Toastmasters Speech, and My Own Rant

At Thursday’s meeting of USPTO Toastmasters, a member who joined relatively recently gave an icebreaker speech. He is originally from Ethiopia, and described how his father had won a place in the green card lottery, and brought him (eighteen years old at the time) to America with him, leaving his wife and the other children, since his father had been able to scrape up enough money for only one family member besides himself.

He, the speaker, had worked full time while studying at Northern Virginia Community College, and then managed to attend George Mason University. It had been hard, but he finally managed to bring his family to the United States, and went on to a career at the Patent and Trademark Office. We were all impressed by his speech, and his striving to live the American Dream, and help his family.

I have already heard accounts from two other people of how they had the good fortune to win the green card lottery, and come to America. One is from Romania, has been active in USPTO Toastmasters for years, and has recently risen to become a supervisory patent examiner; the other was from one of the south Asian countries, and gave a speech a few years ago, but isn’t currently active in Toastmasters, so far as I know.

Donald Trump, who has echoed Hitler by describing immigrants as “poisoning the blood of our people”, has characterized those who enter via the green card lottery as “the worst of the worst.” I regard the three Americans by choice I know who won places by such chance as better Americans than Trump the insurrectionist.

I remember a cartoon from the Clinton Administration, in which a youthful Bill Clinton was seen undergoing brain surgery, wit( the mordant caption, “Young Bill Clinton prepared for a political career by having his sense of same surgically removed.”

I wonder whether Donald Trump ever had a sense of shame to evulse.