Unstable Trump Doubles Down As Stakes Against Him Rise – OpEd – Eurasia Review

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I co-authored, with Mark Green, two books about Donald J. Trump, and I’ve thought a lot about the impact of his presidency on our country. Trump’s legacy is more than being a tody of Wall Street interests or an inflator of massive, wasteful military budgets, or his siding with corporations over workers, consumers, small taxpayers and needy communities. Other presidents have also betrayed their oaths of office in such ways. However, Trump’s most lasting impact is that he has actively and brazenly unleashed the worst elements in our society of cruelty, bigotry, greed, intimidation prone to violence, racism and misogyny. He has given visibility and status to these qualities, dutifully reported daily by ratings-minded mass media moguls, in part because he continues to get away with such behavior year after year.

Moreover, Trump has openly violated long-established norms and standards, both criminal and civil, as well as our Constitution. Remember his radical declaration in 2019, I have Article II, where I have the right to do whatever I want as President. By avoiding this lawlessness, until some recent pushback by law enforcement, Trump has further institutionalized such violent and criminogenic behavior for others to openly emulate. The children now use his bad words in family exchanges.

Others before him have been implicated in some of these violations, but Trump has publicly aired these and other offenses. His abuses of power include, criminal violations of the Hatch Act and the Anti-Deficiency Act, disobeying more than 130 Congressional subpoenas as well as openly, defiantly and repeatedly engaging in at least a dozen impeachable offenses from at the White House (See, Congressional Record, December 18, 2019).

Once unleashed, his imitators rush to copy such behavior, especially when as candidates, they see the political rewards in our winner-take-all, gerrymandered, Electoral College system of minority rule.

During Trump’s presidency, the opposing forces have become milder, not more vigorous. Many from organized labor and organized religion, the world of academia and civic groups have found the will to stand up to Trump’s abuses of power. If they are engaged, they seem extremely sensitive to the currents of anonymous abuse on the Internet. In athletic lingo, they freeze or cling. If they tried, they couldn’t keep up with Trumps high-velocity vitriol.

Tracker Glenn Kessler of the Washington Post counted more than 30,000 false or misleading statements by Trump during his four-year term. Politicians lie, to be sure, but for Trump, it’s a way of life, hour by hour, 24/7, as are his chronic, daily, personal obstructions of justice, which frighten officials. of law enforcement.

A longtime civic leader confided in me that his group didn’t know how to deal with this guy. Progressives picket Obama’s White House. Fifteen hundred people were arrested there during a civil disobedience protest against a proposed pipeline certification that protesters believe will open the door to adding more greenhouse gases to our environment. More protests should have taken place in front of Trumps White House for greater offenses in almost every domestic sector. What’s the point, the fatalistic explanation for not doing so (See a list of some of the protests during the Trump administration: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_protests_against_Donald_Trump).

Of course, the ratings-obsessed mass media bear much of the responsibility for the rise of Donald J. Trump, from his early misogynistic interviews with Howard Stern while a failed gambling czar, to his presidential campaign. The press gave him center stage. The generally reserved New York Times, which Trump has regularly denounced, gave him significant print space, and even repeated his defamatory personal tweets, even printing his comments. -attack members of Congress and private citizens without giving the accused any right to respond. Ignore the Trump dittohead Fox News.

Is our country in for a Trumpian replay in 2024 (assuming he is not convicted by the prosecutions underway)? Cowardly GOP leaders seem resigned to such a horror show, despite Trump’s negative poll numbers. Will enough GOP voters switch to the Libertarian Party, stay home, or hold their noses and vote for a Democrat? Nobody knows because the wild card is whether we see either mass voter passivity or a mass fed-up backlash. By mass, I mean enough of a slice of Trump voters to create a landslide for Trump’s opponents and his Trumpster candidates at the national and state levels.

The upcoming political season is a historic moment of waiting and opportunity for some emerging celebrity, or some with enough voter turnout, or some episode of bullying involving a brutal act by Trump (said against a small number of protesters at one of his rallies. ) who created a breakthrough by unleashing the frustrations, decency and moral outrage that so many people in our country have been suppressing for so long . The majority of US citizens still want a president who aims to inspire the best from its citizens. Their spirits need to be ignited to bring their passion to the voting booth.

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