We are the enemy within
We have met the enemy and he is us
When Donald Trump recently used the phrase "the enemy within" I thought of my friend Andrew Wei. I met Andrew, irony and soul stirring history while going for a walk on a beautiful day in Vancouver with my Ellen. Andrew, a gracious old man had once been an enemy within. Andrew was a survivor of the Tiananmen Square massacre. He was a student in Beijing in 1989 and many who favored democratizing China assembled in a prominent landmark called Tiananmen Square. By the thousands they gathered. They handmade a giant likeness of the Statue of Liberty, which they called the “Goddess of Democracy” which turned to face and confront a giant poster of Mao Tse Tung. After his government declared all who were demonstrating on behalf of the democratization of China to be an enemy within the ruling party sent tanks and soldiers into the assembly of young citizens and butchered thousands. Andrew remembers soldier ordering him to help heave his dead classmates into the backs of trucks. I’m sure the soldiers felt they were ridding their nation of vermin. The enemy within. This week’s “enemy within”.
When Donald Trump recently said he’d “use the military” on Americans I thought of one image that speaks more powerfully than any essay or oratory. I thought of an example of a government using its military on it’s own people. I thought of the striking photo of the lone man standing in front of a line of tanks in Beijing. His identity and his fate remain unknown. He has vanished into history. He was nicknamed “Tank Man” when the image went global. The iconic image of Tank Man was taken by Jeff Widener for the Associated Press.
How many voters voting for Trump would happily roll his tanks against their fellow American citizens? Or one lone citizen defying President Trump?
Who are the Trump voters who would gleefully man the guard towers in the deportation camps?
Who among your neighbors with Trump yard signs would happily assist in the promised mass deportations, turning neighbors in, throwing luggage and belongings out windows and onto the ground and shoving families into rail cars?
After his “reeducation” Andrew Wei was no longer “an enemy within”. A “good communist” he returned to school and became a high school history teacher and taught outside of Beijing.
I could tell from our animated conversation that Mr. Wei was a wonderful and good humored teacher. An Asian Tim Walz. Mr. Wei told me he left his home country of China when he could no longer teach the revisionist history the state demanded.
How many teachers in Florida feel that way today?
It was a long journey for Mr.Wei but worth it. He legally migrated and became a Canadian citizen. He went on to be a successful business man. With great pride Andrew told me he had recently voted for the first time.
In that Vancouver Park as Andrew Wei and I talked I was reminded those of us who are born here take our democracy for granted. For Andrew Wei the America story was not an abstraction. It truly was the cliched “beacon of freedom for all the world” that led him to the west and sustained his hope all of his adult life.
It would be shameful for this generation to extinguish that beacon. To blow out Liberty’s flame. For they would the first generation since our revolution to take us back to the dark ages.
I don’t know if it’s a human, or just an American phenomenon, but it seems that when we have no common enemy, we fight with each other. In either case, it’s time we realized the futility in this approach to living together on this small planet..
Since Friday morning, this question you ask hasn't left me: "Who among your neighbors with Trump yard signs would happily assist in the promised mass deportations, turning neighbors in, throwing luggage and belongings out windows and onto the ground and shoving families into rail cars?" I fear it is a legitimate question. I live in a lovely neighborhood with great neighbors, but I fear it can happen here.