Trump's xenophobia strikes a chord in Keene? (New Hampshire)

The Keene Sentinel ^ | October 4, 2015 | Robert Azzi

[2ndDivisionVet]

Wednesday night I wasn’t surprised as candidate Donald Trump, in keeping within his narcissistic, xenophobic character, told an overflow crowd at Keene High School that if he became president he would send all Syrian refugees who had been given sanctuary in the United States, home:

“I’m putting (refugees) on notice that are coming here from Syria as part of this mass migration that if I win, they’re going back,” he said.

However, what both surprised and disappointed me was the boisterous affirmative response to Trump — cheers and hurrahs from the crowd, presumably mostly New Hampshirites, in support of Trump’s xenophobia.

Is this what New Hampshire has become?

Is this because, as Sinclair Lewis wrote in Elmer Gantry, that many of those cheering Donald Trump had, “got everything from the church and Sunday School except, perhaps, any longing whatever for decency and kindness and reason.”?

Is this what’s become of a land nurtured by Native Americans, chiseled from granite ledges by the labor of immigrants, shaped by generations of gnarly-handed sojourners and high-tech innovators, many of whom labor still within our borders?

This summer I bought native corn from an Armenian farm in Salem, ate sweets from a Syrian baker in Concord and had my aging Swedish Volvo 240 maintained by a Palestinian mechanic. I worshiped in a Manchester mosque, listened to Sunday sermons in Peterborough and drove a student to shabbat services in Portsmouth.

This year, too, I embraced, upon their return to New Hampshire for a visit, four Bosnians and their families — four sojourners out of many who came to our Granite State, barely a back-pack between them, 20 years ago during the war in Bosnia-Herzegovina and who were sheltered and fed by local families, educated in local schools and eventually, when they were able, returned home to rebuild their lives and country.

This is my New Hampshire, Donald Trump, a place where a 9-year-old solitary traveler with Syrian travel documents — my father — found a home and never feared being sent away.

America has a mixed record welcoming strangers. We dispossessed and stole the land of Native Americans and we worked and exploited their land with slave labor — all with nary a look back. Today, as we take pride in our diversity, innovation and power, we struggle still to be fully inclusive.

It’s a worthy struggle — and it’s not over.

During World War II America turned away Jews fleeing Nazi Germany and built concentration camps for Japanese Americans. Racism, xenophobia, discrimination and anti-Semitism exist still in some corners and we rightfully struggle to fulfill the promises of our Founding Fathers.

Institutional amnesia allows us to forget America’s complicity in the pre-revolution oppression and exploitation of the Cuban people by regimes and corporations favorable to our interests. Such amnesia allowed us to both hate the repressive Castro regime while welcoming all Cubans who made it to our shores almost without exception — including the families of candidates Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz.

We forget that the father of Apple founder Steve Jobs and his sister, author Mona Simpson, was a Syrian Muslim student who came to America to study; that President Barack Hussein Obama’s father came from Kenya; that Louisiana’s Piyush “Bobby” Jindal’s Hindu parents came from India to America to study; and that South Carolina’s Nimrata Nikki Randhawa Haley’s Sikh parents came from India’s Punjab.

Today, oblivious to the fact that the Middle East is broken in part because of the recklessness of the Bush administration, too many Americans want to turn their back on the human tragedy currently roiling The Levant and Europe — the world’s largest refugee crisis since WWII. Amidst those xenophobes Trump’s exclusionary rhetoric, from the Rio Grande to the Euphrates, sadly finds acceptance.

I believe we’re enjoined to struggle for social justice and dignity:

“Behold, God enjoins justice, and the doing of good, and generosity towards (one’s) fellow-men; and He forbids all that is shameful and all that runs counter to reason, as well as envy; (and) He exhorts you (repeatedly) so that you might bear (all this) in mind.” (Qur’an,16:90)

Amazon Prime won’t be delivering Syrian refugees with a free return policy. They won’t come tagged by FedEx, as advocated by New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie so we can track them down and return them to — where? — when The Donald becomes commander-in-chief.

They’ll come as Syrians who are Sunni, Shi’te, Druze, Armenian, Orthodox, Kurd, Circassian and other. They’ll come in part as victims of what Arthur Conolly, a 19th-century British intelligence officer, called “The Great Game” — the struggle for the resources and hegemony over the lands once peopled by prophets and poets.

In 1796, Ona Judge Staines, a slave in George Washington’s household and one of Martha’s favorites, escaped from their Philadelphia home.

Upon learning that the fugitive had arrived in Portsmouth, President Washington asked for her arrest and repatriation. Joseph Whipple, the Collector of Customs, defied Washington, choosing not to return Staines to Martha Washington’s service, thus allowing her to live free and die in New Hampshire.

Ona Staines wasn’t returned to bondage because emancipation was the right thing to do.

I believe the Syrian sojourners won’t be forcibly returned anywhere, either, because that is the right thing to do.

[IronJack]

So now wanting aliens to obey our laws is “xenophobia.”

Got it.

Can the Left ever get past this childish notion that calling someone an incendiary name constitutes an effective argument?

[T-Bone Texan]

Why do filthy foreigners feel free to give commentary on our great Nation?

Where I come from that is considered in poor taste.

For real: these people are uppity and need to be taught their proper place. If we cannot enforece our will upon them, our country is lost.

[Bigg Red]

Yep, someone should assist a bunch of smelly squatters to take up residence in this fool’s home to drive home the lesson.

[Lurkinanloomin]

I regret reading the whole thing.