genetic gift than the foundation of a life. 

Some of us, in contrast, have the genetic affliction of depression, which can bathe life’s wonders in dirty dishwater, making our days appear gray and two-dimensional. Depression tries to convince us that hope itself is a fiction. Sometimes the only comfort lies in knowing your mind is a vicious liar and in managing to endure another day.

But when we are thinking clearly, most of us can recall glimpses of purpose, beauty and glory in our lives. In the overwhelming calm and joy of holding our child close. In the majesty and marvelous internal order of nature. In art or music that touches our deepest being. In the undeserved, sacrificial love of a friend. And maybe, if we are silent and open, in the sense that a benign God is speaking to us in the seemingly random events of our lives.

These are not logical proofs; they are signposts pointing in the direction of grace. And they culminate the defiant hope of Christmas: God is for us. God is in us. God is with us.

In enforced isolation and loneliness, God is with us. In chronic pain and degenerative disease, God is with us. In a shattered relationship or a cancer diagnosis, God is with us. In an intensive care unit or a mental ward, God is with us. In life and in death, God will not leave us or forsake us.

It is possible, of course, that none of this true. Such Christmas hope may well be a pleasing myth or projection of our own desires. If we had been there on the night in question, walking the Judean hills, would we have seen and heard the angels? I have no idea. But I do know that the civilization I inhabit is unimaginable without the birth of the Christ child. I know that billions in the last two millennia have claimed communion with Him. And I have faith that this extraordinary person, who knew God’s heart so intimately, can be born into our hearts as well.

Such faith does not promise release from suffering, but it can bring deliverance from fear. It means that every moment we are blessed to inhabit, even in a difficult and shortened life, can be infused with God’s presence and ennobled by His calling. The hope that began on Christmas Day still shines like a star and swells like a song, carried

Such faith does not promise release from suffering, but it can bring deliverance from fear. It means that every moment we are blessed to inhabit, even in a difficult and shortened life, can be infused with God’s presence and ennobled by His calling. The hope that began on Christmas Day still shines like a star and swells like a song, carried across the centuries by chanting monks and gospel choirs, filling great cathedrals and revival tents, but clearest in the quiet of our hearts: God is with us. + Michael Gerson

Donald Trump must never hold power again! Trumpty-Dumpty!

Echo opinion published in the Washington Post by Michael Gerson:

Looking on the bright side of a humiliating national disaster, the manner of Donald Trump’s departure from power has clarified why he must never hold power again!

#25thAmendment!

In leaks to a variety of news organizations, senior Trump administration officials reported: 1) Rudolph W. Giuliani urging the federal government to illegally seize Dominion voting machines; 2) presidential consideration of deranged conspiracy-monger Sidney Powell as a special counsel investigating nonexistent election fraud; and 3) a White House meeting involving disgraced former national security adviser Michael Flynn at which Trump discussed the imposition of martial law.

These accounts indicate the emergence of two distinct factions within Trump’s inner circle. On one side are the lunatics — among them Giuliani, Powell and Flynn — who want Trump to violate laws and assume authoritarian powers. On the other side are sycophants who supported Trump’s spurious legal challenges to the election result but apparently draw the line at treason. By most accounts, Trump’s sympathies lie with the lunatics.Some respond, as usual, by suggesting that these provocations are merely the sad, silly reactions of a cornered narcissist. And it is indeed ludicrous to believe that the military would ever consider torching the Constitution, particularly in service to a draft-dodging coward who views their honored dead as “suckers.” Even on the rumor of a coup, Army Secretary Ryan D. McCarthy and Gen. James McConville, the Army chief of staff, issued a joint statement saying there “is no role for the US military in determining the outcome of an American election.”

But the code-red level of worry within Trump’s staff does seem unprecedented. “People who are concerned and nervous aren’t the weak-kneed bureaucrats that we loathe,” said a senior administration official to Axios. “These are people who have endured arguably more insanity and mayhem than any administration officials in history.” At the very least, these freely leaking White House staffers are determined to distance themselves from outright subversion. It is nice to find there are still some limits to White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows’s servility.

Actor John Lithgow, author of the 'Trumpty Dumpty' poetry books, explains how he got mean — and empathetic — to write about the "despotic age" of Trump. (The Washington Post)

Some respond, as usual, by suggesting that these provocations are merely the sad, silly reactions of a cornered narcissist. And it is indeed ludicrous to believe that the military would ever consider torching the Constitution, particularly in service to a draft-dodging coward who views their honored dead as “suckers.” 

Even on the rumor of a coup, Army Secretary Ryan D. McCarthy and Gen. James McConville, the Army chief of staff, issued a joint statement saying there “is no role for the US military in determining the outcome of an American election.”


But the code-red level of worry within Trump’s staff does seem unprecedented. “People who are concerned and nervous aren’t the weak-kneed bureaucrats that we loathe,” said a senior administration official to Axios. “These are people who have endured arguably more insanity and mayhem than any administration officials in history.” At the very least, these freely leaking White House staffers are determined to distance themselves from outright subversion. It is nice to find there are still some limits to White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows’s servility.

It is most important to consider these events not in the context of an unlikely 2020 coup, but in light of the inevitable 2024 election. The front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination is clearly not committed to democratic self-government. He is willing, even eager, to overturn the constitutional process if it serves his interests. No ethical second thoughts restrain him. Selfishness is not the violation of his standards; it is the fulfillment of his creed. For Trump, self-sacrifice is the true sin.

This time around, Trump’s lawless ambitions have been limited by unamused courts, by courageous state and local officials, by a vigilant mainstream press, by a Democratic House, by his own buffoonish leadership and by an ideologically moderate Democratic candidate who won a reasonably large electoral victory. Only the Republican Party utterly failed in checking Trump’s incipient authoritarianism.

But these conditions are hardly permanent. 

Could Trump win reelection in 2024, against a more ideologically extreme Democratic candidate? Of course he could. Would any Republican official, at any level of government, stand up against a vengeful authoritarian with electoral mandate? It is not likely. Would Trump expand executive power at every turn? He would, particularly if both the House and Senate are controlled by Republicans. Would Trump openly intimidate journalists and political opponents with willing, armed militias? I don’t doubt it. Would he simply ignore court rulings that limit him? I bet he would try. Would he try to manufacture a crisis to justify remaining in power past his term? No scruple would prevent it.

This is not some exaggerated dystopian vision. These hypotheticals are extensions of Trump’s existing views and tendencies. He would do these things, if he could. And how do we know this? Because Trump is the leader of Trumpiism’s lunatic fringe. He is in fundamental sympathy with Giuliani, Powell and Flynn. Even out of power, he will remain the main threat to American democracy. If he wins again, the constitutional order may never be the same.

In the Trump presidency, the worst days are always the most authentic days. And each day now seems more revealing than the last. Desperation has shown Trump’s instincts and nature as never before. He is an authoritarian wannabe. Those who love our system of government must now share one, overriding goal: to ensure that Mar-a-Lago is Trump’s St. Helena, not his Elba.

Read more from Michael Gerson’s archive, follow him on Twitter or subscribe to his updates on Facebook.

Evangelicals must read and understand this opinion echo - "a declaration of war upon fear"

Advent is a declaration of war upon fear.

Michael Gerson echo opinion published in the LaCrosse Tribune a Wisconsin newspaper.  Gersonis a syndicated columnist who writes for The Washington Post. 

WASHINGTON, DC — America’s political culture is dominated by fear.

For some, it is fear that the triumph of progressivism would bring anti-religious persecution and fundamentally alter the American way of life.

For others, it is fear that the reelection of Donald Trump would remove the last restraints on his cruelty, vindictiveness and contempt for the rule of law.

My anxieties are firmly in the second camp. But the general mood of trepidation is universal. Our greatest political passion seems dedicated not to the pursuit of dreams, but to the avoidance of nightmares.

When the goal is to interrupt a downward trajectory, patience is hardly a virtue. In this environment, political rhetoric and writing tend to assume the form of a desperate fundraising appeal: Respond now, or the apocalypse is upon us.

Sustaining this type of distressed uncertainty for long periods, I can attest, is like putting arsenic in your saltshaker. It is a self-administered poison. It kills peace, gratitude and contentment. It undermines mental and physical health. And it is deeply at odds with the Advent season.

This is the time of the Christian year dedicated to expectant longing. God, we are assured, is at mysterious work in the world. Evil and conflict are real, but not ultimate. Grace and deliverance are unrealized but certain. Patient waiting is rewarded because the trajectory of history is tilted upward by a powerful hand.

None of this is to deny the high stakes of politics and elections. But the assurance at the heart of Advent is the antidote to fear. No matter how desperate the moment, we are told, time is on the side of hope.

Such hope does not come naturally to human beings. On the evidence of our senses, despair is perfectly rational. Entropy is built into nature. Decay is knit into our flesh. By all appearances, the universe is cold, empty and indifferent. There is a certain bleak dignity in accepting the challenge of a hopeless cause.

But most of us can’t be content in this state.

We fill the void with cries of protest, or hymns of thanksgiving or demands for justice. This search for answers seems essential to our humanity.

It is possible, of course, that our deepest longings are actually cruel jokes of nature. But it is also possible and rational that our longings are hints of a reality beyond nature. Perhaps our desires exist because they are meant to be fulfilled.

This leaves every human being with a choice between despair and longing. Both are reasonable responses to a great mystery.

Some of the most vivid hopes came from Hebrew prophets who yearned for a savior with aching intensity — hopes that culminated in a confusing visitation. “You shall conceive,” Mary heard. “But … I am a virgin,” she protested. “With God nothing shall be impossible,” she was told. Then her answer: “Be it unto me according to thy word.”

This is perhaps the greatest human moment in the Bible — the calm and trusting response of a young Jewish girl to an absurd and epic request: “Be it unto me according to thy word.”

Mary, who was obviously familiar with the Hebrew prophets, immediately saw the revolutionary implications of the inexplicable child: “He has scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts. He has put down the mighty from their seats and exalted them of low degree. He has filled the hungry with good things; and the rich he has sent away empty.”

This is the fullest expression of the hope of Advent — that all wrongs will finally be righted, that all the scales will eventually balance, and that no one will be exploited or afraid.

But this hope is not yet fulfilled. This sense of anticipation is like a seed in the cold earth. Like the first, barely detectable signs of a thaw. Like a child growing in a womb.

People who hold such an expectation should not be consumed by worry or driven by insecurity. Because hope is not a cruel joke. Because nothing is impossible with God. Because the seed is planted. Because Advent is a declaration of war upon fear.

Representative Jim Jordan slithers to serial cover ups- Cleveland point of view

https://www.cleveland.com/opinion/2019/11/jim-jordan-was-imposed-on-us-for-egregiously-partisan-reasons-now-hes-afflicting-the-nation.html

Here is the fact - Jim Jordan is obviously involved in a cover up of sexual misconduct at Ohio State University. 

Therefore, his morals are corrupted.  Cover ups are serial misconducts. 

Rep. Jim Jordan - He may be the most unfit man to ever represent part of Greater Cleveland in Congress. Echo opinion.

By Brent Larkin, cleveland.com

CLEVELAND, Ohio -- Of all the regions in all the states in all the country, Jim Jordan got dragged into ours. There was no good reason to punish Greater Cleveland by making the person who’s now the second most contemptible human being in the entire U.S. government part of the region’s delegation to Congress. 

Worse yet, the betrayal was bipartisan.

When Ohio’s political and legislative leaders were drawing new congressional boundaries prior to the 2012, election, Democrats wanted a district that would protect U.S. Rep. Marcia Fudge. Republicans wanted districts that would elect the maximum number of GOP congressmen. And some people from both parties wanted a district that would likely lead to the defeat of longtime Cleveland Rep. Dennis Kucinich.

They all got what they wanted.

But to make it work required drawing a hideously gerrymandered district for the southwest Ohio congressman, one that meanders some 200 miles from near Dayton north into Lorain County near Cleveland.

And now it’s fitting that Republicans have given this seven-term sycophant a starring role in the televised House Intelligence Committee impeachment hearings against Donald Trump. The assignment comes as Jordan is being credibly accused by some of knowingly turning a blind eye to sexual abuse by a team doctor when Jordan was an assistant wrestling coach at Ohio State University from 1987 to 1994.

At least five people – four of them former wrestlers and one of them a longtime friend – have said Jordan had to have known former OSU team doctor Richard Strauss was on a sexual rampage that would include -- according to OSU -- 1,429 sexual assaults and 47 rapes of student patients during Strauss’ time at the school (1978 to 1998) prior to his suicide in 2005.

That makes Jordan an ideal candidate to lead the defense of a malignant president who has bragged about physically abusing women and who has been accused by two dozen women of sexual assault or misconduct.

Jordan was appointed to the Intelligence Committee the same day, Nov. 8, that NBC reported on a lawsuit filed early this month in which a former wrestling referee alleges Strauss masturbated in front of him in the shower following an OSU wrestling match in 1994.

People have every right to believe Jordan’s angry dismissals. Common sense suggests they’d probably be better off believing five men who have no reason to lie.


When Jordan slithers out from under his rock each morning, dons a shirt and tie - sans the jacket, lest he be mistaken for Joe McCarthy - his life’s work is to besmirch everything America stands for in service of Donald Trump.

If it takes undermining yet another principle of democracy by condoning attacks on men and women who have devoted their lives in honorable service to this country, Jordan is always ready and willing.

If it takes changing the Trump defense strategy on an almost daily basis because facts keep getting in the way, Jordan is the ideal bootlicker. Trump’s support is all that seems to matter to the man former House Speaker John Boehner regularly referred to as "a legislative terrorist” – along with a whole bunch of other descriptions unfit for print.

When the referee told Jordan what happened, he alleges that Jordan blew him off with, “Yeah, that’s Strauss.”

As the allegations pile up, Jordan’s denials remain unchanged. 

He dismissed the latest one as “ridiculous.”

Why would Jordan so readily ruin what little was left of his reputation? One theory holds he hopes to inherit Trump’s base for a presidential run of his own in 2024. The swamp will be a crowded place in four years, overrun with loathsome folks angling to continue the dastardly business of shredding the Constitution.

Michael Gerson’s credentials to analyze Jordan are impeccable. He is an evangelical Christian, lifelong Republican and onetime chief speechwriter to former President George W. Bush.

In his Washington Post column of Nov. 14, Gerson showed his keen understanding of Jordan, describing him as “the Truly Trumpian Man – guided by bigotry, seized by conspiracy theories, dismissive of facts and truth, indifferent to ethics, contemptuous of institutional norms and ruthlessly dedicated to the success of a demagogue.”

Gerson applied the identical description to Stephen Miller, the White House resident white supremacist.

Everything about Jordan reeks of a man willing to cast aside common decency and fairness in service of a corrupt and cruel president.

He may be the most unfit man to ever represent part of Greater Cleveland in Congress.

Brent Larkin was The Plain Dealer’s editorial director from 1991 until his retirement in 2009.

Donald Trump choas and lunacy must end! Echo opinion

https://www.lubbockonline.com/news/20190826/gerson-trump-presidency-not-just-unfolding-but-unraveling

Michael Gerson: Trump presidency is not just unfolding, but unraveling- echo published in the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal.

WASHINGTON, DC -- Historians studying the Trump presidency will have a prodigious amount of digital material that demands examination, but defies explanation. 

For example, the president’s Aug. 21, half-hour, South Lawn press availability deserves to be at the top of that list.

Michael Gerson opinion published in the Lubbock Texas newspaper

With the whir of a helicopter engine in the background, Donald Trump veered from topic to topic with utter confidence, alarming ignorance, minimal coherence and relentless duplicity.

President Vladimir Putin, he said, “made a living on outsmarting President Obama” -- even though it is Trump who now urges a Russian return to the G-7 summit without any concessions on Putin’s part.

On pursuing the trade war with China, Trump called himself the “chosen one.” (!) This came within hours of retweeting the claim he is loved like “the second coming of God.” At some point, arrogance is so extreme and delusional that it can only be expressed in blasphemy.

Trump accused the Danish prime minister of “blowing off the United States” because she scorned his own balmy, offensive musings on the future of Greenland (!). “We treat countries with respect,” he said -- except, presumably, the ”----hole” ones.

Trump’s new immigration rule, he claimed, would “do even more” to bring migrant families together -- though this togetherness, he failed to mention, would come by allowing the indefinite detention of migrant families.

“I am the least racist person ever to serve in office,” said the man who is increasingly bold in his use of racist tropes.

He joked again about being in office 10 or 14 years from now -- appealing to people who find overturning the constitutional order a laugh riot.

“Mental health,” Trump went on. “Very important.” Hard to argue with that one.

“Our 2nd Amendment will remain strong,” Trump promised, while previewing an effort to overturn that portion of the 14th Amendment guaranteeing birthright citizenship. Some parts of the Constitution, clearly, are more constitutional than others.

Trump pledged the return of thousands of captured Islamic State fighters to Europe, one way or another. “If Europe doesn’t take them, I’ll have no choice but to release them in the countries from which they came, which is Germany, France and other places.” 

Did the president of the United States just threaten to release dangerous terrorists on the streets of our closest allies? Evidently.

Of the wounded and grieving families Trump visited following recent mass shootings: “The love for me,” he boasted, “and my love for them was unparalleled.” And this was demonstrated by “hundreds and hundreds of people all over the floor.” No one draws a bigger crowd in an intensive care unit.

After repeating an anti-Semitic trope about the disloyalty of Jews who vote Democratic, Trump insisted to a reporter, “It’s only anti-Semitic in your head.” But control over the plain meaning of English words is not a presidential power. And the charge of disloyalty is the essence of anti-Semitism.

Seldom in presidential history has more nonsense been expressed with greater concision. Never would the interests of America have been better served by a louder helicopter.

What to make of this? First, the Trump presidency is not just unfolding, it is unraveling. All narcissists believe they are at the center of the universe. But what happens when a narcissist is actually placed at the center of the universe? The chosen one happens. Trump is not just arguing for an alternative set of policies; he is asserting an alternative version of reality, in which resistance to his will is disloyalty to the country.

Second, the president has systemically removed from his circle anyone who finds this appalling. Every president has the right to advisers who share his basic worldview. But Trump appears, on many topics, to have stopped taking advice altogether. His counselors are now flunkies. The proof of their loyalty is not found in the honesty of their opinions but in the regurgitation of his insanity.

Third, the president is increasingly prone to the equation of the national interest with his personal manias. He is perfectly willing to threaten relations with Denmark -- or to force the Israeli government into a difficult choice -- if it serves his tweeted whims. This approach is more characteristic of personal rule than democratic leadership. Self-worship is inconsistent with true patriotism.

Trump’s promotion of moral and political chaos puts other members of his party in a difficult position. Difficult, but not complicated. It is their public duty to say that foolish things are foolish, that insane things are insane, that bigoted things are bigoted. On growing evidence, their failure to do so is abetting the country’s decline into farce.

Michael Gerson’s column is distributed by the Washington Post Writers Group.

Children in cages - Kirstjen Nielsen a victim of the loyalty oath

Trump — the ultimate political narcissist — cares not one whit for the political fortunes of the GOP- the growing old party.

An echo opinion by Michael Gerson published in the San Diego Union-Tribune.

The ouster of Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen* — the implementer of some of the most unjust immigration policies since the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II — is another proof of Donald Trump’s ratchet-wrench theory of loyalty. It goes only in his direction.

In the end, the burnt offering of a staffer’s character is not enough. 

After trying to enforce and anticipate Trump’s cruel or irrational whims, he or she is generally packed off without ceremony, with diminished professional respect and, presumably, with diminished self-respect. Trump has taken what should be the honor of a lifetime — serving the country at the highest levels of the executive branch — and turned it into a reputational black hole.

A few — think former Defense Secretary James Mattis and former United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley — have managed to serve without self-immolation. But this is only because they skillfully established some distance between their views and the president’s. Did anyone doubt that Mattis respected NATO, or that Haley was concerned about human rights?

Nielsen, however, took another route. After a career generally characterized by competence, Nielsen chose to reflect Trump’s priorities. Maybe she reasoned to herself that she was implementing the president’s agenda more humanely than others would have done. Aristotle referred to human beings as rational animals. They are, at least, rationalizing animals.

But the separation of crying migrant children from their parents as a deterrent, and the storing of children in prison-like conditions, will be some of the most enduring political images of the Trump era.**It says something about Nielsen that she took part in such practices. It says something about Trump that such actions were apparently too moderate and restrained for his taste.

Children in cages - a Trumpzi humanitarian disaster!

The status of immigration as Trump’s defining issue is still confusing. He returns to this topic in nearly every time of political stress. Yet it is difficult to imagine that his convictions are deeply rooted. Trump has a long history of hiring illegal immigrants, whom he clearly did not regard as potential terrorists and rapists. And it wasn’t too long ago that Trump criticized Mitt Romney for intemperance on the topic as the Republican presidential nominee. “He had a crazy policy of self-deportation, which was maniacal,” Trump said following the 2012 presidential election. “It sounded as bad as it was, and he lost all of the Latino vote. He lost the Asian vote. He lost everybody who is inspired to come into this country.”

But now Donald Trump seems to find a message of exclusion positively invigorating. In his stump speech, he does not raise legitimate issues related to immigration. Instead, he easily outpaces Romney in the maniacal and crazy department. At the White House, he humiliates staffers who don’t share his enthusiasm and fires people who are not creative enough in their severity. Even a hint of reluctance is taken as betrayal.

The explanation cannot be purely political, at least from a Republican perspective. Trump carried a simplified version of these ideas into the 2018 midterm election — claiming that brown people were invading the country (!) and suggesting that they should be shot by the U.S. military. 

One outcome was the loss of 40 Republican House seats.

But Trump — the ultimate political narcissist — cares not one whit for the political fortunes of the GOP. He cares only about his political standing within the GOP. It is 85% to 90% support among Republicans that ensures the servility of senators and House members in opposing various investigations of Trump and his administration. And this support forestalls the possibility of a serious nomination challenge in the upcoming presidential election.

I have no doubt that Trump is using the issue of immigration in a cynical way to solve political problems. But the implications are disturbing. Trump clearly regards resentment against migrants as the common, binding purpose of the GOP. And so far he has not been wrong. The success of Trump’s cynical ploy depends on the existence of genuine enthusiasm for exclusion within his party. His play only works if GOP nativism is broad and authentic.

In the recent political past, these convictions were usually latent. Anti-immigrant Republicans such as Pat Buchanan and Tom Tancredo were generally viewed as cranks. And more visionary Republicans such as Jack Kemp or George W. Bush emphasized the economic contributions and positive social values of recent migrants.

But Trump’s appeal to inner demons above better angels proved easier than many of us hoped. And that makes the political and moral damage harder to repair.

Mrs. Gerson can be reached at michaelgerson@washpost.com. 

*POLITICO- Nielsen’s allies trying to rehab her image for life after Trump.  Liberal activists say she was complicit in an immoral migrant child separation policy — and she should be ostracized by corporate America. (Andrew Restuccia and Daniel Lippman)

NEWSWEEK- Kirstjen Nielsen testified before Congress, drew an air cage with her hands..... (Jason Lemon)


** New images reveal migrant children separated from parents living in cages. U.S. officials released images showing conditions inside an old warehouse in South Texas, where hundreds of immigrant children wait in a series of metal cages, with children using large foil sheets as blankets.

Reality show phony - opinion from Maine

Barbara Bush called Trump “greedy, selfish and ugly.”

An opinion letter published in the Maine Lewiston Sun Journal 

Dave Griffiths: Why do people support Donald Trump?

“The mask of a barroom political crank turns out to be the face of the president of the United States,” writes conservative political columnist Michael Gerson.

In a manifesto, the New Zealand mass murderer praised Trump for being a “symbol of renewed white identity and common purpose.”

Trump, the draft dodger, can’t stand any comparison with John McCain, so he attacks him relentlessly seven months after the war hero’s death.

Barbara Bush called Trump “greedy, selfish and ugly.”

“Trump stands out among our presidents, not just for being so petty, bitter and mean-spirited, but also for being incompetent,” writes columnist Max Boot, a former Republican stalwart who moved on from a party that is now a personality cult.

“Henceforth the senior ranks of government can be filled with invertebrates and opportunists, schemers and opportunists,” writes Eliot A. Cohen, a former senior State Department official in the George W. Bush administration, of the scandal-plagued Trump years and the inability — or unwillingness — to fill top sub-cabinet slots with qualified policymakers.

Seventy-five percent of attendees at a Yale School of Management conference said they have had to apologize to foreign contacts for Trump’s behavior.

There is more, of course. And there is this question: Why does Trump’s “base” (aka "cult") still support this reality-show phony?

Many people appear to have forgotten their high school civics lessons about what it took to make America a wonder of self-government. So they tune into Fox — the sad equivalent of state-owned news.

Dave Griffiths, Mechanic Falls

When "wrong" is immoral and illegal- history and human rights

Michael Gerson is a Washington Post columnist. This opinion was published in the Utah newspaper Deseret News.

Historical amnesia- an echo opinion

WASHINGTON — One of the worst things about our awful political moment is its historical forgetfulness.

Many Europeans seem to have forgotten where chauvinistic nationalism and the demonization of minorities can lead. 

Many Americans seem to have forgotten that a foreign policy of America First allowed international malignancies to grow that made war inevitable and resulted in the deaths of tens of millions. 

Moreover, many in Western countries seem to have forgotten the difficult, desperate project of building a moral and legal structure around the principle of human dignity, in the aftermath of World War II.

Anti-Semitic attacks in Europe and the U.S. are both atrocities and reminders. They ring with distant but unmistakable echoes of the nightmarish events of the 1930s and 1940s: the racial purity laws, the economic indignities, the despairing suicides, the liquidation of the disabled, the digging up of Jewish graves in cemeteries, the deportations, the ghettos, the shootings in batch after batch, the pits of corpses, the emptied orphanages, the terrified walk to the gas chamber.

It is worth trying to recall how shocking these events were to the conscience of the world. The institutions of the modern state — bureaucracy, propaganda, military power — had been harnessed to the purposes of sadism and mass murder. This indicted a highly sophisticated and educated European society — along with the very idea of sophistication and education as brakes on evil. It indicted other nations who did little, even after the crimes became obvious. It indicted many German Christians who were indifferent or complicit. For some, it even indicted God, who seemed uncaring on a distant throne.

But the response was ultimately an idealistic one. The Allies would institute a new order of justice and human rights. The Tokyo tribunals and the Nuremburg trials were both legal and moral enterprises. The chief counsel for the prosecution, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson, said he would not seek convictions for "mere technical or incidental transgression of international conventions. We charge guilt ... that involves moral as well as legal wrong. ... It is their abnormal and inhuman conduct which brings them to this bar."

The moral response to World War II-era crimes found expression in the United Nations' Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which speaks of "inherent dignity" and "equal and inalienable rights." There were many influences on this document, from President Franklin Roosevelt's Four Freedoms to the Declaration of Independence. But the theory was simple: The Axis powers not only lost, they were wrong. Their vision of nation, race and culture would be replaced by an assertion of universal human rights and dignity.

It was, however, more of an assertion than an argument. French Catholic philosopher Jacques Maritain, who was involved in the debates surrounding the Universal Declaration, said, "We agree on these rights, providing we are not asked why. With the 'why' the dispute begins."

Some of the challenge to this vision of inherent dignity has come from arguments associated with academic liberalism. It has become common to deny that human beings have natures that can be separated from their cultural circumstances. And without a human nature, it is hard to define a set of human rights. Without some standard from outside the culture — some statement by God or reason that every human life is sacred — we are left only with the current consensus of our culture. And we are left with no good reason to tell our children why they should hold to that consensus rather than abandon it.
But the most urgent, comprehensive attack on the universality of human rights now comes from the nativist right. 

In fact, places such as Hungary, Romania, Germany, Poland and the United States, there are politicians who are attempting to define nationality based on the dehumanization of cultural outsiders — Muslims, migrants and refugees. This type of politics is dangerous wherever it is practiced. In the United States, it also requires the renunciation of responsibilities rooted in the postwar acceptance of human dignity as the basis of global order and peace.

This is the cost of historical amnesia — the cost of electing an American president who is both ignorant of and indifferent toward the lessons of the last century, or any century. Donald Trump, is a president who always turns, by feral instinct, to an organizing message of bigotry and exclusion. A president who is throwing away an inheritance he does not value and unleashing forces that can easily move beyond control.

Scott Pruitt is challenged by Pope Francis about environmental science

Pope Francis and the environment ~ the antithesis of wrong minded Scott Pruitt: by Walter G. Moss*

Scott Pruitt is in conflict with God's creation ~ these deliberate degradation are sins

Maine Writer comment: Let's remember, before Pope Francis was a chemistry teacher before he became a priest.  In other words, Pope Francis is a scientist.  On the other hand, Scott Pruitt is a political operative and, as such, he has no idea about how the environment is harmed by his propriety driven policies.

Published in the History News Network HNN.com

Scientific evidence overwhelmingly attests to the existence of human-caused global warming. The problem, however, is many people ignore or dispute such evidence. Such it has been with evolution, and so it now is with global warming. A recent example has been the man President Trump appointed to the job of protecting our environment—the Environmental Protection Agency’s head, Scott Pruitt—and other Protestant evangelicals who share his hostility to a science-based climate policy. (Evangelicals are primarily Protestants of various denominations who share an emphasis on the importance of experiencing a “born-again” transformation, on the Bible and Jesus as ultimate authorities, and on encouraging others to accept Jesus as their Savior. Evangelicals make up about 25 percent of U.S. voters.)

An article in the century-old pro-business magazine Forbes recently stated that Pruitt “has systematically removed science from environmental decisions and regulations in the United States.” Two other recent articles zero in on Pruitt’s evangelical connections. The first, in Slate, is entitled “God’s EPA Administrator,” and it asks, “Did the politics and history of evangelical Christianity create Scott Pruitt?” The second, a New Yorker essay, asks, “Are Evangelical Leaders Saving Scott Pruitt's Job?”

Late last year I wrote that President Trump’s worst sin was the damage he was doing to our environment and that Pruitt was one of his chief henchmen. 

“Sin” is a strong word and a religious one. But in using it I was following the example of Pope Francis, in his 2015 climate encyclical. There he quoted favorably the Orthodox Patriarch Bartholomew, who stated:“For human beings … to destroy the biological diversity of God’s creation; for human beings to degrade the integrity of the earth by causing changes in its climate, by stripping the earth of its natural forests or destroying its wetlands; for human beings to contaminate the earth’s waters, its land, its air, and its life – these are sins.”

All of these religious references, lead us to several important questions: 1) Do different religions (e.g., Francis' s Catholicism and Pruitt's evangelical Protestantism) say different things about our obligations regarding climate change? 2) What role do religious beliefs regarding climate change play in the minds of politicians? 3) How do these beliefs affect the behavior of voters?

In answer to the first question about the differences in religions, the answer is, “Yes.” But the answer involves more complexity than one might imagine. Some idea of this complexity can be gained by looking over such books such as the Routledge Handbook of Religion and Ecology (2018), which contains essays on different religions’ and regions’ approach to ecology, plus other ones dealing with subjects such as religions and climate change (see here for an online version of the latter essay). Even within one religion, for example Judaism with its Orthodox, Conservative, and Reform branches, there are often different approaches to climate change.

Our chief concern here, however, is between the different perspectives of the Catholic Pope Francis and Trumpian Protestant evangelicals like Scott Pruitt. In addition to quoting the Orthodox Patriarch Bartholomew about how harming our climate is sinful, Francis begins his climate encyclical by citing the environmental concerns of his papal predecessors since 1971, and then he jumps back to the thirteenth-century’s St. Francis of Assisi, whose name our current pope took as a “guide and inspiration” when he was selected to head the Catholic Church. The pope recommends the saint’s loving attitude toward nature as a safeguard against regarding ourselves as “masters, consumers, ruthless exploiters, unable to set limits on . . . immediate needs.”

Early on, however, Pope Francis transitions from a concern with his Catholic forerunners’ thinking to stating that he will review “several aspects of the present ecological crisis, with the aim of drawing on the results of the best scientific research available today, letting them touch us deeply and provide a concrete foundation for the ethical and spiritual itinerary that follows.” 

Pope Francis then goes on to write that “a very solid scientific consensus indicates that we are presently witnessing a disturbing warming of the climatic system. In recent decades this warming has been accompanied by a constant rise in the sea level and, it would appear, by an increase of extreme weather events, even if a scientifically determinable cause cannot be assigned to each particular phenomenon. . . . A number of scientific studies indicate that most global warming in recent decades is due to the great concentration of greenhouse gases (carbon dioxide, methane, nitrogen oxides and others) released mainly as a result of human activity. As these gases build up in the atmosphere, they hamper the escape of heat produced by sunlight at the earth’s surface. The problem is aggravated by a model of development based on the intensive use of fossil fuels, which is at the heart of the worldwide energy system. Another determining factor has been an increase in changed uses of the soil, principally deforestation for agricultural purposes.”

Thus, from the beginning of his encyclical, Francis displays the utmost respect for scientific findings. Popes, however, have not always been so open-minded. Mention of the Catholic papacy’s negative reaction to the contentions of Copernicus and Galileo that the earth revolved around the sun (and not vice versa) is enough to dispel any overly-rosy generalizations about past papal respect for science.

Yet, the Catholic Church has never taken an official position on Darwinian evolution, and unofficially it has never been as hostile to it as Protestant evangelicalism. Most notable among evangelical opponents to Darwin, as the famous Scopes Trial of 1925, reminds us, were the fundamentalists. (A Pew Research survey indicates that only 27 percent of white evangelical Protestants, as compared to 68 percent of white Catholics, are willing to accept that “humans have evolved over time.”)

Although fundamentalists are only a subset of evangelicalism, by 1930 a decades-long transformation was occurring among evangelicals in general. As conservative columnist Michael Gerson points out, before the Civil War many evangelicals were abolitionists who believed in social justice and progress, but by 1930 “all progressive social concern . . . became suspect” among most evangelicals. Decades later white evangelicals “shamefully” sat out or opposed the civil rights movement.

In general, as a 2014 survey revealed, white evangelical Protestants are less likely than other major U. S. religious groups to concern themselves with scientific developments or to believe that climate change is an important environmental matter. Although U. S. Catholics were more than twice as likely as white evangelical Protestants to say that climate change is the “most pressing environmental issue,” they still did not prioritize it as much as they have done since Pope Francis’s climate encyclical, which has swayed, some, but by no means all, Catholic believers.

Although climate change may or may not be of much interest to religious believers, it can no longer be ignored by national politicians. This brings us to our second and third questions: What role do religious beliefs regarding climate change play in the minds of politicians and voters? In light of the overwhelming percentage (81 percent) of white evangelicals who voted for Donald Trump in 2016 and the prominence of evangelicals like Vice-President Pence and EPA head Pruitt in the Trump Administration this question has special importance.

When one considers that Attorney General Jeff Sessions, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, Energy Secretary Rick Perry, and Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson are also evangelical Christians, the serious impact of Trumpian evangelicals is considerable. In addition, other Republican evangelical Trump supporters like Senator James Inhofe (Okla.), patron of fellow Oklahoman Pruitt and author of The Greatest Hoax: How the Global Warming Conspiracy Threatens Your Future, also increase evangelicals’ influence, as do the fossil-fuel-tycoon Koch brothers, who have supported various conservative evangelicals like Pence and Pruitt, as well other individuals and groups opposing efforts to reduce global warming.

Trump’s own religious views are less clear. But the evangelical leader James Dobson claimed that during the 2016 campaign Paula White, a Florida televangelist and spiritual advisor to Trump, converted him to evangelicalism. What is certain, however, is that Trump considers himself a Christian and has supported many goals of conservative evangelicals.

Evangelicals are influenced by their faith’s distrust of science and belief in God’s omnipotence. One example is furnished by Pastor Ralph Drollinger, author of “Rebuilding America: The Biblical Blueprint” and conductor of a weekly Bible-study meeting attended by many of the Trumpian evangelical cabinet supporters—about Drollinger and his Bible-study group Pruitt has stated, “to be encouraged, to pray . . . to spend time with a friend, a colleague, a person who has a faith focus on how we do our job, whether it’s through prayer or through God’s Word, and to encourage one another in that regard is so, so important, and we have that in our Cabinet and it’s such a wonderful thing.”

Drollinger has written: “To think that Man can alter the earth’s ecosystem—when God remains omniscient, omnipresent and omnipotent in the current affairs of mankind—is to more than subtly espouse an ultra-hubristic, secular worldview relative to the supremacy and importance of man. . . . In our lifetime there has been a radical shift in aggregate, national religious belief. In essence and unfortunately, America has been in the process of changing horses: from the religion of Christianity to one of Radical Environmentalism. We are in the process of exchanging the worship of the Creator for the worship of His creation. This is a huge and dire error, with extreme consequences, and it presages disaster.”

But not all evangelicals share this view. In deciphering the role of religious faith in the politics of evangelicals, the insights of Gerson (see above) seem most pertinent. He believes his own evangelical faith has shaped his life, but that “Christian theology is emphatically not the primary motivating factor” in the minds of evangelical politicians and voters(my bolding). He writes that “Fox News and talk radio are vastly greater influences on evangelicals’ political identity.”

Also influencing their political choices are other factors like geographic location and race. The states with the largest evangelical populations (all with more than 40 percent of the total population) were Alabama, Arkansas, Kentucky, Mississippi, Oklahoma, and Tennessee—more liberal California and New York had much smaller percentages of evangelicals, only 20 percent and 10 percent respectively. In last year’s Alabama Senate race, 80 percent of white evangelicals voted for the Republican candidate, while 95 percent of black evangelicals supported his Democratic opponent.

Gerson faults white evangelical voters for being too defensive, reactive, and narrow, for voting for Trump with his “distinctly non-Christian” values. Unlike the Catholic Church, which developed a well-thought-out social philosophy, evangelicals failed to do this, and Gerson thinks this has left them too susceptible to politicians like Trump who promised to look out for their interests. 

Michael Gerson supports Pope Francis opinion about the environment~ Evangelicals are influenced by extremist FoxNews

In contrast to the narrowness that Gerson eschews, Pope Francis has urged Catholics to be open-minded, pragmatic, and work for the common good. Anyone reading his long climate encyclical from beginning to end, while perhaps not agreeing with all aspects of it, should conclude that it reflects this spirit and is motivated primarily by his deep Christian faith. 

*Walter G. Moss is a professor emeritus of history at Eastern Michigan University 

Hypocrisy

Three recent news items under the rubric of "Republican hypocrisy" ~ an echo essay by Michael Gerson, published in the Journal Star, a Peoria Illinois newspaper:

— At the Catholic Prayer Breakfast in Washington, House Speaker Paul Ryan said: “We see moral relativism becoming more and more pervasive in our culture. Identity politics and tribalism have grown on top of this.” Ryan went on to talk about Catholic social doctrine, with its emphasis on “solidarity” with the poor and weak, as “a perfect antidote to what ails our culture.”

— In the Oval Office, according to The Washington Post, Donald Trump boasted about how easy it is to appeal to audiences with an anti-immigrant message: “Acting as if he was at a (cult) rally, he then read aloud a few made up Hispanic names and described potential crimes they could have committed, like rape and murder. Then, he said, the crowds would roar when the criminals were thrown out of the country.” In the Post’s account, ”[Stephen] Miller and [Jared] Kushner laughed.”

— At the American border, the brutal separation of confused, weeping children from parents who cross illegally is being implemented. According to The Arizona Republic: “The Office of Refugee Resettlement reported at the end of 2017 that of the 7,000-plus children placed with sponsored individuals, the agency did not know where 1,475 of them were.” Some could be lost to abuse or trafficking.

What do these incidents add up to? A political, moral and religious failure of massive, discrediting proportions.

It is often difficult to apply theological doctrines to public policy. 

But if there is one area where the teaching of the Christian faith is utterly clear, it is in the requirement to care for the vulnerable stranger. According to the Hebrew scriptures: “When a foreigner resides among you in your land, do not mistreat them. The foreigner residing among you must be treated as your native-born.” In the New Testament, Jesus employs compassion for an abused traveler as the test and definition of neighborly love.

The dehumanization of migrants and refugees has been one of the most consistent themes of this president — including using the fact that some criminals enter the country illegally to fan a generalized hostility to Hispanic immigration. Can you imagine what would have happened if a White House staffer attending a policy meeting on family separation had said, “This is cruel. This is immoral. This is wrong.” They would have been quickly cleaning out their desk. The rejection of Christian teaching on this issue is pretty much a job requirement in the Trump administration.

And how did Ryan address the issue of Trump’s habit of dehumanization at the Catholic Prayer Breakfast? By avoidance, under a thick layer of hypocrisy. He complained that politicians are too often in “survival mode,” trying to “get through the day” rather than reflecting on and applying Catholic social teaching.

Ryan was effectively criticizing the whole theory of his speakership. 

Indeed, SpeakerRyan is in survival mode. As a matter of fact, he has been in survival modae from the first day of Trump’s presidency, making the case that publicly burning bridges with the president would undermine the ability to pursue his vision of the common good (including tax reform and regulatory relief). 

This, while a weak argument, is at least a consistent one. But by making the Christian commitment to human dignity relative to other political aims, it is no longer an option for Ryan to speak of “moral relativism” as the defining threat of our time.

Ryan was effectively criticizing the whole theory of his speakership. He has been in survival mode from the first day of Trump’s presidency, making the case that publicly burning bridges with the president would undermine the ability to pursue his vision of the common good (including tax reform and regulatory relief). This, while a weak argument, is at least a consistent one. 

But by making the Christian commitment to human dignity relative to other political aims, it is no longer an option for Ryan to speak of “moral relativism” as the defining threat of our time.

In the name of survival, Ryan has ignored and enabled the transformation of the GOP into an anti-immigrant party. This does not reflect his personal views. But it will be remembered as the hallmark of his time in office — the elevation of survival above solidarity.

My tradition of evangelical protestantism is, if anything, even worse. According to a recent Pew poll, white evangelical protestants are the least likely group in America to affirm an American responsibility to accept refugees. 

Moreover, Evangelicals insist on the centrality and inerrancy of scripture and condemn society for refusing to follow biblical norms. And yet, when it comes to verse after verse requiring care for the stranger, they not only ignore this mandate but oppose it.

This represents the failure of Christian political leadership — not only from the speaker, but from most elected religious conservatives. Even more, it indicates the failure of the Christian church in the moral formation of its members, who remain largely untutored in the most important teachings of their own faith.

Ryan concluded his remarks by quoting Mother Teresa on God’s call to “be faithful,” not to “be successful.” But what if one is neither? Perhaps silence is the best option.

Michael Gerson writes for the Washington Post. Contact him at michaelgerson@washpost.com.

Donald Trump needs immigration sensitivity training

Unfortunately, Donald Trump denies his mother's Scottish immigrant heritage (Mary Anne MacLeod Trump), every time he panders to the right wing Republicans, who are opposed to protecting DACA (Deferred Action) children and others who deserve a path to American citizenship.

The Washington Post opinion writer Michael Gerson has a point of view about the Donald Trump cruel immigration hypocrisy.  

Here is an "echo" of Gerson's commentary:

Even on his finest behavior, Trump can’t be gracious to immigrants

In general, a State of the Union (SOTU) address is massive in the moment and quickly forgotten. And President Trump’s first State of the Union address was even more unmemorable than usual.

That, presumably, was the point. The speech aspired to political normalcy, and largely achieved it. The lavish use of everyday heroes was welcome relief from Trump’s relentless narcissism. The partisan jabs were generally within acceptable State of the Union boundaries. The proposals on vocational schools and prisoner reentry gave evidence of a working White House policy process. The platitudes of unity were familiar and reassuring.

For Trump, rhetorical expectations are always a hurdle just millimeters above the ground. (Maine Writer ~ Trump's administration is serial political drama.)

Did Trump call for restrictions on press freedom? Did he try to obstruct justice? Did he attack an opponent’s wife? 

With Trump, being anodyne (ie, inoffensive, often deliberately so) is an achievement. On State of the Union ~ SOTU~ night, official Washington was like a sailor returning home from the Southern Hemisphere — grateful to be navigating by familiar stars.

But the speech was instructive in another way: by the obvious exception to its general tone. 

Even on his finest behavior — even wearing his Sunday best — Trump could not be gracious to immigrants. 

Their role in the address was largely to create an atmosphere of menace — variously killing children or running a truck into a bike path. “Americans are dreamers, too,” said the president, as though young people facing deportation were living lives of privilege at the expense of American citizens.

Elements of Trump’s immigration approach are better than his rhetoric. A path to citizenship for migrants brought to the United States as minors is a genuine concession on the part of the president. A pivot toward skills-based immigration has broad support, and not only on the Trump right. Few have ideological objections to additional border security (although Americans generally don’t support a wall).

It is the sum total of Trump’s plan, however, that reveals his deeper intention: a dramatic cut in legal immigration. 

According to a Cato Institute report, the president’s approach would reduce the number of legal immigrants by up to 44 percent each year. It would likely bar 22 million immigrants over the next five decades. These would be the largest cuts in legal immigration since the 1920s.

Trump’s arguments on immigration are uniformly exaggerated or wrong. There is little evidence that migrants take jobs from working-class Americans. They generally have skills and attitudes toward work that put them in competition with other migrants. 

There is no evidence that immigrants have higher rates of crime. The opposite is true. And most terrorism experts see little urgent threat from refugees (who are highly vetted) or from family unification.

But Trump is not really making a case that can be refuted with rational arguments. He exemplifies what social psychologist Jonathan Haidt calls the moral foundation of “purity.” 

(IMO~ "evil")....Trump’s approach to immigration assumes that migrants are contaminants. Haitians “all have AIDS,” Trump is reported to have said. Developing nations are “shithole countries.” “They’re bringing drugs,” he argued, “They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists.” His language about the border is borderline eugenic. The wall would prevent not just migration but infection, too.

As the State of the Union demonstrated, this attitude is not a removable part of Trump’s appeal. It is a Jenga (block) piece at the bottom of his ideological tower. Without promoting fear of  “the other,” there would be no Trumpism (aka, ~ says MaineWriter~ modern "Nazism").

The desire to cut legal immigration is at odds with America’s long-term interests. An aging population taking more and more entitlement benefits will require more workers to sustain those commitments (or confiscatory tax rates that undermine economic growth). Trump is opposed to entitlement reform and proposes to exclude tens of millions of legal immigrants — a dreadful combination. This demonstrates a reckless ignorance of economics and demography. It would condemn the United States to declining wealth and power.

America actually needs a generous supply of skilled immigrants over the next few decades. But “skilled” does not just mean engineers. Our US economy requires skills in construction, the service industry and the agricultural sector as well — capabilities across a spectrum of work.

Economic arguments, however, go only so far. The best response to dehumanization is humanization. Someone needs to highlight the resilient Syrian refugees fleeing oppression and violence; migrants seeking a better life for their families beyond the Rio Grande; Haitians working long hours to send remittances back home. 

Their stories also deserve telling in the State of the Union address. But that will require a different president.

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Mary Anne MacLeod Trump, was Donald Trump's Scottish Immigrant mother

Obviously, Donald Trump needs immigration sensitivity training, beginning with an appreciation of the history of Mary Anne Macleod Trump, his own mother.