I came to this country 41 years ago. Now Trump is making me feel like I don’t belong here. By Max Boot September 5 at 7:32 PM Max Boot is a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations … I am white. I am Jewish. I am an immigrant. I am a Russian American. But until recently I haven’t focused so much on those parts of my identity.

I’ve always thought of myself simply as a normal, unhyphenated American.

Ever since I arrived here, along with my mother and grandmother, from Russia in 1976 at age 7, I have been eager to assimilate. And I’ve done a pretty good job of it. I don’t have any accent, and I haven’t written much about my origins — which, at any rate, don’t have much to do with my job, which is writing about military history and American national security policy.

From the Washington Post:For example, on March 2, 2016 Max Boot told the New York Times : “I would sooner vote for Josef Stalin than I would vote for Donald Trump.”For example, in Politico on March 2, 2016: “In a March 1 interview with Vox, Max Boot, a military historian at the Council on Foreign Relations who backed the Iraq War and often advocates a hawkish foreign policy, said that he, too, would vote for Clinton over Trump. “I’m literally losing sleep over Donald Trump,” he said. “She would be vastly preferable to Trump.”Totally unrelated. ‏By the way, here’s tweet from Max Boot in March 2016 right after a Muslim terrorist attack on Brussels:

Problem in EU is failure to assimilate Muslim immigrants. US has done better job, but Trump attacks alienate Muslims & threaten security. — Max Boot (@MaxBoot) March 22, 2016

More Max:

So people are often surprised to find out that I wasn’t born in the United States. When I tell them where I’m from, they often ask, “Were your parents diplomats?” Nope. My parents were Russian Jews who fled the oppression of the Soviet Union and found a haven in the Land of Opportunity. But that didn’t seem to matter much. Until Donald Trump came along…. At one time it was easy to dismiss such sentiments as the ravings of a handful of marginal losers. That’s harder to do now that the president of the United States has embraced the far-right agenda. … The announced end of DACA hit me particularly hard, because almost half of those affected arrived in the United States before their sixth birthday. In other words, they were about the same age I was when I came here. My family’s case was somewhat different in that we received legal status as refugees after arriving here, and in time we became citizens. Not even Trump and his nativist attorney general, Jeff Sessions, have yet figured out a way to strip naturalized American citizens of their legal status — although they’ve explicitly stated that they want to reduce legal immigration by 50 percent. … The result of all this hate-mongering is that for the first time, I no longer feel like a “real” American. I now feel like an outcast, a minority. … Increasingly I feel like a Jew, an immigrant, a Russian — anything but a normal, mainstream American. That may be precisely what Trump and his most fervent supporters intend. They are redefining what it means to be an American. The old idea that anyone who embraces America’s ideals can become an American is out. A White House aide has even repudiated the words on the Statue of Liberty: “Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.” Instead, American-ness is being redefined in blood-and-soil terms. I find myself increasingly forced to think of my ethnic identity instead of the national identity I adopted as a boy in 1976. That is discomfiting for me, and a tragedy for America.

Uh, Max, you’re finally realizing about yourself what your skeptics noticed years ago.

America can only be worthy of Max Boot if it relentlessly invades the Boot family’s ancient ethnic enemies in the Old World. Since Max isn’t going to fight himself, to get enough boots on the ground, America must invite in mercenaries from the whole world to invade Max’s hereditary rivals. For example, from iSteve in 2005:

Invade-the-World-Invite-the-World Personified Neocon Max Boot explains in the LA Times his latest brainstorm about how to turn the Republic into an Empire: Uncle Sam Wants Tu: The military could ease its manpower shortage by letting foreigners join up. I note that there is a pretty big pool of manpower that’s not being tapped: everyone on the planet who is not a U.S. citizen or permanent resident… The military would do well today to open its ranks not only to legal immigrants but also to illegal ones and, as important, to untold numbers of young men and women who are not here now but would like to come. No doubt many would be willing to serve for some set period in return for one of the world’s most precious commodities — U.S. citizenship. Open up recruiting stations from Budapest to Bangkok, Cape Town to Cairo, Montreal to Mexico City. Some might deride those who sign up as mercenaries, but these troops would have significantly different motives than the usual soldier of fortune. Hey, great idea, Max! It worked like a charm for the Roman Empire in the 5th Century AD. Last year I wrote, “One main breakdown could be between those who want to hammer the rest of the world into being just like America and those who fear that trying to do that will only end up making America just like the rest of the world.” Boot is a particularly sinister exemplar of those whose overweening ambition would just end up making America as God-forsaken as the rest of the world. Here’s a better idea: If we can’t find enough American citizens to start more stupid wars, then let’s not start them.

Imagine a Boot stamping on an American face — forever.

[Comment at Unz.com]