Trump’s legacy: Fear and loathing

The “good old days” when I was a kid growing up in Minnesota included an economic depression and a world war. We couldn’t pay the rent and my brother died serving in the Navy when his plane crashed. Yet today, I think of those days as almost idyllic whenever I listen to Donald Trump and read what he has done to my Minnesota — to our Minnesota.

The old-fashioned ice man brought ice when we had ice boxes and not refrigerators. I am old enough to remember those days. But that chunk of ice made life better. Today, the ICE man cometh with bullets and racist nonsense in both words and actions. The result has been deadly.

The dramatic murder of two good citizens is horrifically visible on television and described in the papers. What is not easily visible is what caring citizens see and describe.

Here is what a Minnesotan who cares has written and which appeared in America, the Jesuit monthly magazine. She’s a mother of five, she’s a doctor — but more important, she’s a neighbor who cares.

“We are buying groceries for families who have not left the house in over a month because they fear being targeted by ICE. We are driving children to school because their bus stops are no longer safe. We are organizing patrols to stand outside day cares and schools, to make sure children and parents can get in and out safely. We are fundraising rent money for neighbors who can’t go to work for fear of detainment or deportation. We are helping find midwifes for pregnant women terrified to go to hospitals and finding nurses willing to check on elderly and disabled neighbors with serious conditions.”

“Neighbors are organizing to help protect neighbors from the federal government. ICE agents are everywhere. The aura of fear is palpable … Pregnant mothers are not going to their prenatal appointments because they are scared to leave their homes. This week I helped a mother find home birth resources because she is due to deliver any day now.

“My 7-year-old and I watched a man being pulled from his car at a red light. My daughter works at a restaurant, and it had to close because the owner fears for the safety of his staff. My kids’ events are being canceled left and right because schools are afraid — basketball games, mock trial competitions, and even school fundraising events. The custodian at the Catholic Church attached to my children’s school was deported after living here for 25 years.”

I hope that Donald Trump, his enablers, and his minions will find an ounce of decency in their depraved souls to make this Minneapolis nightmare go away.

He is a curse on our society beyond Minnesota. He is a gaudy Midas with the wandering hands of a teenage boy. He insists on touching every thing in sight. The Kennedy Center, Dulles Airport, Penn Station all targets of his ego. He wants his name on them all. I would throw in a sewage treatment plant in for balance.

Norman Sherman of Coralville has worked extensively in politics, including as Vice President Hubert Humphrey’s press secretary, and authored a memoir “From Nowhere to Somewhere.”