Donald Trump's Soul Is Full of Greed and Garbage

Naturally, Donald Trump is celebrating the Supreme Court's atrocious decision to uphold a significant piece of Trump's Muslim ban, ubiquitously and mendaciously known as the "travel ban."

The White House put out a statement from Trump, reading in its entirety:

Today's unanimous Supreme Court decision is a clear victory for our national security. It allows the travel suspension for the six terror-prone countries and the refugee suspension to become largely effective.

As President, I cannot allow people into our country who want to do us harm. I want people who can love the United States and all of its citizens, and who will be hardworking and productive.

My number one responsibility as Commander in Chief is to keep the American people safe. Today's ruling allows me to use an important tool for protecting our Nation's homeland. I am also particularly gratified that the Supreme Court's decision was 9-0.

Hang on. Did the aggressively bigoted, incompetent, lazy-ass, big league loser of a president who fits signing bills that hurt people in between his golf game just say that he only wants immigrants who "can love the United States and all of its citizens, and who will be hardworking and productive"?

ALL THE MIRTHLESS LAUGHTER IN THE MULTIVERSE.

It's always the motherfuckers who could never meet their own requirements for citizenship that suggest the most absurd qualifications for entry.

It reminds me of the time that racist heapshit Rep. Duncan Hunter was asked at a Tea Party rally if he would support the deportation of American citizens who are the children of undocumented immigrants, to which Hunter replied that he would, then defended his position by saying, "We're not being mean. We're just saying it takes more than walking across the border to become an American citizen. It's within our souls."

What horseshit.

Our souls don't make us deserving of the best America has to offer. For proof of that, look no further than the GOP.

The Real American, as defined by Republicans, doesn't look anything like the collection of cowards and reprobates that comprise the Republican Party — least of all their disgusting wreck of a president.

The qualities that define Republicans' idealized Civis Americanus — patriotic, brave, principled, adventurous, enterprising, optimistic, indomitable — look an awful lot like the undocumented immigrant who makes their way across the border in search of a better life, risking deportation and detention and bodily harm to realize a dream arbitrarily denied on the accidental circumstances of one's birth.

Would that it took at least walking across the border to become an American citizen. We'd certainly have fewer citizens who used the gift of their unearned citizenry as a justification to behave like intolerant, isolationist scoundrels.

I am exhausted to my very bones with these projectionist hypocrites caterwauling about the unique soul of the American citizen, whose own souls could not less resemble their ideal. There's nothing fearless or innovative or hopeful or confident about xenophobic nationalism; about the promotion of personal avarice above social conscience; about contempt for the marginalized.

This country, a beautiful mosaic of people and cultures and ideas, still infused with a spirit of exploration and invention, really does have the potential to be a land of opportunity for everyone who arrives on its shores or crosses its borders, if we gave that notion half the chance it deserved.

But when the soul of Republicans' Ideal American Citizen stares them in the face, they suggest kicking it out of the country — or barring their entry altogether.

Within their souls is not the expansive, courageous ideal they champion, but a profound insecurity born of the lazy complacency that unearned privilege breeds. They are anxious braggarts, waving the flag and shouting about how America is the "greatest country in the world!" at every opportunity — and then reacting with sullen resentment when people agree and clamor to get in the door.

Certain people, anyway.

My Scottish-born husband came to the US not because his life was dreadful or he was being persecuted or his family was starving or because he couldn't find work. He came on a fiancée visa because he fell in love with an American citizen. And when we were flying over the ocean that once separated us, together, for the first time, clutching hands and chattering excitedly about the life on which we were about to embark, Iain talked about his vision of life in America — about its diversity and opportunity and generous supply of chances.

It was, I imagine, a conversation not at all dissimilar to those had by other immigrants making their way into the same country, who are different from Iain only by virtue of a piece of paper he held in his hand as he crossed the border, or because of the nation in which he was born.

Being an American is more than a matter of geography, law, and luck. Frequently, the people who weren't born here seem to understand that better than many of those who were.

They laugh and sniff and squirm and rage at the abiding belief shared by many Americans that this country is not "ours" to gift or deny to anyone who wants to share this space in good faith, and help make it better. They ignore any history that might suggest this land isn't "theirs." They not only draw lines along borders, but lines between citizens — the kind who belong here, and the kind who don't, because they didn't earn it, as if having been born here to citizens by a twist of fate is some sort of laudable achievement, but having been born here to non-citizens is some sort of scam.

And they talk about souls — whatever that means — as if souls don't reside inside one's humanity, which is neither contingent on nor contained by borders. Any American soul not firmly rooted in one's humanity isn't much of a soul at all; it's a selfish intellect disconnected from the commonality of humanness, whence the dehumanization of non-Americans begins.

I don't know if I have any kind of soul at all, no less a particularly American one. But if I do have an American soul, I can say this with certainty: Within my American soul is a love of this country, even despite its many flaws, so profound that I cannot imagine denying the chance to love it as much as I do to anyone who wanted it.