To the Editor:

It has dawned on me that Trump’s vision for America is to make it into an exclusive country club.

The wall he wants on our southern border with Mexico shows that he’d like to make America a gated community — literally. A beefed-up ICE force is needed, in his view, to guard the gate.

In his America-as-Mar-a-Lago, Trump envisions only what he considers the right sort of people. He adores the exclusivity of a country club, a place as he sees it where one doesn’t have to hobnob with the riffraff.  Charging a $200,000 admission fee pretty handily achieves this goal.

But what to do if some “riffraff” are already members?  That explains the Muslim ban and the mass deportations. And what do you do about those for which deportation is not an option? Attorney General Jeff Sessions has answered this question by signaling a huge jump in the planned number and duration of incarcerations. If you can’t deport the “undesirables,” then make it easier to lock them away in private prisons for such “offenses” as marijuana use.

Apparently, the main criterion for membership desirability in Country Club America is possession of obscene wealth and a willingness to share that wealth with Mr. Trump or his family. That’s why Russian oligarchs are so welcome. That’s why Saudi Arabia wasn’t included in the Muslim ban. And it explains why Jared Kushner’s sister was promising EB-5 visas for Chinese citizens willing to purchase them for a minimum $500,000 investment in U.S. projects, presumably projects with a Trump/Kushner family business connection. As racist as Trump is, he’s even more classist.

With Trump’s cabinet, we see the people he surrounds himself with by choice: mostly filthy rich white men. In Betsy DeVos’ case, her billions in personal wealth and her huge political donations outweighed the obvious drawback of her being the wrong sort of gender. I’m sure Trump takes pride in making a few magnanimous exceptions to his membership rules.

I do realize the appeal that country clubs and gated communities hold for some people. (Who doesn’t want to ride around every weekend in a golf cart with rich Republicans?) Nevertheless, the idea of remodeling our inclusive, democratic, egalitarian nation after them horrifies me. If we end up with Trump’s Country Club America, about 98 percent of us are going to be relegated to the outside of the gate.

The time has come to ask ourselves, “Which side (Whose side) are we on?’

Bill Spencer

Cullowhee