Trump’s harsh rhetoric belies the way of the world
I have woman of when always been a the world, starting I was a secondgrader of the world. That was the year, 1969, when I started to study Spanish. My old grade school, Ancilla Domini, was run by an order of Spanish nuns, and their native language was part of the mandatory curriculum. I only got as far as saying the Hail Mary and a few random blessings (I could do a mean Act of Contrition) but it taught me the power of language. Being able to communicate, even at my limited 7-year-old level, in an entirely different way was a heady thing for this child of North Philly.
We moved a short while later to Delaware County, we’re I’ve lived ever since. That autumn I started at Merion Mercy, and abandoned Spanish for French. I still remember those 45 rpms in the “Bonjour France!” curriculum and the little books that went with them. Even though we only had a half hour a day of the exotic new idiom, I began to explore the wonders of a wider universe. My teacher facilitated a pen pal exchange, and I was matched up with a girl named Marie-Therese Favery from a city called Ballon, which I insisted on calling Balloon. Our pen pal friendship didn’t last very long, but my love affair with French and foreign languages continue to this day. (As an aside, I will be wearing a beret and drinking merlot today, cheering my great-grandfather’s native country to victory in the World Cup against a country about as big as the Linc.)
I majored in French at Bryn Mawr, spent my junior year in Paris, and ended up teaching both French and Spanish at several schools before settling down to practice immigration law, where my status as a polyglot (look it up, please, it has nothing to do with an act engaged in by Stormy Daniels) helps me immensely. On any given day, I speak French with West or North Africans, Spanish with Central and South Americans, or even Italian with some of my paesani. I can also fake a good conversation in Portuguese, and can even say my name and count to 10 in Romanian.
I do not say this to brag, because I know several people who speak 10 or more languages fluently. My old friend Peter, who I first met more than 30 years ago, speaks all the languages I just mentioned, and can chatter away in Arabic, Turkish, Urdu, and Buddha-knowswhat other tongues. Compared to him, I’m as linguistically gifted as a mime.
I am writing about my love of languages to try and explain why I am so disappointed in President Trump’s attitude toward NATO. I understand the cold, hard facts about how we have been paying a disproportionate amount in supporting our allies, and have absolutely no problem whatsoever with Trump trying to shame the other treaty members into picking up some slack. The fact that he’s gotten them to agree to an increase in their shared financial obligation is a definite feather in his cap, and both I and my wallet thank him.
And if it stopped there, I wouldn’t have a problem, or a column to write. But it doesn’t stop there. With the exception of a few halfhearted comments about the importance of NATO, dragged out of him like the name, rank and serial number of a captured POW, our president has shown disdain for both the organization itself, and its allied members. True, he did comment at a news conference in Brussels that “the United States’ commitment to NATO is very strong, remains very strong (and) I believe in NATO.”
But this begrudging nugget came after blistering attacks on the member countries, and preceded a meeting with Boris Johnson, a vocal critic of British Prime Minister Theresa May. This doesn’t even include the fact that Trump essentially belittled Angela Merkel, a woman who watched the Berlin Wall being built as a young girl, by saying Germany was paying billions of dollars to Russia, as if this means it has no reason to fear the country that had blithely stolen the Crimea from a country seeking NATO membership, the Ukraine.
There are actually too many insults to include in one column, so I’ll just say that our president has shown a visceral hostility and dislike for people who don’t speak English (and even a few who speak it with a peculiar accent).
This is more than just political wrangling. This is a return to that old American isolationism seen most vividly in a movement known as “America First,” which flourished in the years leading up to Pearl Harbor. People like Charles Lindbergh, a young John F. Kennedy, Sargent Shriver, Gerald Ford and Lillian Gish were supporters, and wanted us to leave Europe to fend for itself during World War II. Only when our own soldiers were attacked did the organization disband, begrudgingly, and support the war effort.
I do not want us to return to the days when our interests ended at the shoreline. I have spent a lifetime teaching people about the beauty of other lands, and parallel lifetime helping foreigners come to this country and enrich it with their talents and passion. I refuse to believe that President Trump speaks for the majority of Americans when he scolds and disparages our allies who, like family members, may sometimes disappoint us but who will be there the moment we are threatened with harm.
John Donne wrote, “No man is an island, no man stands alone.” That goes for countries, too.