This is America

Arguably also #2

Trump has revoked the legal status of half a million immigrants from Venezuela, Cuba,  Haiti and Nicaragua who were granted permission to migrate under the auspices of  a sponsorship program introduced by the Biden administration in 2022 as a pathway to citizenship for those seeking asylum from acknowledged crises.  Beneficiaries of the program have been encouraged to self-deport and are  "required" to download a governmental app to inform the administration of their intent to do so.  And there are hints that Ukrainians are next.  Trump's administration is persecuting and seeking to deport or otherwise disappear legal citizens (Mahmoud Khalil most famously) whose opinions they don't like, and have used the pretext of the 1798 Alien Enemies act to round up non-criminal Venezuelans (men and women) for deportation and imprisonment in El Salvador which has agreed to take them-- the act's first invocation by a sitting administration ever in peacetime.  They have also sought to loosen prohibitions on torture and the use of black sites for those designated as enemy combatants, with an ambition to outdo the illegal activities of the Bush administration that at least had the context of the Iraq War to use as a cover for their thuggery.  And without yet waging war they are dropping bombs and killing civilians in Yemen (and coordinating the attacks via IM threads on private 3rd party apps that they accidentally share with journalists).  They are dismantling the Department of Education, cancelling foreign and domestic aid, antagonizing neighbors, infiltrating cultural institutions, hacking the few benefits American workers and taxpayers get from paying taxes and now have their sights on Social Security, Amtrak and the Post Office.

Some have wishfully called the unparalleled fascism that the Trump administration has unleashed on the country in its first two months following the playbook of the supremacist Heritage Foundation's Project 2025 Un-American.  The sad fact is that it could not be more American if it came with baseball cards and apple pie.  The country that brought you chattel slavery, Jim Crow, colonial settler genocide, trickle down economics, global anti-democratic mayhem in the name of the corporate class, planetary imbalance-- an acknowledged inspiration for both Hitler and settler colonial genocidal zionists in Israel-- now brings you Trump.  The empty protestations of impotent Democrats like Biden and Obama to the contrary, Violence and Stupidity is who we are. There is a certain class of lout that America has attracted and exalted and produced in abundance over the years, and comb-over Trump and his implanted South African partner in crime with implants Elon Musk are the apotheosis.

I know this is not what those who invoke American ideals in contrast to what we're witnessing from Washington are talking about when they use the phrase un-American to describe what Trump and Musk and their evil minions are doing.  True enough, there is a strain in American culture, a never realized but often invoked strain, that hints at government of, for and by the people.  A land of the free, a home of the brave and just and good.  Simple folk who believe in doing for yourself and letting your neighbor be but taking care of folks when times is tough or they ain't got the wherewithal to take keer of theirselves.  We don't go in for this here authoritarian stuff, least wise from those we send to Washington.  Shucks, we don't know much about book learning and such, but we'd never think of putting down folks who do.  We're not the kind to shy away from facing the cold hard facts of life if it's what we've got to do to make the world safe and life good for all good people everywhere.  Sure, we have differences, but we don't let them come between us, and we'll fight for your right to disagree with us about anything as long as you're not hurting no one with it.  Why, it takes all kinds to make the world go 'round.   There's plenty of room for everybody!  Burning books and jailing folks for having opinions contrary to our own and blaming people who don't look like us or act like us or believe like us for our problems is for fraidy cats.  That's not us!  That's not who we are!  Right, Neighbor?

Yes and No.