Glenn Aparicio Parry
Trump has tried to dehumanize large blocs of people: Mexicans, Muslims, African-Americans, immigrants, refugees, women, and he has attacked various individuals that seemed beyond reproach, beginning with John McCain for not being a war hero and most recently attacking a civil rights icon, John Lewis.
This, ironically, is why it is all the more important to not dehumanize Trump. He is a five-fingered one, just like us (okay, maybe his fingers are smaller). No seriously, Trump is one of us and we have all collectively participated in a society that made his rise possible. There are many possible explanations for why he was elected president, but mostly I believe it is due to the festering wounds of 9/11 and the economic crisis that followed.
Trump won the presidency in seeming defiance of everything America is supposed to stand for. But the truth is America has always been a grand experiment, a work in progress to form a “more perfect union.” Our founding fathers were heavily influenced by the egalitarian societies of Native America to form a nation based on liberty, but they rarely acknowledged their influence and instead excluded Native Americans from fully participating in America, and later we engaged in outright genocide by the time of Andrew Jackson, the closest parallel to Trump in American history. We of course also excluded African-Americans and women of all ethnicities from fully participating in the society. It took the better part of two centuries to begin to correct this.
It was from the Iroquois Confederacy we learned our system of federalism – modeling the balance between the central government and the states after their system that balanced power between their five (now six) nations. It was also from the Iroquois we learned the concept of impeachment, for it was the women’s councils that appointed the male chief and had the power to remove him if he didn’t pass muster. So if the day comes that we impeach Trump, we have Native America to thank for it.
In the meantime, it is Martin Luther King Day today, and it was he who said that he 
. This is timeless wisdom worth listening to. Hate only produces more hate. We can vigorously oppose policies without hating, and it will be far more effective. Blessings to all on MLK day.
Benjamin Franklin, George Washington and Thomas Jefferson all spent a lot of time with the Iroquois nations and the Peace of the Iroquois Nations was extremely influential in the writing of our Constitution
