Today's Must-Read: What America Is

It occurred to me while surfing through the news this morning that Trump's whole message, from the beginning of his candidacy and continuing through today, has been completely negative: his appeal is to the worst of us.

Tom Sullivan has a post at Hullabaloo that helps to put it all into perspective.

The #Resistance locks progressives into a confining frame. An energizing one, perhaps, but restrictive nonetheless. With Martin Luther King Jr. Day 2018 behind us and the first anniversary Women's March ahead, and with the next volley from a president dishing red meat for his base coming as surely as the sun rises, perhaps it is time to clarify who we are rather than simply protest what we stand against.

Ed Kilgore offers an anecdote from Rev. William Barber II's book, The Third Reconstruction:

Not long ago I was a guest on Real Time with Bill Maher, with one of America’s most prominent atheists. Wearing my clerical collar, I realized that I stood out among his guests. So I decided to announce to Bill that I, too, am an atheist. He seemed taken aback, so I explained that if we were talking about the God who hates poor people, immigrants, and gay folks, I don’t believe in that God either. Sometimes it helps to clarify our language.

One could say the same about what makes America great. If American greatness means slamming the golden door to fellow human beings, to refugees from places the sitting president considers "shitholes," then I am not an American either.

He goes on from there. I found this particularly tellling, a quote from our last real president:

We are called to better things. The last president, a man not born to wealth or the privilege of whiteness, had a clearer sense of who we are. Nancy LeTourneau excerpts Barack Obama's speech at the Edmund Pettis Bridge:

For we were born of change. We broke the old aristocracies, declaring ourselves entitled not by bloodline, but endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable rights. We secure our rights and responsibilities through a system of self-government, of and by and for the people. That’s why we argue and fight with so much passion and conviction, because we know our efforts matter. We know America is what we make of it.

To finish off, out of order from Sullivan's post, another quote from Rev. William Barber:

Trump is a symptom of a deeper moral malady. And if he was gone tomorrow or impeached tomorrow, the senators and the House of Representatives and Ryan and McConnell and Graham and all them would still be there. And what we have found, Amy, when we look at them, no matter how crazy they call him or names they call him or anger they get with him, it’s all a front, because at the end of the day, they might disagree with his antics, but they support his agenda.

Trump really is a symptom of the moral rot that has infected American conservatism since the days of Ronald Reagan, if not before. And it's not just the Republicans in Congress -- it's the billionaires who own them, who think that their own greed is the guiding force of this country, or should be; it's the "Christian" right whose lust for power has left far behind any claim that they may have once had to being real Christians; it's the small, confused people who live in fear that someone not just like them will take something away from them. I'm sure you have your own candidates for this list. And right now, they're in control.

As always, read the whole thing. It's truly inspiring.