Antichrists: At the heart of the extraordinary row between the American pope and the American president is the matter of what American-ness truly signifies. The pope, who spent much of his adult life among Peru’s poor and misbegotten, argues that to be American is to confer inalienable human dignity upon citizens and migrants alike, the centerpiece of a July 3 video message that honored America’s long history of compassion and inclusion as exalted by the Declaration of Independence. But to the openly xenophobic American president, these concepts are well nigh revolting. He has lived a life of privilege, worships money, and has no patience for those who do not in some way resemble him and his values system. For this reason, the president’s July 4 festivities are by invitation only and favor the country’s oligarchs. By contrast, the Chicago-born pontiff of Creole origin is on Lampedusa, Italy’s southern Mediterranean detention island, to mingle and pray with stricken boat people, in an effort to bring dignity and hope to those who in Italy and elsewhere are often spit upon. He is attempting to embody the spirit of the Statue of Liberty, a symbolic monument whose pledge has been mooted by a president who implicitly deplores the huddled masses if they fail to show their papers, the classic “deine Papiere” spoken by Nazi police in the 1930s and ’40s. Neither the pope nor the president can win this argument. Dignity and disdain will never shake hands. There is no deal to be had here. But there is a choice worth making between right and wrong, and the pope, seeing his nation in trouble, abides by the former, and this America can use any nobility that comes its way, lest its birthdays remain indefinitely in the hands of billionaire Antichrists.