IT has become alarmingly apparent that the election of US President Donald Trump last year has brought out the worst characteristics in the American people. Emboldened by the US president’s simplistic and bigoted views of the world, racists and white supremacists have come out of the woodwork to spew hatred toward all things they view as foreign, wearing their ignorance on their sleeves.
Typically, Mr. Trump reaches the lowest common denominator in the American public with his posts on Twitter, bypassing, as he likes to point out, the traditional media and going straight to the people. Unfortunately, the “people” with whom his tweets resonate represent the ugly underbelly of American society, who have neither the intellect nor the inclination to discern the value of just what Mr. Trump is saying. In the terse, pithy style that Twitter encourages, Trump’s lies and inflammatory remarks can be passed off as truth without the benefit of evidence. His simplistic solutions to complex problems such as terrorism—ban immigration from Muslim countries—gain credence, particularly among the uneducated, who resent foreigners for taking jobs away from them, even though they would not have qualified for those jobs in the first place.
In Portland, Oregon, a 35-year-old convicted felon fatally stabbed two passengers aboard a commuter train after they tried to stop him from harassing two young women who appeared to be Muslim.
In March, a Sikh man was shot and injured in front of his house in a Seattle suburb. His attacker reportedly shouted “go back to your country.” In Kansas, a man walked into a bar and shot three men, including two immigrants from India, after shouting “get out of my country” and yelling racial slurs.
This rise in racially motivated hate crimes, fanned by a president that is unabashedly anti-immigrant, has given rise to the perception that intolerance has become the new normal in the United States.
Mr. Trump himself has continued to fan the flames of intolerance with his tweets on the recent London terror attacks, using them to urge US courts to reinstate his travel ban.
Then he took aim at the Muslim mayor of London.
“At least 7 dead and 48 wounded in terror attack and Mayor of London says there is “no reason to be alarmed!” he tweeted, twisting the local official’s words out of context.
The mayor, Sadiq Khan, had actually urged Londoners not to be alarmed by the increased police presence in the wake of the terror attacks.
“There’s no reason to be alarmed,” the mayor said of the increased police presence. “One of the things the police and all of us need to do is ensure that we’re as safe as we possibly can be.”
In their 1958 political novel The Ugly American, author Eugene Burdick and William Lederer depicted the failure of the US diplomatic corps, who were insensitive to the local language, culture and customs of the countries to which they were posted.
Mr. Trump’s updated version of the ugly American is far worse, going beyond an inability to engage the world to antagonizing it with hatred and ignorance. It is a pity that these ugly Americans have come to the forefront, overshadowing the millions of their better educated countrymen who are decent, open and tolerant.