Tag: history

Dumping on Democracy

On October 19, 2025, Donald Trump sank to a new low in his break from presidential traditions. He shredded the principle that because the President is the one officer elected by the entire nation, not merely by one state or district, he must at least attempt to rise above party politics. President Andrew Jackson once summed up this principle when he declared that unlike all other government officers “the President is the direct representative of the American people” and must therefore always endeavor to rise above party politics. Presidents up until now have—despite their flaws—tried to at least pay some lip service to this idea.

For years, Donald Trump has sneered at anyone who dares to disagree with him—calling them “dishonest,” “weak,” “corrupt,” “losers,” “low IQ,” and “lazy.” But on October 19th  he went further. He posted a juvenile cartoon video of himself flying a fighter jet, dumping excrement on millions of citizens peacefully exercising their freedom of speech. It was crude, it was cruel, and it was the clearest window yet into his contempt for the American people he has sworn to serve.

Let’s be clear: he wasn’t just emptying his bowels on the protesters. He was emptying them on every president who came before him who worked to soothe political agitations rather than vilify and dehumanize their opponents. Starting with George Washington, John Adams, and Thomas Jefferson, everything they stood for—principle, unity, and the belief that disagreement should never dissolve the bonds of the republic—was desecrated and defiled in Trump’s video.

Washington, for all the myth of universal adoration, was hardly spared the sting of politics. He was burned in effigy more than once by his opponents. Many balked at the idea of celebrating his birthday—after all, national birthday celebrations were for kings, not presidents. Yet despite the vitriol Washington endured, in his Farewell Address he warned against the “spirit of revenge” that arises from partisan politics and has perpetuated “the most horrid enormities.”

John Adams fared no better. His political opponents called him a “mentally deranged, blind, bald, toothless old man” who supposedly planned to end presidential elections and turn the country into a monarchy. Yet Adams refused to fully align himself with the party that supported him, nor did he engage in personal attacks against his opponents. He claimed simply to be a man of principle—a “party of one.”

Of course, we leave it to Thomas Jefferson to best articulate the central principle of our democracy—one that Donald Trump seems to find most contemptible. After prevailing in the contentious election of 1800, an election that included claims that Jefferson’s victory would unleash a reign of terror where murder, adultery, rape, incest, and robbery would be openly taught and practiced—Jefferson rose above the frenzy. In his inaugural address, he declared:

Let us then, fellow citizens, unite with one heart and one mind, let us restore to social intercourse that harmony and affection without which liberty, and even life itself, are but dreary things. And let us reflect that having banished from our land that religious intolerance under which mankind so long bled and suffered, we have yet gained little if we countenance a political intolerance, as despotic, as wicked, and capable of as bitter and bloody persecutions. 

Washington, Adams and Jefferson hoped to convey that despite our political differences, we are knit together by our love for this country. As Jefferson wrote,

 

Every difference of opinion is not a difference of principle. We have called by different names brethren of the same principle. We are all republicans: we are all federalists.

Mistakes and Apologies

The idea that immigrants come from “prisons” or “mental institutions,” especially in reference to immigrants from South America, expresses a theme that is an entrenched part of the American narrative.

When laws that specifically target one group are passed, they are seen as necessary at the time, driven by the perceived need to protect national security. However, history inevitably reveals them as moments when our nation was deeply mistaken. Despite the lessons these mistakes should teach us, we repeatedly fail to learn from them, allowing fear and prejudice to shape our policies again and again.

Trump recently invoked the Alien Enemies Act that was passed in 1789, when the French were the target of our collective fears. If the Quasi-War with France expanded from a naval conflict to a land war, which side would the French be on? The act made it easier to deport suspected spies and made it harder to become a citizen. If Trump were a better student of American history, he would know that most historians agree that the passage of that law was the low point of Adams’ presidency. Even Adams later claimed that “this law was never executed by me, in any sense.”

In 1882, the Chinese became the target of intense national xenophobia, with accusations that they were stealing jobs from Americans, driving down wages, and engaging in vices such as gambling and opium smoking. In response to these prejudices, the U.S. government passed the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, a law that aimed to halt Chinese immigration. In 1943 they were suddenly no longer a menace. We needed an alliance with China in order to win World War II and the law was repealed. As Franklin Roosevelt said at the time, “Nations like individuals make mistakes. We must be big enough to acknowledge our mistakes of the past and to correct them.”

In 1988 it was President Ronald Reagan’s turn to apologize when he signed a bill that provided restitution for the wartime internment of Japanese-American civilians. Reagan admitted that “This action was taken without trial, without jury. It was based solely on race…we must recognize that the internment of Japanese-Americans was just that: a mistake.”

Sometimes, it’s not the passage of legislation, but the absence of it, that becomes a national disgrace. After World War II, the fear of communism coupled with deep-seated antisemitism, prevented the U.S. from passing a law that could have offered refuge to some of the war’s most aggrieved victims. In 1945, a proposal to increase the number of Jewish refugees allowed into the United States was blocked by Congress. Critics at the time argued that “many of those [Jewish refugees] who seek entrance into this country have little concept of our form of government.”

Some even described the rejection of this legislation as a “betrayal of our basic American tradition.” But in reality, it was a continuation of our darker traditions—one that persists to this day.