On Jan. 20 in Washington, Donald Trump was sworn in as the 45th US president. In his inaugural address, Trump appealed to patriotism in an attempt to eliminate the racial, gender, religious and social divisions that have been growing in the process of building a diverse society.
Trump said that he hoped Americans would be like US soldiers and remember that “whether we are black or brown or white, we all bleed the same red blood of patriots” and “we all enjoy the same glorious freedoms, and we all salute the same great American flag.” Soon after Trump’s address, White House spokesman Sean Spicer said that Trump would proclaim a “national day of patriotism” that would become a public holiday for federal government employees.
However, Trump’s patriotism call is incompatible with the US public’s calls for action in the construction of a more diverse society. To civil rights activists, human rights are human rights. There should not be an option of “making concessions for the sake of national interests” when addressing gender, racial or religious discrimination, or discrimination against certain social values.
This has left civil rights activists questioning whether Trump is simply using patriotism to legitimize his continued reliance on white supremacy in his understanding of US society and discrimination against minorities.
Such doubts are not without factual basis. In the past, Trump has made various flagrantly discriminatory remarks. One of the best known examples of this was when he in 2011 publicly questioned whether then-US president Barack Obama, who is black and was seeking re-election at the time, was really born in the US.
Another example is how he, in the final presidential debate in October last year, used the term “nasty woman” to refer to his rival, Hillary Rodham Clinton.
That expression was later used by US feminists as a slogan of solidarity when they called on the US public to oppose Trump, resist gender discrimination and defend the rights of minorities. Women’s rights advocates even organized women’s marches in major US cities and around the world to protest against Trump on the day after his inauguration.
According to data provided by two US academics, the total number of protesters in cities across the US on Jan. 21, the day of the march, was between 3.3 million and 4.2 million, which is the largest protest in US history.
During the next four years, similar social struggles are likely to continue occurring in the US.
However, Trump will probably continue to follow his path of patriotism. After all, without the goal of “making America great again,” Trump would be too insignificant and weak to be able to respond to the wide range of objections from the diverse US society.
What Trump does not understand is that for many Americans, it is the public protests against him in defense of the multidimensional values of freedom and democracy that really makes the US great.
Jason Kuo is a postdoctoral fellow at the Mortara Center for International Studies at Georgetown University.
Translated by Lin Lee-kai
Saudi Arabian largesse is flooding Egypt’s cultural scene, but the reception is mixed. Some welcome new “cooperation” between two regional powerhouses, while others fear a hostile takeover by Riyadh. In Cairo, historically the cultural capital of the Arab world, Egyptian Minister of Culture Nevine al-Kilany recently hosted Saudi Arabian General Entertainment Authority chairman Turki al-Sheikh. The deep-pocketed al-Sheikh has emerged as a Medici-like patron for Egypt’s cultural elite, courted by Cairo’s top talent to produce a slew of forthcoming films. A new three-way agreement between al-Sheikh, Kilany and United Media Services — a multi-media conglomerate linked to state intelligence that owns much of
The US and other countries should take concrete steps to confront the threats from Beijing to avoid war, US Representative Mario Diaz-Balart said in an interview with Voice of America on March 13. The US should use “every diplomatic economic tool at our disposal to treat China as what it is... to avoid war,” Diaz-Balart said. Giving an example of what the US could do, he said that it has to be more aggressive in its military sales to Taiwan. Actions by cross-party US lawmakers in the past few years such as meeting with Taiwanese officials in Washington and Taipei, and
The Republic of China (ROC) on Taiwan has no official diplomatic allies in the EU. With the exception of the Vatican, it has no official allies in Europe at all. This does not prevent the ROC — Taiwan — from having close relations with EU member states and other European countries. The exact nature of the relationship does bear revisiting, if only to clarify what is a very complicated and sensitive idea, the details of which leave considerable room for misunderstanding, misrepresentation and disagreement. Only this week, President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) received members of the European Parliament’s Delegation for Relations
Denmark’s “one China” policy more and more resembles Beijing’s “one China” principle. At least, this is how things appear. In recent interactions with the Danish state, such as applying for residency permits, a Taiwanese’s nationality would be listed as “China.” That designation occurs for a Taiwanese student coming to Denmark or a Danish citizen arriving in Denmark with, for example, their Taiwanese partner. Details of this were published on Sunday in an article in the Danish daily Berlingske written by Alexander Sjoberg and Tobias Reinwald. The pretext for this new practice is that Denmark does not recognize Taiwan as a state under