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Phrase ‘go home’ can have devastatingly cruel meaning

Not long ago, I heard the mantra “If you don’t like it go home.”

It was a very snowy day, and the county plow crews were plowing. I needed to ask the plow operator if it was possible to leave smaller glaciers at the end of the driveway. He just looked at me and said nothing, so I turned to walk back to the house. It was three steps that I took before I heard him tell his partner that iconic meme heard only by those who do not look purely caucasian and most especially, if they happen to have an accent.

On that day, I decided to respond, so I turned to face him and walked back nearer to them. I told him “see this driveway? See the house at the end of it? It’s my house, I built it more than 45 years ago, it is my home, so get used to it.

Max Boot wrote “July 17, 2019, is a date that will live in infamy”. That was the day President Trump and his followers unveiled the unofficial slogan of his 2020 reelection campaign {send her back}, the successor to the unofficial slogan of his 2016 campaign: “Lock her up.” Both slogans are repulsive and certainly un-American, but the new one is even worse than the old, Boot asserted.

As one who has been “told” many times to “go back where I came from” or “go home” let me share why I agree with Mr. Boot. Setting aside that the president tried to disavow what anyone with eyes and ears have seen and heard him say on TV and social media.

Anyone could easily see and hear him lighting up the crowd’s fuse, and how long he relished in hearing their “cry” as he panoramically scanned the audience right and left. As always, he pivoted the next day and called the hateful shouters “incredible patriots.”

There is a reason that I find “send her back” to be more offensively un-American than “lock her up” which defies the most significant rule of democracy and the very foundation of our republic.

I can tell you from personal experience that despots indeed imprison those who dare to criticize them. There are no words that I know which can adequately tell you how dismally glum that is. Feeling safe to express your own views and opinions is a most uplifting feeling.

One of the president’s tweets asserted that the four female lawmakers very recently elected to represent their communities by the people of their community that they are “unable to love this country” dismissing the fact that three of them were born right here in America.

One of the differences between an immigrant becoming a citizen and one who is born a citizen is that immigrants must study to pass a citizenship exam. I am so glad I did. I am “forever” surprised by how so very little so many American know about their very own country and how it is constitutionally governed. I did not leave my place of birth because I was persecuted or because I had a meager existence.

I can and do understand why America is a beacon of goodness and graciousness for many. The president said that we are “full.” Maybe we are, but I have not come across any data to convince me of that.

In my experience, America is far better than what its president claims to be. He sees America as a land of carnage, warned that we are becoming a third-world country, and called us losers and laughingstocks of the world. The brutal fact is this. Indeed, we are beginning to lose our global status, but that is overwhelmingly due to his own words (anytime anywhere he is not reined in by a teleprompter), and acts which for the most part are only to fluff his own cushions’.

Irrespective of whether you support the president or not, genuine authentic Americanism has nothing that resembles such hateful bigotry and purely racist veins. I left everyone and everything I knew to come to America. My views were obtained and shaped by TV series and films.

It was the late 50’s and early 60’s, and America looked like heaven to me. I was young when I knew deep in my core that the ultimate destination of my life’s journey will be to live and work and be right where I am on the day, I write these words.

Editor’s note: Mohey Mowafy of Marquette is a retired Northern Michigan University professor.

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