by Emil Guillermo
It was typical Trump-style. The president’s July Fourth speech was a “flood the zone” mess. Veterans and patriotic sentiment, mixed in with red-baiting, followed up with loud, monotonous fireworks that made D.C. seem like a battlefield.
After the uniformed military singers joined in for the Ariel Pineda parts of Journey’s most famous song, I was ready for a cease-fire. But we were force-fed a bombastic 40 minutes.
And that’s still not the most memorable weekend highlight.
For that, we turn to something that should come as a warning to all Asian Americans. It was on the eve of July 4th, the 3rd, at Mt. Rushmore.
Standing beneath the towering stone likenesses of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln—the worst president in American history looked even smaller than normal, as he made an assessment of where we are as a country.
“We see our American identity under a renewed attack,” Trump said. “There is now a resurgence of the communist menace in our land, including from newcomers to our country, who embrace ideas totally opposed to our way of life and our great success.”
Was he talking about the Democratic Socialists winning in New York? If he was, it was a lie. The Mamdani-backed Democrats are not communists. They are Americans upset with the direction of our country’s economy and way of life. Not communists.
With Trump using the word “newcomers,” he made his target clear. It’s all about the immigrants, and he instantly made them all deportable.
And that’s the lasting subtext of Trump’s 250th birthday gift to America. The president took the occasion to formally declare the New Red Menace.
Figures. Trump was, after all, mentored by Roy Cohn, the hateful lawyer of Sen. Joe McCarthy who spearheaded the paranoid drive against the civil and political rights of Americans in the 1940s and 50s by accusing them of being communists.
When you’re down in the polls and you’re losing face in the world, what else do you do but launch the “New Red Menace” and heat up the rhetoric, saying “communism is a mortal threat to our American liberty, the greatest threat to our country.”
I was surprised Trump excluded himself, the evolving autocrat, who, considering his illegal and unconstitutional actions, would make him the greatest threat.
A missed opportunity.
In doing so, we now know the “middle game” of his second term. Relive the blacklist era between 1947 and 1959 and the reign of the House Un-American Activities Committee, where hateful Republicans hurled allegations against innocents that destroyed lives.
Hang on to your hats. Trump’s response to Progressive Democrats is to go full-on regressive and back to a mean and nasty time in America.
Don’t let the Fox-ites fool you by playing things down as if all Trump’s anti-Communist talk is just “standard rhetoric.”
It’s not. It’s the only strategy that can revive Trump and the GOP from a mid-term catastrophe.
Trump got a few anti-communist jabs in that late July Fourth speech, but masked with veterans and a bit of optimism, Fox commentators chose to simply dismiss it.
But we shouldn’t.
Ask all the innocent Asian scientists dragged through the mud when their loyalty to the U.S. was questioned. Ask the former NOAA scientist Sherry Chen, who won her case against the U.S.
Asian Americans in the academic research and scientific communities have only recently understood what all this Trump red-baiting means. And how it can destroy people’s lives.
And let’s hope our general population hasn’t forgotten the damage of red-baiting. It is the ultimate in weaponizing the government against political opponents.
Damn commies? Damn McCarthyites.
Trump is reviving the feeling. 250 years after the Declaration of Independence, we’ll all need cover from what looks like a full-fledged onslaught against anyone who dares to challenge the administration on affordability and cost-of-living issues, advocating for economic fairness and justice.
How can that be? Well, you can’t side with those “commies,” can you?
In fact, you must. Because they’re not commies. They’re just fellow Americans who aren’t blessed with billions. They’re regular folk who want to live the promise of America.
The Declaration That Matters
There were no Filipinos in the room when the Declaration of Independence was signed on July 4th, 1776.
They probably had no idea we would be coming. So when you talk about the Founding Fathers, I hope you thought about your own. Or your father’s father. Whoever was first. Think about that guy today.
And truthfully, let’s not forget the gals, too. We need not adopt the sexism or racism inherent in the Declaration to be inclusive. Our mothers and grandmothers who immigrated to America are no less noteworthy.
The courage it took to get on a boat, or later, a plane, from whatever island or foreign land. Or to drive across a border (all legally, of course). Whenever it was done on our individual timelines, the freedom was worth all the good feelings you can squeeze out of the weekend.
I hope you were inspired to read at least some of the Declaration of Independence. The beginning of the second graph is the killer.
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal,” it says. Feeling equal today? Or just sweet and low?
“That they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.”
Oh yeah, “LLPH.” Are you getting your share of that?
Defending Birthright
The high court’s recent birthright citizenship ruling affirmed that, yes, we belonged. And yes, we are entitled.
But it comes at the same time when the ICE quotas for arrests are resulting in thousands of people being rounded up, law-abiding immigrants among them.
The overall message? You don’t belong. We don’t want you.
We’ve been told that before as Filipinos. My father was told that in California in the 1920s.
Some are always trying to rig the equation so that some people are less equal than others.
That was why the founders declared independence in the first place, citing the “Right of the People to alter or to abolish” any form of government that “seems most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.”
It’s the reason they stood up against an absolute despot, against a King.
Today, we all can declare independence simply with the power of our vote. And that’s why this administration is doing all it can to restrict and prevent people from voting. Or coming here.
Here’s another example of how ugly the midterm elections will be.
House Speaker Mike Johnson told Fox the day after the Fourth that Congress would look to stop birthright citizenship, which he says has become birthright tourism.
Enough to upend more than a century of legal precedent dating back to Wong Kim Ark?
Here’s the easy fix for so-called “birthright tourism” abused by many countries, but especially by Chinese and Russian nationals.
The fix? Don’t give visas to pregnant women. Sorry. Simply abort their citizenship plans. Restrict visas to pregnant foreigners.
And leave the 14th Amendment alone. I jest? Not.
But already you see how the closer to the midterms, politics will only get more xenophobic, ugly, and anti-immigrant.
The president lit the wick on the eve of the Fourth at Mt. Rushmore, when the giant presidents of our history made Trump seem so small as he invoked the new red scare.
Funny coming from a guy who loves Russia’s communist leader Vladimir Putin so much, he had the U.S. join Russia against Ukraine at the UN.
Not to mention the recent sycophantic summit with President Xi, the leader of the Chinese Communist Party, when Trump called Xi not just a friend, but “a smart and great leader.”
What a guy, that Trump.
He’s the American president who aspires to be Xi and Putin, not Lincoln nor JFK. (I guess that’s why the MAGA hat is red?)
These are the themes that will reverberate throughout the midterm campaign. Trump will say it’s the only way to save America. No, it’s the only way he knows to save himself.
The ugliness of division is always the go-to when you’re limping desperately into the midterms.
EMIL GUILLERMO is an award-winning journalist, news analyst, and comic monologist. See him perform at the Winnipeg Fringe Festival, Venue 24, Ace Art Gallery, July 16-July 26. See him on YouTube.com/@emilamok1 for details.
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