What Donald Trump Gets Wrong about American Culture and the Constitution

Edwin Eisendrath

Several years ago, a friend from China became a U.S. citizen. To honor that event, I asked her to take me the best Chinese restaurant she could find in Chicago before her naturalization ceremony. And I promised to take her to an American restaurant that was just as good after she took the oath of allegiance.

She found a superb restaurant. A week later, I took her back to the very same restaurant. At first, she was confused. She reminded me that I promised to take her to an American restaurant. I told her that this is an American restaurant, and it is who we are. She thought about that for a minute and then got it.

It’s a lesson Donald Trump never learned.

Donald Trump’s homage to America celebrates the values of those Americans who developed the system of chattel slavery, deployed systematic violence, forced removals, and cultural erasure upon native populations, and exploited the labor of workers from farms to trucks to factories. It is an America whose highest values are to own and control.

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