Do What I Say, Not What I Do
From the very early days of the campaign, His Orangeness has railed against all things not White American Male – all dark skinned people, especially women, ALL women, for that matter, and immigration, both legal and undocumented. His rhetoric is continuously over the top, hateful, and racist. He loves to dehumanize migrants with inflammatory terms like “illegals”, “animals”, and “aliens”. His favorite pejorative, though, is “chain migration”. The actual term is “family reunification” which has been allowed by the US government for decades where a documented migrant to the US could sponsor their spouse and children to join them in the states. In some cases, a migrant’s parents are admitted into the country to join the family. It’s humane, decent, and, I might add, very difficult. It takes years to unify families through our broken system.
But in Trumpland, “chain migration” has been weaponized and is now used by Trumpists to be bigots in polite society. Trump has repeated the falsehood (even during the State of the Union) that “chain migration” allows immigrants to bring “unlimited” people to the United States. The statement, in short, is simply a lie. It’s not true, and has never been true, but the term is in high repeat in conservative circles.
Trump’s problem, though, is that the very system he rails against just allowed Melania Trump (You remember her, right? She’s the nude model from Slovenia who is now our First Lady.) to bring in her parents through “chain migration”. AND, said parents, Viktor and Amalija Knavs, became US citizens yesterday. That’s right, folks, the very system that Trump demands that Congress end just allowed his in-laws to become American citizens. Now, the Knavs are probably perfectly nice people who are fortunate to have friends in high places who could grease the skids for them attain US citizenship, which millions of others have been waiting decades for. That’s not the problem. The problem is the now-familiar hypocrisy.
This kind of hypocrisy shouldn’t be surprising. Trump’s entire personal foundation is built on lies, cheating, and hypocrisy. Rules apply to everyone else, but not Trump. He’s immune from common decency or common sense. Worse, the White House refuses to address any of his hypocrisy, including the “chain migration” lie, and the invertebrates in Congress, terrified of losing their power, do nothing to stop it. That’s why it’s up to us to shine the light on Trump’s lies and fight fire with fire.
There is a place for anger, and THIS is it.