In one week the preposterous second-place president transformed the land of the free and the home of the brave into the land of the prejudiced and the home of the scaredy-cats.
As they say, elections have consequences. That goes as well for electoral colleges that defy the popular will.
Prejudiced? Why, yes, precisely.
Prejudice is defined as a predetermined opinion of someone without knowing that someone. For Donald Trump to declare the world's once-great immigrant destination unaccepting of anyone coming from seven nations because those nations contain terrorists ... that's textbook prejudice, imposing a negative opinion of individuals based on a stereotype.
It also is mean-spirited to refugees we've vetted and determined to be perfectly safe--legitimate refugees, in other words, in need of the safe harbor a humane pre-Trump America, generous and brave, would have provided.
Then to compound the prejudice by saying Christians will be accepted before Muslims when the United States begins accepting anyone at all from those seven nations ... that's textbook religious bias, which defies merely the founding essence of our country and its Constitution.
Scaredy-cats? Why, yes, precisely.
Typical of a blustery bully, Trump has put himself and America into a pitiably cowering position.
There are no guarantees of safety when terrorism is the foe. There are no guarantees of safety, period. But, statistically, the greater threat is a homegrown mass shooter, or a weather event, or an automobile accident.
Fear is paralyzing and destructive. But it can motivate common sense when applied to logical precaution. And carefully vetting for up to two years all Syrian refugees who seek asylum--the policy of the braver America of a week ago--is a logical precaution.
But simply declaring that no refugee from Syria may be allowed in the United States at all, as well as no immigrant or visitor from Iraq, Iran, Yemen, Libya, Somalia and Sudan for 90 days, applies fear in a way that is un-American and non-Christian.
It returns the Statue of Liberty to France and replaces it with a keep-out sign, metaphorically speaking.
There are other problems in the Trump executive order.
The first is that it was so vague and un-vetted by relevant agencies that the keystone-cop enforcement beheld worldwide over the weekend would provide high-grade slapstick if prejudice and fear could ever be deemed laughing matters.
Another is that, if national protection was the point, then the objective was compromised by the uneven politics-based selection of the Mideast countries to be affected. Our attackers on Sept. 11, 2001, mostly came through Saudi Arabia. But Saudi Arabia is our ally politically and economically, and is not affected by the order. The preposterous second-place president has done business there.
Thus the Trump administration seeks to protect the country only to the extent politically and economically expedient.
It defends itself by citing a finding from the Obama administration that the seven nations affected by Trump's order were the seven most known for the presence of terrorists. That, we should note, is the first report of the Trump administration embracing for legitimacy a position of the Obama administration.
Another problem is that our national cowering may not make us safer, but the opposite. It could lose us valuable admirers, friends and allies in the region infested with terrorists who want to kill us.
When an Iraqi man who interpreted for our soldiers is detained at a New York airport ... what signal does that send to the next local person we may seek out for help?
Newt Gingrich has said, sagely, that everything else will be mere noise if Trump creates jobs and keeps the country safe. In this case the prejudiced scaredy-cat may be making the nation less safe.
One more problem: Many people from the seven affected countries have enhanced the United States by coming to it. We see many examples, but here is one close to home: When former U.S. Sen. David Pryor was rushed to Washington Regional Medical Center in Fayetteville with a stroke, his survival and recovery chances were enhanced by the fact that two neurosurgeon brothers who came here from Iran, and who specialize in new and less-invasive treatments, were on duty.
I'm not saying Pryor would no longer be with us if not for immigrants from Iran. I'm not saying anything Trump has ordered affects these brothers' move to America in the 1980s.
What I am saying is that people vary wherever they live and that a blanket exclusion of any duration will inevitably lock out the good with the bad.
An Iranian filmmaker apparently will not be able to visit America for the Academy Awards for which he has been nominated.
It's better to welcome the good and screen out the bad.
If Tennessee turned scaredy-cat and banned all Arkansans owing to crime in Little Rock, then Tennessee might miss out on good doctors from UAMS or a worthy country-and-western musical talent.
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John Brummett, whose column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, was inducted into the Arkansas Writers' Hall of Fame in 2014. Email him at [email protected]. Read his @johnbrummett Twitter feed.
Editorial on 01/31/2017