The House of Unamerican Activities

I am an immigrant.

My family left our once beloved country, Egypt, in the 60s.

In the 70s, I was sworn in as an American citizen in the borough of Manhattan. It was in a courtroom where a portrait of Tricky Dick — who was about to resign — hung behind the judge. I repeated the oath of allegiance with probably a hundred others, whom I remember as being mostly of Asian origin.

Because I am an immigrant, I can never be President, but would not want the job anyway.

This week, after a seven month absence that I have spent in my country of origin, I am returning to the US.

The country is roiling from a president (the lower case “p” is deliberate) who is unlikely to remain in the White House till the end of his first term.

Unlike the current president of the United States, I have never attempted to enrich myself though corrupt practices.

I have never had to pay off women with hush money to conceal extra marital affairs, which I have never had in my nearly 30 years of marriage to the same woman.

I have never accepted bribes of any sort, nor engaged in any criminal activity.

I am far from perfect, but I have always tried to behave in an ethical manner when it counted.

While the current president of the United States rails against Arab Americans and Muslims in general, the truth of the matter is that most immigrants from the Middle East work hard, obey the law, pay their taxes, and earn a good living in a variety of professions.

In the seven months I have been here, many young people I have met have expressed to me the idea that they would jump at the chance to live in America.

America remains the land of economic opportunity.

It continues to be a place where the idea of liberty defines the country — despite the fact that the White House, under the rule of the deeply corrupt Trump, has now become the House of Unamerican Activities, with odd and deeply suspicious entanglements with oligarchs from the former Soviet Union and other shady characters around the globe.

The Republican party itself professes to represent ordinary folk, the real Americans, but in effect has become nothing more than an engine for political graft. It is a party that countenances chicanery and highly questionable machinations by a sitting president in return for campaign payoffs by mega wealthy right wing donors who embrace the politics of sleaze and disguised influence peddling.

November cannot come soon enough.

The day of reckoning for Trump and his party is coming in 210 days, on November 6th, 2018.

No one can predict if Donald Trump will have resigned in disgrace by then or not, but I sense that a tsnunami of voters will revolt against the forces of Republican conservative tyranny.

They will be voting for one thing.

A return to democratic norms.