“The president’s comments are unkind, divisive, elitist and fly in the face of our nation’s values.”
— Rep. Mia Love
Because Mia Love is a Republican representative facing a challenging re-election campaign in Utah, and perhaps because she is the daughter of Haitian immigrants, any objection she makes to President Trump’s contempt for Haiti and the 54 countries of Africa may be thought courageous. And even her slow progress toward identifying the president’s language as racist may be thought heroic.
Which evidences how our definition of “courage” and our standards for “heroism” have slackened.
Emmanuel Mensah is a hero. After evacuating a couple and their four children from the recent apartment fire in the Bronx, he returned into the fire to rescue four more people. Then returned into the fire again … but did not return from it.
Emmanuel Mensah was from one of those African countries Trump wants to replace with Norway. Mensah also was a member of the Army National Guard whose sacrifice did not surprise his father.
“It was in his nature,” is what Kwabena Mensah told CBS News.
Which causes us to wonder: If that was in the nature of one of the persons from one of those countries Trump characterizes, what is in the nature of our president?
Following Trump’s racist remarks, there has been argument lacking distinction whether the root word used by Trump was “holes” or “houses.” But it has been sufficient distinction to give Sen. David Perdue enough daylight between the fact and the truth to argue that the president, “did not use that word … And I’m telling you, it’s a gross misrepresentation,” when the difference is neither gross nor a misrepresentation.
Outrage may have been hoped to be universal. Except from Trump’s base. Except from a few commentators on Fox News who seem to think this is the way a tough guy is permitted to speak. Except from most of the Republican members of the Senate and the House.
In other words: except from nearly half of us.
Republican legislators who protested Trump’s remarks replaced courage with euphemism, claiming the president’s remarks were “problematic,” or, as Speaker Paul Ryan said, “unfortunate, unhelpful.” Some trivialized the statements as “salty” or “rough.”
That is the rhetoric Mia Love tried to adopt several days after her first statement when on CNN’s State of the Union she was asked whether she thought Trump’s comments were racist.
Love stammered:
“Uh, well, uh, I, I think they were, yes [nervous laugh]. I think that they were unfortunate. Uh, uh, I don’t know if they were taken [sic]. I, I wasn’t in the room. I know that comments were made. I don’t know which context they were made [sic]. I’m looking forward to trying to fix the problem.”
Which problem? The president? Racism? Incivility? Perhaps the problem caused by those we elect who have neither the will nor the courage simply and swiftly to run into the burning building.
Cornel West, speaking recently at Weber State about “Civility in Modern Times,” identified this sort of rhetorical dodging as at once cowardly and enabling: “These are not problems!” He protested. “These are catastrophes! Moral catastrophes!”
A time of catastrophe is a time for heroes. A time of catastrophe is a time to cross the street and help people out of the inferno that has been set ablaze by Donald Trump. A time of catastrophe is a time for politicians of all parties to learn from Emmanuel Mensah the meaning of the word “hero.” And the sacrifice required to be the name.
Robert Rees is director of Mormon studies at Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, Calif. Clifton Jolley is a writer and president of Advent Communications in Ogden.