Once upon a time, not all that long ago, the leader of the Republican Party and the conservative movement in this country was Ronald Reagan, and I miss him.
You could disagree with Reagan’s policies, and many did, but his unfailing optimism and his belief in American exceptionalism were contagious.
I keep thinking about that as I hear Donald Trump’s increasingly nihilistic rhetoric about America. He reached a new low during a rally in Tempe, Arizona last week as he blamed Vice President Kamala Harris on the issue of border security and immigration.
He said she, “deliberately dismantled our border and threw open the gates.” He said as a result, “We’re a dumping ground. We’re like a garbage can. You know it’s the first time I’ve ever said that. Every time I come up and talk about what they’ve done to our country, I get angrier and angrier, and it’s the first time I’ve ever said, ‘garbage can,’ but it’s a very accurate description.”
Illegal border crossings have surged during the last three-and-a-half years, and the criticism of how the Biden-Harris administration has managed the border and immigration is legitimate. However, the U.S. Customs and Border Protection reports the encounters between ports of entry have dropped significantly since the administration took executive action in June making it harder for migrants to claim asylum at the southern border.
Trump’s “garbage can” metaphor is tied to his contention that countries are opening prisons and mental facilities and sending those people to this country. There is no evidence to back up that claim, but that does not stop Trump from making it.
It is a continuation of his dystopian view of a country in decline. His campaign is a pattern of setting up partially true or completely false propositions and then offering himself as the only solution. Trump’s rhetoric triggers darkness and fear.
By comparison, Ronald Reagan was guided by hope and, as he said in his farewell address in 1989, the great things that come “from the heart of a great nation—from our experience, our wisdom, and our belief in the principles that have guided us for two centuries.”
As he often did, he referenced John Winthrop’s ideal of America delivered in a sermon while bound for Massachusetts Bay in 1630—“The shining city upon a hill,” which he took from the Gospel of Matthew.
It was perhaps the earliest reference to American exceptionalism, which more than three centuries later, Reagan took to heart. “In my mind it was a tall, proud city built on rocks stronger than oceans, windswept, God-blessed, and teeming with people of all kinds living in harmony and peace.”
Reagan’s critics would often dismiss his musings as hackneyed and myopic. He was an easy target for cynics and those who considered our belief in exceptionalism as jingoistic pap. But they missed the point.
The fundamental values of the country always made him aspirational and never demagogic, which is what a country needs in its leaders if it wants to accomplish important things. Reagan understood that, but it is a belief that today’s Republican Party under the leadership of Donald Trump has forgotten.
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Publish date : 2024-10-27 17:58:00
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