Hospitality or hostility?

  

A society should be evaluated by the way in which it treats those at the margin. President Trump says he will make the United States great again. This is coded language for eliminating or emasculating anyone who is different.  People of color, members of the LBGTQ community, Muslims and even women are belittled and exploited through the actions of the Executive branch. The cruelest action the White House has taken was to separate children from their immigrant-mothers who were seeking asylum in the United States. This is likely to cause lasting psychological damage to these children.

If the hostility shown to those at the margin were merely that caused by President Trump, dreadful as it is, it is likely the consequences would not be irreversible.  However, this hostility inhabits the minds of his followers, his base, which demonstrates that we have a very intolerant bloc of our society, say one-third or more of the country, which will be with us well after Trump is gone.  Trump aficionados not only hold these views, they will teach these views to their children.  Evangelicals maintain they have a special relationship with God, yet, four out of five Evangelicals voted for Donald Trump. When Evangelicals vote for a pedophile over a Democrat as happened in Alabama in a special election in the fall of 2017 there is a great measure of animus in the hearts of those voters. There is great irony in the United States calling itself a “Christian nation” if by Christian we mean following the practice of Jesus of caring for the poor and for those left out.

Jacque Derrida in an article entitled “Hostipitality” in the journal Angelaki discusses immigration in terms of “hospitality” and “hostility” toward persons who are immigrants. The two words have the same Latin root and the title of his article “Hostipitality” is a portmanteau word that blends the words into a new word that draws attention to the inherent contradiction between the contrary meanings.   All too often we respond to immigrants and marginal others with hostility, not hospitality.  Two other words also have the latin root "hos"--- "hostel" and "hospital," i.e., a place to stay and a place to seek care for ailments.  If only we could live the words affixed to the Statue of Liberty, "Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.”