The following is the opinion and analysis of the writer:
Lindsey Hoshaw
Last week former President Donald Trump visited Tucson to speak at the Linda Ronstadt Music Hall and it got me thinking about his strengths. One of them immediately came to mind. Donald Trump is an expert at building walls. Not The Wall, of course. That was never finished. He’s an expert at building metaphorical walls — emotional walls, political walls and walls that prevent people from getting in. According to Trump we need to keep out the immigrant “rapists” and criminals who are eating household pets and “poisoning the blood of our country.”
I shouldn’t tell Trump, but I’m surrounded by immigrants. My dad’s friend Nino came here from Puglia after he fell in love with an American woman who was teaching abroad. One of my cycling friends grew up in South Africa and remembers life during apartheid. And my neighbors, two Armenian anesthesiologists who work at a level-one trauma hospital, have invited me over for so many coffee chats that I’ve lost track.
I’m not afraid of these immigrants, my neighbors. The only scary moment in my neighborhood was when I thought I heard gunshots (they turned out to be fireworks) and I futilely tried to hide under the bed. I texted my neighbor saying, “I tried to crawl underneath my bed but I don’t fit. Help!” I’m a 42-year-old woman and the image of me trying to crawl into a four-inch space is laughable. Such is the irrational reaction of a lizard brain when it’s in overdrive.
But that’s what Trump wants — a nation full of fearful angry lizards. Why? Because when we’re afraid we are vulnerable and we’re easier to control. Think of the monster under the bed when you were a child. Trump has recreated that for us in the form of the hypothetical raping, drug-dealing illegal alien who wants to sneak into your home and eat your household pet.
Donald Trump wants me to choose fear. He wants me to choose hate. He wants me to choose violence. But that is not a world I want to live in. I don’t want to live in a constant state of fear and terror. I don’t want to believe that my neighbors are out to get me when I have no evidence to support this. (Vaheh and Anna, I owe you a coffee. Next one’s on me.)
Which is why, as we approach the 2024 presidential election, kindness has become an act of defiance. It’s a rejection of hate, vitriol, and fear. It’s a rejection of prejudice and tribalism and authoritarianism. I have a choice. I get to choose the world I want to live in. And I get to create that world. I choose not to let my imagination run away with me and then blame it on the life-saving doctors who live next door.
My Armenian neighbors lived on this block before I did and welcomed me like family. They created space for me. I can choose to invent fictions and hate them or I can choose to build something with them. I am building community. We are building community. The thing we are not building (and will never build) is a wall. Every day, it’s my choice. These small actions may not make headlines, but they’re the ones that will persist after we’re gone.
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