“Holers”

One supposes there is a minority — hopefully a small one — of American voters who choose the meanest and stupidest candidate they can find, either to spite people who have things they don’t have or to punish people who have things they don’t deserve. Or maybe it helps make them feel kinder and smarter by comparison.

Be that as it may, Trump and his stooges just gave away one of the biggest gimmes in recent political history, that being Hillary Clinton’s 2016 “basket of deplorables” gaffe. Now instead, the vast majority of Americans can proudly call ourselves “Holers.” I’m one. The Terezin death camp in what’s now the Czech Republic, where one of my relatives and many fellow Czechs were killed, was by any standard a hole of the worst and most deadly sort.

The vast majority of Americans feel solidarity with immigrants regardless of national origin, race or ethnicity, precisely because almost all of us got here the same way. We know the risk, danger, faith and hard work that successful immigration signifies. And if that solidarity makes me what white supremacists call “a race traitor,” I’ll wear that name proudly as well.

Chris Norden

Moscow, Idaho