It is time for all Americans to stop pretending that Trump is something that he isn't. Donald Trump is nothing less than a dire threat to everything that our country has always said that it stands for. Yes, we've always been at least a bit hypocritical when we say what we stand for, our reality always falling far short of our expressed ideals; but that is no reason for us to give up on trying to make our ideals our reality. Donald Trump is the most severe threat to the American way in a very long time, and it's time we figured that out.
Donald Trump is first of all a threat to the rule of law. The rule of law is perhaps the most foundational American principle. Everything else we value depends on it. Trump sees the independent, nonpolitical operation of the law not as a foundational value but as a threat to his wealth and his power. His efforts to get Attorney General Sessions to "un-recuse" himself from the Russia investigation is a blatant attempt to obstruct justice. He wants Sessions in charge of the Russia investigation for one reason and one reason only: He wants Sessions to rein in Mueller and protect Trump from the legal consequences of that investigation, which will almost certainly show that Trump's campaign conspired with Russian operatives to influence the 2016 presidential election in violation of the law and that Trump obstructed justice in an attempt to avoid the legal consequences of that conspiracy. In the pardons Trump has issued he has sounded a "dog whistle" to people who know the facts about that conspiracy, signaling to them that if they keep quiet and/or lie to protect him he will pardon them. Trump is thus even using the constitutional prerogatives of the presidency to obstruct justice. I fear that there is nothing he will not do to save his own skin.
The policies that his administration pursues of tax breaks for the ultras-rich and deregulation so that polluters can more freely pollute and destroy the environment are reprehensible and contradict the supposed American values of equality and concern for generations that come after us. Trump is a racist and a misogynist. He works against the supposed American value of racial and gender equality at every turn. Trump and his administration want to return the world to the ways of the 1890s when industrial capitalists made immense amounts of money at the expense of the poverty and misery of huge numbers of people, explicit racism and legal discrimination, and the subjugation of women to the whims of men.
As I once wrote in an essay on this blog Trump is an American fascist. He whips up an unfounded and immoral hatred of immigrants in the way Hitler whipped up an unfounded and immoral hatred of the Jews, and he does it for the same reason. Fascists always need an enemy on whom to blame people's problems. It matters not at all that the enemy chosen is not responsible for those problems. It matters only that the fascist leader can give frightened people an enemy to hate. Hitler did it with the Jews. Trump does it with immigrants, and he throws in such supposedly un-American people as Muslims as people he calls on us to hate as well. Hitler's hatred of the Jews led to the Holocaust. I can only pray that Trump's hatred of immigrants, especially non-white, non-Christian immigrants, will not lead to a similar tragedy in our land.
Trump is not just another bad president. We've had lots of bad presidents, but we've never before put a true American fascist in the White House. Not even Richard Nixon was the kind of fascist Trump is. We have put a fascist in the White House, and we need to do everything we can without violence to put an end to his destruction of American values. Yet we all just go on about our ordinary lives. We watch television news with its advertisements about the embarrassment of bad breath as if our very way of life were not threatened by the man in the White House. Well, folks, our way of life is threatened by the man in the White House, beginning with his threat to the rule of law seen in his attacks on Attorney General Sessions, the FBI, the Justice Department, and the Mueller investigation. I wish I knew how to get rid of Trump, Pence, and the spineless Republicans in Congress who won't stand up to them, but I don't. We face the most severe threat to the American way of governance and of life that we have faced perhaps since the Civil War, and I don't know what to do about it. I don't think the Democrats take the threat that Donald Trump represents sufficiently seriously. I think most Americans are unaware of just how dire a threat to us Trump is. (But then most Germans didn't realize how dire a threat Hitler was to them until it was too late.) I look at our political realities today and fall into despair. We are in serious, serious trouble. May God help us to find a way out of it.
Donald Trump is first of all a threat to the rule of law. The rule of law is perhaps the most foundational American principle. Everything else we value depends on it. Trump sees the independent, nonpolitical operation of the law not as a foundational value but as a threat to his wealth and his power. His efforts to get Attorney General Sessions to "un-recuse" himself from the Russia investigation is a blatant attempt to obstruct justice. He wants Sessions in charge of the Russia investigation for one reason and one reason only: He wants Sessions to rein in Mueller and protect Trump from the legal consequences of that investigation, which will almost certainly show that Trump's campaign conspired with Russian operatives to influence the 2016 presidential election in violation of the law and that Trump obstructed justice in an attempt to avoid the legal consequences of that conspiracy. In the pardons Trump has issued he has sounded a "dog whistle" to people who know the facts about that conspiracy, signaling to them that if they keep quiet and/or lie to protect him he will pardon them. Trump is thus even using the constitutional prerogatives of the presidency to obstruct justice. I fear that there is nothing he will not do to save his own skin.
The policies that his administration pursues of tax breaks for the ultras-rich and deregulation so that polluters can more freely pollute and destroy the environment are reprehensible and contradict the supposed American values of equality and concern for generations that come after us. Trump is a racist and a misogynist. He works against the supposed American value of racial and gender equality at every turn. Trump and his administration want to return the world to the ways of the 1890s when industrial capitalists made immense amounts of money at the expense of the poverty and misery of huge numbers of people, explicit racism and legal discrimination, and the subjugation of women to the whims of men.
As I once wrote in an essay on this blog Trump is an American fascist. He whips up an unfounded and immoral hatred of immigrants in the way Hitler whipped up an unfounded and immoral hatred of the Jews, and he does it for the same reason. Fascists always need an enemy on whom to blame people's problems. It matters not at all that the enemy chosen is not responsible for those problems. It matters only that the fascist leader can give frightened people an enemy to hate. Hitler did it with the Jews. Trump does it with immigrants, and he throws in such supposedly un-American people as Muslims as people he calls on us to hate as well. Hitler's hatred of the Jews led to the Holocaust. I can only pray that Trump's hatred of immigrants, especially non-white, non-Christian immigrants, will not lead to a similar tragedy in our land.
Trump is not just another bad president. We've had lots of bad presidents, but we've never before put a true American fascist in the White House. Not even Richard Nixon was the kind of fascist Trump is. We have put a fascist in the White House, and we need to do everything we can without violence to put an end to his destruction of American values. Yet we all just go on about our ordinary lives. We watch television news with its advertisements about the embarrassment of bad breath as if our very way of life were not threatened by the man in the White House. Well, folks, our way of life is threatened by the man in the White House, beginning with his threat to the rule of law seen in his attacks on Attorney General Sessions, the FBI, the Justice Department, and the Mueller investigation. I wish I knew how to get rid of Trump, Pence, and the spineless Republicans in Congress who won't stand up to them, but I don't. We face the most severe threat to the American way of governance and of life that we have faced perhaps since the Civil War, and I don't know what to do about it. I don't think the Democrats take the threat that Donald Trump represents sufficiently seriously. I think most Americans are unaware of just how dire a threat to us Trump is. (But then most Germans didn't realize how dire a threat Hitler was to them until it was too late.) I look at our political realities today and fall into despair. We are in serious, serious trouble. May God help us to find a way out of it.
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