Salon: Don’t let Donald Trump win this argument: Democrats must push back forcefully against

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anti-refugee xenophobia

Calling out the right's ugly xenophobia isn't just the right thing, morally; it's also a political necessity

Yes, the outpouring of sympathy and grief inspired by the recent terrorist attack in Paris has been touching. And despite how odd it might be to hear a bunch of ultra-conservative, anti-labor types declaring solidarity, it’s nice to see Americans put the xenophobia that’s defined the politics of 2015 on pause and at least pretend to care about other people. That’s all been good.

But we Americans would be kidding ourselves if we pretended that those humanitarian sentiments have defined our reaction to Paris. They haven’t. On the contrary, the loudest voices in America, the ones that the rest of the world is most likely to hear first, have demanded that the country respond to the massacres exactly how ISIS wants — with terror, rage and a kind of paranoid tribalism that I like to call lizard-brained. Perhaps fittingly, given how embarrassing this behavior is already, the targets of this spasm of irrational meanness and cruelty have been arguably the weakest, most helpless people on the planet: Syria’s refugees.

Strongly pushing back on this mob mentality should instead be understood as a part of the larger battle over the meaning of “Americanness” that currently roils U.S. politics. Because the mentality that treats the welcoming of nonwhite, non-Christian refugees to American soil as a sign of decadence is the same mentality that regards Barack Obama’s patriotism as inherently suspect. It is the logic of those for whom the phrase “real Americans” makes intuitive sense. It is an ideological position.

What’s more, it’s an ideological position, and an understanding of Americanness, that Democrats cannot afford to let stand unchallenged. Not just for moral reasons, though those motivations are profound; but for political ones as well. Under Barack Obama, the Democratic Party has accelerated its long-term trajectory toward becoming the country’s first truly multicultural and cosmopolitan major party. That’s done; that ship has sailed (just ask Jim Webb).

http://www.salon.com/2015/11/19/dont_let_donald_trump_win_this_argument_democrats_must_push_back_forcefully_against_anti_refugee_xenophobia/?google_editors_picks=true

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