The De-Valuation of American Citizenship

by J.R. May, Published 25th June 2026 @ 10:54AM EST

A week ago, I had booked an Uber for a ride home from visiting a friend in Baltimore - an activity that thousands of Americans do on a regular basis. Most passengers, especially in suburban and metropolitan areas, are used to the wide variety of personalities and characters that encompass those who routinely drive with Uber, Lyft and other rideshare platforms; for example, you've got the chatty drivers who will eagerly tell you their entire life's story during a 10-minute ride, the drivers who spend your entire ride conversing on the phone with someone else via Bluetooth, the drivers that listen to their favorite music while driving you to your destination and, invariably, scattered among this wide variety of personalities and life stories are non-native immigrants that came to America seeking their own version of the fabled "American Dream".

It was on this particular day that my driver was a member of the latter group, a non-native immigrant who had come to the US in the 1980's seeking a better life for himself and his family. Now in his 60's, he had taken up Uber as a way to bring in extra cash for his family - a wife, several children and numerous grandchildren. I listened intently as he told me the story of how he came to the United States, filled with hope and the promise of a better future than what had been offered in his native Somalia. I smiled softly when he spoke of the day he officially became a US citizen, beaming with joy at being one of the "lucky few" granted the extraordinary privilege of not just merely citizenship, but US citizenship, and chuckled as he described it as having been gifted "the Golden Ticket inside the Wonka Bar". Back then, he said, there was no greater honor, no greater privilege an immigrant to the US could dream of than becoming a full-fledged citizen of the United States of America - and he took great pride in it. He went on to describe how he worked hard to bring the rest of his family over from Somalia, to build a life for himself and his wife & children. Not one day in his life, he said with great conviction, had he ever regretted the choice to leave Somalia for the United States, to build a new life, to become a citizen. 

"…At least, not until recently." Abruptly, his tone changed; his voice softened, the weight of sadness and weariness evident immediately as he continued, "…I never thought I would feel shame at being a US citizen. I never thought I would feel regret. I have loved this country for so long; it was all I ever dreamed of. No matter how hard I had to work, I was willing to do it for the opportunity to call this place 'my home' forever, but now…I just feel sorrow. The rest of my family still in Somalia, they do not understand it. I cannot explain to them what is happening here. Some days, I fear for myself, my wife, even my children. I know I don't sound like you when I speak. I'm afraid - even as a citizen, will they (ICE) come for me too? I left Somalia for such reasons, but now I feel the same fear as I felt all those years ago. But where do I go now? Where do I run to now? I'm 63 years old; I cannot just uproot my whole life again as I did when I was younger. I am too old to flee…"

Finally, with sadness, he glanced back at me and said, "…I don't understand where the hatred comes from. Why? Why do they hate us so much? All I ever wanted…", he paused briefly before continuing "…was a better life for my family. I never expected to be hated for that."

As we arrived at my destination, sadness now tucked and hidden away behind his usual smile, I thanked him for the ride - and his story. Before I could open my door fully, however, he stopped me and offered me his personal cell number. "Next time, just call me if you ever need a ride; doesn't matter when, any time of day or night, you just call me." I told him that was kind but not necessary, but he insisted "No please, just take my number, really it's no trouble…you're one of the good ones", he said, before his tone again softened "…some others, not so much. Some others…", he continued, his voice now almost whisper-quiet "…they scare me. Please. And thank you again - for being so kind." Properly humbled, I accepted his number and saved it in my contacts list. As he drove off to his next Uber pickup, I stood there for a moment, in front of my home, in silence.

I felt ashamed. 

Deeply, undeniably ashamed. In that moment, staring at my phone, saving his number to my contacts list, I had never been more disgusted in my life with myself for being a US citizen than I had felt in that moment. On the heels of that shame, however - rage. Rage at how our current so-called "leadership" has cheapened and devalued the thing I had always, from the time I was a little girl growing up in southwestern Ohio, a product of a traditional conservative upbringing in a family that had served our country for generations, always taken immense pride in being identified as: An American Citizen. Alongside that rage, finally, was another emotion: Betrayal. I felt betrayed. Betrayed by traitors for whom citizenship is a God-Given Right of their own birth, but whom would willingly deprive others who share in our goals, our dreams as a nation the right to share the same.

And so, in the midst of my shame, I began to ponder, "What does it mean to be a citizen? What should it do for a person? What rights and privileges should it confer to those bestowed with it?", and finally, "What value should citizenship even hold? What value does citizenship hold right now?"

Recently, the topic of US birthright citizenship has been taken up by the Supreme Court of the United States. At stake is whether or not the children of undocumented immigrant parents who are not legal residents born on US soil can rightfully claim US citizenship by birth under Section 1 of the 14th Amendment, which states: "All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside." In Trump v. Barbara, the Trump Regime has argued that the phrase "and subject to the jurisdiction thereof" excludes children of undocumented immigrants and some temporary visa holders. While originally included within the 14th Amendment as a direct rebuke to Dread Scott v. Sanford (1857) and a further step in dismantling the so-called "Black Codes" to guarantee US citizenship to the children of former slaves after the Civil War, long before the 14th Amendment existed, the idea of "who should be considered a citizen?" had already been broadly tackled by the early framers of the Constitution.

Before the United States was the mature nation of 50 states and multiple territories that exists today, back when the "nation" was young and consisted of only the 13 original colonies, the Founding Fathers sought to unify the young would-be nation under a single banner of "citizenship" without impinging upon the laws and customs unique to each independent, sovereign state. As such, the concept of "citizenship" itself was rooted in the early Constitution's Privileges and Immunities Clause of Article IV, which states: "The Citizens of each State shall be entitled to all Privileges and Immunities of Citizens in the several States.". It sounds simple enough, but at the time the only thing that bound each would-be state to another had been their shared identity as British Colonial subjects to the Crown of England - that, and their shared belief in freedom from the Crown's authority over the colonies. Beyond that, what was to guarantee their continued co-existence and cooperation across territorial boundaries, across state lines and, beyond that, to the as-yet-little explored frontier once free of the Crown's influence? A "national identity" did not exist yet. That was precisely what this clause sought to create - a way to unify the young nation, to prevent the possibility that out-of-state visitors would be treated as foreigners or second-class citizens within other states. It protected fundamental national citizenship rights from state, rather than just federal, infringement.

Further limiting the power of the Executive Branch to strip away citizenship-by-birth is the Due Process Clause, found in the 5th Amendment of the Bill of Rights. Early framers of the 14th Amendment relied on the Due Process Clause, originally created as a limitation on the federal government, to apply or "incorporate" the protections enshrined in it to state governments as well. It strips the Executive Branch of the power to unilaterally revoke or deny a person's recognized status without rigorous, individualized judicial review since citizenship is considered a supreme "liberty" and "property" interest under the Constitution. As such, the government cannot arbitrarily bypass established laws or constitutional mandates to strip a person of their status - which is exactly what the Trump Regime sought to do shortly after taking office when Trump signed an executive order titled "Protecting the Meaning and Value of American Citizenship." It was this action that directly led to where we are today, with the Supreme Court on the verge of issuing a decision in what is sure to be one of the most important cases since the reversal of Roe v. Wade. 

So far, the Court has signaled that it does not agree with the Trump Regime's interpretation of the 14th Amendment, Section 1, and remains highly skeptical of their arguments against birthright citizenship. Trump, however, never one to back down from a fight, recently authored a Truth Social post in May 2026 that stated the following:

"A negative ruling on Birthright Citizenship, on top of the recent Supreme Court Tariff catastrophe, is not Economically sustainable for the United States of America!" 

Similarly, in an earlier Truth Social post in April 2026, he stated:

"If they [the Supreme Court] rule against our Country on Birthright Citizenship, which they probably will, it will be even worse, if that's possible. It will cost America massive amounts of money but, more importantly, it will cost America its DIGNITY!"

"Dignity", huh. I wonder about that, because right now, from where I'm sitting, it's the Trump Regime's buffoonish mascot parading about the world like the whole of every nation on Earth automatically owes him respect and adulation that is costing America its "dignity". One need look no further than the janky failing "peace negotiations" with Iran to see that. Because Trump believes he is owed respect, yet need not offer it in return, and because he believes he can bluster and parade about the whole goddamn world saying whatever he likes to whomever he likes with little to no consequence, every time the US has (supposedly) neared a deal with Iran to end the "war" that we, the US, started in the first place and now look an epic fool to the whole of the Earth for getting involved in, Trump, by virtue of his own lack of restraint and inability to effectively navigate diplomatic matters by simply shutting the fuck up for once in his life has allowed this "war with Iran" to drag on long after it should have been brought to a resolution. He has singlehandedly overseen the shuttering of the Straight of Hormuz by Iran, a key chokepoint in international shipping that has directly led to outrageous prices for gasoline, diesel and other commodities that frequently pass through the Straight before making their way out to other international markets. It is no exaggeration to say that every time the US has neared a deal to re-open the Straight of Hormuz, Trump has singlehandedly managed to thwart it and reset negotiations over and over again by being an ignorant drumfunk who feels he is owed more than he offers because he believes himself to not only be in a superior position by virtue of his office, but because he believes that he himself is superior, period, as a white man, as a leader, as a businessman, as a politician, as literally anything that can be conceived of in connection to himself, he believes himself the superior.

That's why it is so easy for him to trample upon the rights, the dignities and liberties of others. When you believe that you are more deserving as a human being than other human beings, when you, by virtue of God believe that you have been chosen to lead a nation regardless of your own character or misdeeds because you are entitled by birth and birthright to do so, it becomes insidiously easy to devalue the lives of others you feel are beneath you. Lesser than you. From there, it becomes even easier to dehumanize and degrade these people until they becomes something less than human - something that can be fictionalized into whatever you want them to be. Trump has developed a language that has devalued undocumented immigrants - and indeed immigrants in general - to the level of cockroaches stampeding across the border in droves, popping out babies left and right that are claiming citizenship by birth that will, according to his allies, eventually overtake the majority of real US citizens. By turning undocumented immigrants and, indeed, immigrants in general into "illegals" and "aliens" by generating fear through lies and misinformation, Trump and his allies have not only fostered hatred and bias directly through their words and actions, they have allowed it to fester and spread, unimpeded, throughout the whole of the US amongst those who have bought into the idea that undocumented immigrants are, essentially, cockroaches flooding the US Borders to come here and pop out kids that will, eventually, replace all of the "native" white people who were previously in the wealthy, ruling majority for most of US history. 

For those of us who have read and understand the data, the very notion that tens of millions of undocumented immigrants are flooding and pouring over an unguarded border day and night for months on end is patently absurd, yet the naive among us who are willing to be swayed have allowed themselves to buy into the notion through the acknowledgement and validation of their own prejudices by those who hold power and authority among us. In doing so, they elected a leader who has no qualms about using an already-extant authoritative body as his own personal SS squad to target and, essentially, arrest and "disappear" these immigrants away into overcrowded, inhumane detention centers to await potential deportation - including infants and very young children. After all, who cares about the children of "cockroaches" that are "invading" the US? Again, when you dehumanize and degrade an entire class of human beings, it becomes easy to do incomprehensible harm - even to children and babies, who are wholly innocent of their parents so-called "crimes". At the Dilley Immigration Processing Center in Texas, Staff dialed 911 to report children with severe fever, broken bones, respiratory distress, seizures, plunging oxygen levels and other medical emergencies at least a dozen times within a six month period. 

If the argument to support the detention of undocumented immigrants is to remove so-called "criminals" from the US, I personally believe one would be hard pressed to explain how a two-month old infant could be categorized as a "criminal", or a six-year old child, yet these and dozens of other children under the age of 12 are currently being held in deplorable conditions at ICE detention centers nationwide under Trump's mass deportation agenda, without adequate food, water or medical care - all for the sake of combatting a fictionalized deluge of illegal immigration. Now, is the immigration system broken in the United States? Absolutely. Does it desperately need reform? For sure - but I believe most of civilized society would agree that whatever this is that's happening, this is not the way to go about doing it, through the criminalization and demonization of those whose major crime is the desire for a better life for themselves and their children. 

However, when you look at Trump's previous actions concerning immigrants from his first term as President, it becomes painfully obvious that, in reality, he's just a prejudiced bigot who despises those who are poor and non-white and views them as creatures less than human dirtying and diluting the purity of America's so-called "greatness". Some might recall the abject failure that was the "Family Separation Policy" enacted by the Trump Administration in 2018. At the time viewed as "cruel" and "inhumane", the policy was enacted as a way to deter undocumented migrants from crossing the border. If a family was apprehended at the border, the adults were taken into custody by the Department of Homeland Security, while the children were seized by the Department of Health and Human Services; before the policy was suspended due to immense public and political pressure, over 3,000 children had been taken and, in many cases, sent thousands of miles away into shelters and group homes. Because the Trump Administration, at the time, did not keep a centralized record of which children were seized and sent to where, once the policy was suspended they faced a nightmare of their own creation in trying to reunite the children they had intentionally separated; even now, 8 years later, many children still to this day have not been reunited with their parents from the zero-tolerance period. 

Now ask yourself: What kind of disgust or hatred must a man have in his heart for him to think it is acceptable - no, scratch that, good and preferable - public policy to take young children and infants away from their parents at the border and intentionally separate them in such a way that they're sent thousands of miles away, to a place they've never known without a single soul to genuinely care for them, in a country that is not their own using a language they do not speak, without keeping any record of where they have come from or who their parents actually are, and somehow think this is beneficial for all parties involved. When you begin to understand the cruel intentions and motivations behind Trump's implementation of this policy through the lens that is, at best, a disastrous second term, you begin to see why and how it is so easy for him and, indeed, all of his supporters to wholesale dehumanize anyone who is not part of the white majority - regardless of citizenship. Indeed, if anything it has been made easier for him to inflict harm upon the children of undocumented migrants by simply disappearing them within these detention centers alongside their parents, never to be seen or spoken of again. After all, he had the failed example from his first term zero-tolerance policy to learn from; too bad he learned the wrong lesson.

The decent human beings among us, who do not harbor such ugliness or prejudices within ourselves or our souls can only look upon the actions of the current Trump Regime with dismay and disgust. Indeed it appalls me to this day to look upon those who regard themselves as "good Christian people", yet speak with such venom and malice when it comes to anyone who is not plainly a white Christian nationalist and a natural-born US Citizen. In my own experience living among people who harbor such prejudices it generally does not tend to stop with one group of people; unfortunately, the prejudice and malice invariably ends up extending to other groups, be it black and brown Americans, women, or other minority groups. Hatred begets hatred, and when one gives license and voice to causes that support hatred, hatred towards others is what is given in return. 

In the midst of all of this prejudice, this awfulness, I cannot help but reflect on what it means to be a US Citizen. When I was a child, growing up in the early-90's, I remember my great-grandparents purchasing me a children's book with an aluminum cover; within it were all kinds of experiments and examples of not only how the world worked, but one example in particular relied on two bags containing different portions of white rice, supposedly measured out by each grain. The example was to illustrate "the odds that I would be born in the United States" as opposed to another country in the rest of the world. The largest bag of rice represented "everyone else", while a very, very small pouch represented the US population. For those not privileged enough to have been a child in the early-90's, some context: Ronald Reagan had just completed two terms in office, having run under his "Make America Great Again" pledge (sound familiar?), and was succeeded by his former vice-president George H.W. Bush. Nationalistic pride was at a high; the Berlin Wall had come down only a few years prior, and the Soviet Union had collapsed less than 3 years afterward. The US was the sole reigning superpower in the world and absolutely everyone was proud to be an American. I can vividly recall being in class in Elementary School, in my small, rural hometown of less than a few thousand, being given a homework assignment to "memorize the Preamble of the Constitution"; decades later, I still remember it to this very day. I remember learning about how America came to be the great nation it was in that day, built largely on the successes and achievements of those who came to America seeking their version of the "American Dream": Immigrants, by another name. 

For example, Albert Einstein, arguably the sole greatest contributor in modern history to our understanding of the mechanics of the Universe was a German Jew who entered the US a refugee fleeing the rise of Nazism in 1933. On the opposite end of the same spectrum, Wernher Von Braun was a full-fledged Nazi who developed the V2 rocket during World War II; he immigrated to the US under Operation Paperclip at the end of the War. Without his contribution to NASA and the space program, the US would have never reached the moon before the Soviets; Not only was he a Director of the Marshall Space Flight Center, he was the chief architect of the Saturn V rocket that brought the Apollo astronauts to the moon. He wasn't the only one; numerous former Nazi Party members were brought to the US after WWII to work for NASA during the Cold War, as well as recruited to use their expertise to further America's ambitions; for example, Hans von Ohain was another former Nazi who was recruited post WWII as a physicist who designed the first operational jet engine for Germany and later became a chief scientist at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base - some of you may know it as the esteemed "Area 52".

Before them were people like Nikola Tesla, who was the modern inventor of alternating current that powers the bulk of our modern technology to this day. Born in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Tesla was a Serbian-American who immigrated to the US in 1884 before becoming a naturalized citizen. Without him, modern society as we know it would not exist. Andrew Carnegie was a Scottish immigrant who rose from poverty to build U.S. Steel, one of the largest monopolies to ever exist; he later became a pioneering philanthropist, funding thousands of public libraries nationwide - his name still graces places to this day. In more recent times are immigrants you might be more familiar with: Sergey Brin, the co-founder of Google, fled the Soviet Union as a child and immigrated alongside his family to the United States. Madeline Albright, the first female Secretary of State was originally born in what was then known as Czechoslovakia; she fled both Nazi and Communist regimes, eventually immigrating to the United States. 

Aside from being immigrants to the United States, what else can we say unifies "us", citizens born within the US, with "them", those who arrived to the US as immigrants, legal or otherwise? The answer to that question, I believe, is what defines America - and all of us as the "citizens" of it. In truth, the answer has always been within plain sight for any who care to look. The answer lies on a plaque within the Statue of Liberty, in a sonnet titled The New Colossus:

"Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,

With conquering limbs astride from land to land;

Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand

A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame

Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name

Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand

Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command

The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.

"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she

With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,

I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

"…and her name Mother of Exiles…Give me…the wretched refuse of your teeming shore…"

That. That is what unites us as "Americans". That is what defines us as Americans. America was never intended, even from the beginning, to be a land of exclusion, solely reserved for those whose fortune had granted they be born here as the children of immigrants who came long before the founding of what is now known as the United States, no. America has always been a nation whose guiding principles are unified under the idea of America; that America is the land for those sick at heart, weary and exhausted from persecution and fear. From the beginning the colonies were a place people could flee to escape persecution; far from being established as a unified "Christian Nation Under God", most of the original colonists established themselves in colonies that centered on what was the correct way to interpret and worship God - and they did not like each other! What would be interpreted today as different denominations of Christianity or different groups who still believed in Christ as savior and worshipped God but differed in minor details regarding how God was to be properly worshipped, back then, translated into whole segments and sections of colonial society who could barely stand each other based on their interpretation of different aspects of the Bible. By the time we get to the Declaration of Independence in 1776, far from being conceived as a "Nation Under God", national identity was rooted in a shared rejection of the Crown's authority over the colonies as the primary unifying force for the young nation, not a shared belief in God. That, indeed, if you share in the idea of "America" then you, too, are an "American".

That is something no other nation has. No other nation can say that it was founded on the idea of freedom as a given right of life and liberty; that, indeed, you have a right to pursue happiness for yourself, here, in America, so long as you share in our ideals as a nation. By demonizing the thing that has made America "America", its people - regardless of how they arrive here - he has devalued and cheapened what it means to be a US Citizen with his own pettiness, bigotry and prejudices, for all of us. By pursuing agendas that discriminate and dehumanize other human beings from places far less blessed in liberty than ourselves, he has turned the American "Dream" into a "Lie". Now, those "huddled masses yearning to breathe free" curl up in overcrowded, unsanitary detention centers with little to no food or water, while their children sicken and die under our watch. These are not "criminals", in the vast majority of cases. These people are chiefly those who ICE was already aware of, with residences on file whose cases were already within immigration courts, who were following the law to immigrate as best as they could; they were low-hanging fruit, easy "victories" to tout Trump's mass deportation agenda. Many of you might remember how hard the Trump Regime tried to paint a middle-class working father and husband of a child with severe disabilities as a gang member and criminal, Kilmer Abrego-Garcia; even after unlawfully deporting him to El Salvador to be tortured and being ordered to return him to the United States by virtually every court who held authority in the matter the Trump Regime tried to argue that they simply "could not bring him back", which was laughable. "Oops, our bad, but sorry now that he's gone there's nothing we can do so…sucks to be him I guess" was essentially what the Trump Regime was saying at the time. Miraculously, however, he was magically returned - and then the Trump Regime tried to argue that he still couldn't lawfully remain here and needed to be deported to a third country! Despite clearly being shown to be absolutely full of shit, neither Trump nor his loyalists would simply allow Abrego-Garcia to resume his life with his family in Maryland, because if it's one thing Trump cannot abide, it is being shown to be a loser and a liar; the existence of Abrego-Garcia threatened to do that, and so the matter was never allowed to lie. Trump made a grievous error, and rather than apologizing for that error he instead decided to demonize Abrego-Garcia and paint him as a dangerous gang member and universal threat to society that needed to be deported to be properly dealt with.

Now multiply that to include the millions of citizens born to undocumented parents, as well as the parents themselves, and you get a sense of the scope of sheer hatred Trump harbors for those who he has unilaterally deemed as a lesser class of human being than himself. By giving license to that hatred with the American public he has allowed it to propagate and spread, unchecked, like a virus - ravaging communities and the people who live within them. 

So, at the end of the day, one is compelled to ask one's self: Why do we allow this hatred to exist? Why do some among us feel compelled to engage with this hatred, allowing themselves to be convinced that it is wholly acceptable to dehumanize and degrade other human beings to the point that they find it lawful to arrest and detain these people, regardless of age, in mass detention centers awaiting deportation, at best, and death at worst? MAGA supporters are quite fond of using the phrase "woke mind virus" to describe those who disagree with its bigoted and racist agenda, but I would argue that, rather than a "virus" that has infected the minds of people to make them aware of their prejudiced and hateful agenda, they, in fact, suffer from an ideological virus the likes of which have not been seen or existed since the KKK was allowed to exist as a mainstream organization within the United States. 

We like to believe that both time and history inexorably move in the direction of progress and enlightenment, but in reality this is not always so. If anything, progress is a fragile thing that can easily be undone within a single decade - even a single year. When people begin to take the freedoms and rights they enjoy for granted, sure enough throughout history there has always been someone to step in, insidious and destructive, to not only undo hard-won progress, but to, on occasion, destroy and remake an entire way of life into their own image. Republicans have watched over the last few decades as their power and authority within the US has gradually waned in favor of more progressive, liberal ideals but, more than that, they have also watched what they consider to be their "way of life" erode away as well. Over the decades the causes Republicans have championed have changed dramatically - how quickly people have forgotten, for example, that George W. Bush, son of the former President George H.W. Bush, was a champion of immigration reform! Not only did he support immigration, he supported reform that would streamline and clarify the immigration process - or at least, he tried to, until 9/11 happened. 

Speaking on the American identity, former-President George W. Bush once stated: 

"At its core, immigration is a sign of a confident and successful nation. It says something about our country that people all around the world are willing to leave their homes and leave their families and risk everything to come to our country."

What, then, does it say when America outright rejects immigrants, both lawful as well as undocumented? What, then, does it say when Americans themselves demonize those who risk everything, including their very lives, to spend months trekking over land through jungles, mountains, over rivers and continental divides guided by members of drug cartels to end up walled off at a closed border, desperate and weary, with nowhere else to go, all because America just "doesn't want them here"? 

It says that we have allowed our entitlement and our identity as Americans to overwhelm our sense of decency for our fellow man. It says we have taken for granted the hard-won freedoms and liberties that our ancestors fought and died for by denying the same to others who would seek the same relief from persecution and harm as they did. At the end of the day, it says that some of us have allowed the words of a traitor to convince us to disregard our conscience in favor of an idealized version of America that sees a specific class of brown people eliminated from society wholesale in favor of the idea of white supremacy and privilege to be the guiding force of what it means to be an American - to the exclusion of all others. 

And finally, at the end of it all, it says that we have allowed one man to devalue and degrade what it means to be a Citizen of the United States of America. 

I am not sure how others define the word "traitor", but by my own definition I believe this qualifies. This is precisely why the Founding Fathers forbade traitors from holding public office - because they feared the rise of another king or autocrat. Yet here we are, on the cusp of America's 250th Anniversary, a traitor holds the highest office in the land, the US treasury is insolvent for the first time in our nation's history, unable to pay the balance on our debts should they be called in, enmeshed in a "war" with Iran that has seen them come out on top in negotiations, with us in a far weaker position than when we started, a would-be king throwing temper tantrums online and derailing negotiations he himself is supposedly conducting, angry that his party cannot secure so-called "voter reform" that would enable them to cling to power long after their unpopularity has become clear by rigging the system against their ouster, and what becomes painfully obvious is a party in decline, desperately clinging to the last vestiges of power it can muster, backing a leader it knows will be their undoing, yet too far gone into the abyss to extricate themselves. Meanwhile their so-called leader comports himself with all the wit and grace of a toddler at a dinner table throwing gobs of spaghetti at a younger sister loudly exclaiming "I know you are but what am I?!". By any measure Trump is, and has been, the greatest embarrassment ever witnessed in the history of the Presidency of the United States of America - and will go down in history as such, God Willing.

Ask yourself - what does being an American mean to you? What value does it carry? What value has it lost? Who deserves the right to call themselves an American? What is the harm in someone arriving within our borders, lawful or undocumented, if within their heart they share the same ambitions, same beliefs, same goals and desires, same yearning for freedom, equity and safety that any of us who call ourselves natural-born citizens do? Where is the harm, precisely? At the end of the day, far from being dehumanized, devalued "cockroaches", these people are the entire reason America is what it is today, and without them…what are we, exactly? More importantly - who do we want to be? A land of racist, intolerant bigots with closed borders and empty souls filled with hate? Or a land that is, as Bush Jr. put it "secure enough" in our identity "to welcome all"?

I, for one, will never forgive Trump for what he has done to my country. I will never forgive the way he has cheapened and devalued the idea of America to the rest of the world. Nor will I ever forgive how he has turned us against ourselves, allowing hatred to beget more hate. 

So the next time you see or hear someone talking about immigrants as though they don't belong here, as though they are somehow less than human, remind them of how their own ancestors arrived here, seeking a better life, and ask them would they deny the right of others to do the same. What Trump has done isn't harmless; the ramifications from his actions will extend far into the future for years, if not decades, to come.

The only way this gets better is if we, as Americans, make it better ourselves. 

Let's try and do that, ok?