Letter from a concerned European

Today I sent this letter to my friends in Indiana, where I spent 1 year in high school, too long ago. I will post replies if they add value to the discussion.

Dear [Friend name],

Perhaps you remember me. When I was 17 I spent a year of high school with you in North Judson Indiana. It has been one of the best years of my life so far, and I’m truly grateful for how you welcomed me.

One of the things I liked and did most (ok, apart from partying and sports) was discussing “life” with classmates. Quite often you thought my perspective of the world was “strange” because of the values I’ve been brought up with in my weird little country 4000 miles away. I often didn’t agree with your opinions. But I’ve made some of the best and deepest friendships of my life in your country. That’s because you listened to me and I listened to you. We respected each other.

It is in your country that I learned my guiding principle: the importance of respect for other cultures and opinions. It is my firm believe that many of the problems in this world are caused by people not understanding or accepting foreign cultures. Globalization is unstoppable, so we’d better get along. It’s necessary, but also fun and interesting to learn about other cultures.

I am very concerned about the direction your country, and the world, is heading under the guidance of your new President. I thought I’d share my concerns and ask you how you feel about the current situation. I just read the newspapers and most of the voices I read on Facebook are anti Trump. I don’t live in the US, you do. Only you can tell me if I’m seeing this wrong. I hope so.

So, this is how I see it:

Your country was built by immigrants. It became a truly great country by adopting strangers like me and using your multi-cultural brainpower and connections to promote your “all people are equal” values abroad to help make this world a safer place for all people. I’m very grateful for that.

In my opinion, your President is rapidly turning the world — and the US — into an unstable and dangerous place. There are many things I find scary about what President Trump is trying to do (censorship of government agencies, curtailing press freedom), but I would like to focus on one: I feel President Trump is renouncing a key American value it’s been promoting all over the world since its founding — “all people are equal”.

President Trump considers all muslims a threat, and has said he wants to ban all muslims from entry to the US. That’s not legally possible, so yesterday he started banning people from 7 countries from entry to your country. Not because they’re a threat to your country, but because they are from a Muslim country. He did this on Holocaust Remembrance day — a day where you remember how millions of people were persecuted just because they were Jews (or homosexual, or Romani, etc.).

This is shocking to me.

But also I think it’s counter productive to what Mr. Trump is trying to achieve. Instead of “protecting” you from the rest of the world it will spread hatred and actually make you more vulnerable. President Trump is not listening like you were listening to me — he just cares about himself and people who think like him. To me it feels like he’s not a president of all American people.

If I were a US citizen, I think I would be trying to see how we can restore the error we made by electing Mr. Trump as soon as possible and tell the world that we’ve made a mistake.

So again, this is just how I feel. I may be very wrong and I truly hope I am. Did you vote for Mr Trump? How do you feel? What do you think? Please let me know.

All the best,

Bart