Donald Criticizes Identification, Not Race

Donald keeps getting criticized for criticizing race:

Mr. Trump has called Judge Curiel, who was born in Indiana to Mexican immigrants, a “Mexican” and said he has a “conflict of interest” in the case because of Mr. Trump’s proposed border wall with Mexico. The case that Judge Curiel is overseeing is a class-action suit in which students of the for-profit operation say they were defrauded.

Mr. Dickerson asked Mr. Trump if, in his view, a Muslim judge would be similarly biased because of the Republican presumptive nominee’s call for a ban on Muslim immigrants. “It’s possible, yes,” Mr. Trump said. “Yeah. That would be possible. Absolutely.”

This reminds me of Teddy Roosevelt’s comments on the same subject:

There is no room in this country for hyphenated Americanism. When I refer to hyphenated Americans, I do not refer to naturalized Americans. Some of the very best Americans I have ever known were naturalized Americans, Americans born abroad. But a hyphenated American is not an American at all.

This is just as true of the man who puts “native” before the hyphen as of the man who puts German or Irish or English or French before the hyphen. Americanism is a matter of the spirit and of the soul. Our allegiance must be purely to the United States. We must unsparingly condemn any man who holds any other allegiance.

But if he is heartily and singly loyal to this Republic, then no matter where he was born, he is just as good an American as any one else.

The one absolutely certain way of bringing this nation to ruin, of preventing all possibility of its continuing to be a nation at all, would be to permit it to become a tangle of squabbling nationalities, an intricate knot of German-Americans, Irish-Americans, English- Americans, French-Americans, Scandinavian- Americans, or Italian-Americans, each preserving its separate nationality, each at heart feeling more sympathy with Europeans of that nationality than with the other citizens of the American Republic.

The men who do not become Americans and nothing else are hyphenated Americans; and there ought to be no room for them in this country. The man who calls himself an American citizen and who yet shows by his actions that he is primarily the citizen of a foreign land, plays a thoroughly mischievous part in the life of our body politic. He has no place here; and the sooner he returns to the land to which he feels his real heart-allegiance, the better it will be for every good American.

Donald needs to point out that he isn’t criticizing race, he is criticizing identification. Nobody has a problem with a judge of Mexican descent who identifies as a freedom-loving American, and rules fairly in the interests of America and Americans. Everybody will have a problem with an American judge who identifies as a Mexican, and rules to advance the interests of Mexicans over Americans. Likewise, nobody has a problem with a Muslim judge who identifies as a freedom-loving American. Nobody wants a Muslim judge who identifies as a Muslim before being an American.

Donald needs to turn this into an issue of people either being loyal to some out-grouped identification, or loyal to America, first and foremost – and point out that he is the one calling for patriotic loyalty, while it is his opponents who are calling for treason and the betrayal of this nation and its people.

This would make him into the loyal American in the debate, and make everyone who opposes him into the traitors who want to betray us all. It would also force those listening to the issue to either identify themselves as people who want citizens to betray America, or people who are loyal Americans and part of the larger group – and thus Trump supporters.

This would also call up a subconscious amygdala pathway that a lot of us have been subtly developing for a long time – the issue of fellow citizens who view Americans as outsiders, because they identify as members of another country. For too long we have had people loyal to other nations help themselves to this nation’s bounty, while dmeanding our loyalty to them based on their technical citizenship, even though they themselves don’t even make a pretense of such loyalty to our nation, or its people.

With just a little rhetorical Judo, this entire issue becomes one his opponents would flee from, and one which would subtly force everyone to identify with the Donald – as a loyal, patriotic American, or openly self identify as one of the traitors who holds no loyalty to this nation or its people.