"The system must be jammed," said an official as the line for U.S Customs and Border Control coiled and recoiled like one's intestines at the John F. Kennedy Airport at New York. The first phase of the Trump "Muslim Ban" was in play. Fear and tension was almost palpable on the faces of those who had a giant X on their immigration slip, which resulted in them being ushered into a separate line by airport officials.
I was returning from a three week vacation in India. I heard about Trump's Muslim ban on my way to the Airport at Delhi, but brushed the substantiality of it aside deeming it as another of his nugatory promises. What I failed to realize was that unlike "Trump the candidate", "Trump the POTUS" actually weaves immense power and can change the course of millions of lives with a single stroke of his pen called "the signing of an executive order". And so he did.
I've been back for a week now. But in the course of this week I have felt that the America I left four weeks ago isn't the America that I have come back to. The America I left was wounded -- wounded by the divide that had pestered the United-ness of it. The America I see today, however, is more United than it has ever been. From signing petitions to halt discriminatory, anti-environment, anti-women, in essence anti-human legislations to exercising its first amendment rights through peaceful and gracious congregations, in my perspective America has gone through what we may call a "caterpillar to butterfly" transformation. Though Alt Right groups and conservative commentators readily reduce protests and organized social movements to "herds of triggered crybabies," it is undeniable that these same "herds of triggered crybabies" have reminded us what a democracy looks like. It is easy to call out on the politically 'woke' by reading off of a cut and dried quasi-clever script, but it takes a whole lot of commitment to dedicate time and effort into the organization of such social dissents.
Opposition of Trump's Muslim ban is not to say that the United States ought to have an "Open Door Policy" when it comes to Immigration -- that would be both impractical and unfeasible. However, instead of banning entire populations, Mr. Orange Face should have devised a screening process to eliminate the real "threats" -- criminal offenders, people with past ties with radical groups, convicts etc. In lieu of the travel ban, a plethora of statistics have revealed that "the influx of security threats" from the banned nations is almost negligible. Hence, the only objective that Trump's ban has achieved so far is the dismantling of families.
In her op-ed column titled "In Trump's Washington, Nothing Feels Stable" for the WSJ, Peggy Noonan writes that, "Americans want an America that looks after itself, but they don’t admire bigotry or respect prejudice. They’re embarrassed by it." Miss Noonan declares that the executive order not only shook Trump's 'enemies' but his allies as well, hence "Everyone, left, right and center, feels the earth is unsteady under their feet." And considering the WSJ's political leaning, one can surmise that things have actually gone "too wrong".
As powerful as Trump might be, he is not immune to the power of social movements like the Women's March on Washington (and the world) and the ongoing anti-Trump protests that have swept the nation. While the Women's March reiterated the power 'the ladies of the nation' wield, the anti-Trump protests in response to Trump's ban on immigration from seven Muslim majority countries is a striking reminder to the POTUS that he can't undermine the potency of the very peoples that he derives his own power from. As America, what we must do is believe in our Unity and March On -- because it is not Trump's America, it is ours.
