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| Was the Daily News onto something over a year ago? |
As
though they thought the crowds of hundreds of thousands of people gathering
across the nation, including Chicago, could be laughed off. Ignore them long
enough, and they’ll go back to the kitchen and fix them a chicken pot pie.
BUT
IT SEEMS the negative sentiments expressed by those who find the concept of “President
Trump” to be a national embarrassment are not limited to the women.
There
are going to continue to be protests held by activist-types concerned about
immigration policy and the president’s executive orders that he tries to spin
into something that only impacts a few select people from certain countries.
But
the reality is that such policies stir up the nativist element of our society –
the xenophobes who are inclined to view this as merely the first step (after
all, Trump has only been president a couple of weeks now). It’s just a matter
of time before restrictive policies can be spread to cover many other parts of
the world.
So
I expect the protests are going to become more vociferous. More outbursts. More
vocal. Particularly since U.S. District Judge James Robarts in Seattle on Friday issued an order that, for now, has halted the Trump action that they counted on to enforce their non-Muslim vision of the world.
BECAUSE
THEY’LL BE on behalf of people that the conservative ideologues want to believe
never had any right to be in this country at all (or casting votes in this
election, which is the base sentiment behind Trump’s cheap rhetoric that he
really won the popular vote last year in the presidential election), the
reactions will become more mean-spirited than the laughs that were generated
for the women.
They’re
going to be hostile. We’ll see how close they push to being violent, when some
group of crackpots decide they’re taking matters into their own hands and
fighting on behalf of the United States of America in telling those foreigners
where to go!
There
have been protests all week in places across the nation, including in Chicago
on Wednesday night when people marched from the Homeland Security offices to
the federal plaza (the site where the women wanted to wind up, but couldn’t
because their crowds of possibly up to 250,000 were too large).
There
also will be another protest and rally Saturday in East Chicago, Ind., giving
those people a chance to express themselves without having to make the trip
into the city. It’s not just the Chicago malcontents upset their support for
Hillary Clinton wasn’t enough to win her an Election Day victory.
EVEN
THE WOMEN had a similar counterpart rally for Northwest Indiana, held in
Valparaiso. Although this one is being held in a community where just over half
the population is of Latino ethnic origins. Immigration sentiments spread across ethnic labels.
Which also means the
hostility will be there. I already have seen countless statements being posted
on places throughout the Internet expressing the idea that these people have no
right to complain, and that no one will listen to them or ought to pay them any
mind.
I
saw one Facebook crackpot (who insisted on using a picture of himself in
military uniform, which I think ought to constitute a violation of good taste)
say that the protests will be successful in 90 days – which is when Trump’s
restrictions are allegedly going to cease to exist.
But
that’s only because the permanent policies that are now being crafted are to
take effect then. It becomes important to make one’s opposition known before
the changes become permanent.
I
FIND IT reassuring that people are not falling for the Trump-ite spin that says
his immigration restrictions merely impact a few individuals – and not even all
people with Arab or Middle Eastern ethnic origins. Meaning the bulk of us
shouldn’t care.
It
really doesn’t matter how few there are. Because any hostile policy reflects
poorly upon us as a people. We lose a lot of the moral high ground our society
always claims to have when it asserts itself over the rest of the world.
And
perhaps seeing the women and the Latinos and just about everyone else who wasn’t
in the 46 percent of voters who actually thought Donald J. Trump was fit to be
president is a sign of a lesson truly learned; the one expressed in that poem
by Pastor Martin Niemoller about cowardice during the Nazi era in Germany – you’re
all aware of it:
First, they came
for the Socialists, and I did not speak out – because I was not a Socialist,
Then, they came
for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out – because I was not a Trade
Unionist,
Then, they came
for the Jews, and I did not speak out – because I was not a Jew.
Then, they came
for me – and there was no one left to speak for me.
Whether
he likes it or not, the masses are going to let their opposition to Trump on
many grounds be known; regardless of how much the ideologues wind up being annoyed
at the realization they’re outnumbered.
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