Trumpism... America's Real Plague?

 

Close to four years the world has been mired in the Fear of the Unknown, as the United States took its democracy to the brink.

Bit-by-bit, American’s rights and freedoms slowly eroded with a tweet or the stroke of a Sharpie pen upon an errant Executive Order, edging the nation ever closer to an autocracy through the consequential decision to vote Donald Trump in as president. The days of America being a shining democratic beacon upon the North American hill along with Canada were fading fast, and the world watched helplessly as the U.S.’s global strength slowly ebbed away.

On that dark November night in 2016, all rational souls felt the air leave their lungs after the Trump presidency was called, and since then, we have held what was left of our breath, fearing what terrible, despicable, irreparable damage that man could wreak.

And Trump’s words and deeds have been horrendous.

Each and every day for the last four years, the world has woken up, scrolled their new feeds, and groaned at the latest embarrassing or dangerous act of a dysfunctional and deranged man.

To sum up the experience in one word — exhausting.

And that exhaustion existed before Trump managed to kill a quarter million of his fellow citizens from an out of control pandemic. The utterly sad fact is that some Americans who voted for this man, who wore the red MAGA hat and stood shoulder-to-shoulder at his zero policy rallies were now dead. Stone-cold dead. Piled up in refridgerator trucks, waiting to be buried, never having had the chance to be held by their loved ones before they took their final breath.

Trump is not responsible for Covid.

Trump IS responsible for instituting no cohesive federal plan to fight Covid.

While the free world feared terrorist bombs falling from the sky thanks to Trump’s loose lips with world dictators, Americans had a far greater in-house threat. Trump’s narcissistic mind and his profound inability to govern killed off 80 times the number of Americans who died on 9/11, and that death toll soars up and continues to rage on.

The American genocide took up virtually no space in Trump’s mind.

His goals for being president still lived on…

• ·         Be a quasi-king/dictator, snuggling up to the idea of a never-ending term.

• ·         Romp around in the White House — sleeping in, watching FOX, abusing staff, and not reading the Presidential Daily Brief.

• ·         Soar in the heady skies via the overuse of the taxpayer funded Air Force One.

• ·         Make grandiose rally speeches riddled with lies and disinformation, while...

• ·         Pooh-poohing legitimate news sources as fake.

• ·         Threaten career assassination to anyone who dare question his words or deeds.

• ·         And slowly, but with zest and determination, swap out every ally the U.S. has ever had for every foe they’ve ever made because that’s what it takes to be a Kompromat in Putin’s and Erdogan’s armies.
  

It’s not like his psychological dysfunctions and leadership inabilities and mobster mentality weren’t already known… ask any New Yorker, any contractor, who has been threatened or stiffed. And then there’s the whole, I can’t go back to ordering hotel windows after being the President thing… yeah, where would the fun be in that?

The Art of Losing Deals is the book that should have been written about the gold-plated grifter. He knew nothing about property development unless you count arm-wrestling City Hall, kicking out coloured tenants or selling the Trump name on buildings he didn’t even own. And the ne’er-do-well still managed to go bankrupt six times on Daddy’s multi-million dollar dime.

It’s funny that, having Fred constantly bail out his loser kid. Daddy finally died, as fathers eventually do, and the screw ups Don makes now can’t be cleaned up by another round of dough, especially since Don had already stolen the lion’s share of Fred’s estate, robbing his relatives of their inheritance.

Yet, somehow, irrespective of the private and public nightmare that has been Trump, millions of Americans thought Don was the right choice. 

 

New York Magazine

This is key.

Until an answer is found to explain why this voter mindset exists, Trump and his cookie-cutter minions — who if left unchecked, will procreate like bunnies — will never ebb from American politics.

That thought should send a chill down everyone’s spine.

To date, the Democrats haven’t accepted there is a NEED UNFULFILLED in half of the American electorate, and they are afraid to face the MAGAmites, to ask the question: Why?

When all is said and done, and the proverbial milk has spilled, it usually takes an historian — Jon Meacham to be exact — to shine light on and remind us of the obvious, for it seems only those who study the past recognize its potential to e’er repeat.

As Meacham pointed out on an MSNBC interview, Trumpism is the culmination of all the darkest American “isms” combined;

• ·         Isolationism – you only have to examine the late arrival to both world wars to see America’s inherent inclination to hunker down and only care within and not without, that is until the bombs or sea mines literally explode on their doorstep.

• ·         Racism – antebellum plantation slaves, 60s race riots, Black Lives Matter protests, anyone?

• ·         Nationalism – an overzealous belief that American ways are always the best, no matter how far the bar is lowered.

Trumpism – my definition – an alt Right mélange of all the above with an Old Boys School mindset — old white men with money and power refusing to let The Others in on the deal —  baked in. 

The Economist

The question is: Hasn’t Trumpism been simmering on America’s back burner for decades?

If you agree with that political evolution, there shouldn’t have been any shock as to Trump’s kingship. The greedy Wall Street ‘80s and the birth of the raging Newt Gingrich/alt Right mindset started this elitist ball rolling. Add to that Islamic terrorism and a declining manufacturing base with no plans to retool the industry or retrain the workforce, and you have the lower educated blue collar workers swimming in a Fear and Rage soup that happily boiled over in 2016.

Yet, I’ll be the first to admit I was slack-jawed when I witnessed the Blue Wall of Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania turn red. Being a Canadian, I knew our country’s moderate Left belief to lift all boats in a higher social benefits tide bled into those northern states. And yet, here I was, watching our cousins to the south march ever further to a nationalist Right.

It was impossible to not see similarities from the starving Germans post WWI, and how Fear and Rage drew them ever further Right with the help of their own ill-educated, psychologically dysfunctional guru. Some say this comparison is hyperbole, and yet the similarities are there in the timeline and motivation, and they are striking…

Uneducated, unemployed labourers, desperate to feed their families, seeing an outlier promising a return to better times, as long as they kept The Others out of the country and away from their jobs…

Any historian can see the parallel. The starving Germans needed not to starve. The jobless Americans needed no foreigner to take what little manufacturing jobs remained. Fear and Hate > MAGA > Trump.

The question becomes: If half of the electorate still managed to vote for Trumpism even after their leader made a colossal international, domestic and cultural mess out of these last four years, doesn’t that beg for a political reckoning on the Left?

 

Maclean's

Like everyone else who watched with bated breath the 2020 election results slowly trickle in, and saw that promised Blue Wave morph into a Red Mirage, the thoughts were, by God, not again? What is wrong with the States? Many of us assumed 2016, like Trump, was an outlier, a nightmare never to be repeated, yet here we were, watching over 70 million Americans head to the polls and prove the pollsters wrong, again. If there aren’t polling company boardroom execs red-faced and raging, demanding answers and course corrections, the public will never again heed the stats of another American poll. Heck, their ilk may already be extinct like that of the Do-Do bird, for all I know.

The question morphs: Is Trumpism here to stay in the Congress and Senate regardless of a Biden presidential win?

The answer is scary, and moderate Americans don’t want to even entertain the possibility.

Worst Case: if the Democrats don’t face the MAGA force and figure out how to cure their ills, the U.S. will again be under a Red Repub Rule, and this time it may longer stick, and to the entire world’s detriment.

Best Case: You can have all the moderate Left-wing presidents you want, but if they have no legislative power because the MAGA mindset still pervades in the Congress and Senate, then all you have is a 4-year quasi-king with a pen and Executive Orders that then become revoked by the next 4-year quasi-king.

The laws never changing.

The citizens never benefiting.

The country never improving.

Infrastructure, manufacturing and civil rights erode beyond repair, turning that shining light on the hill into a dying ember.

As a freedom-loving North American, this scenario angers me.

Canada and the U.S. fought in two world wars, sacrificed tens of thousands of lives, to preserve and enhance civil liberties, to retain and make robust our manufacturing might and to defend humanitarian interests around the globe.

Hasn’t the world endured enough autocrats, dictators and despots?

Wasn’t North America the ONE continent where such evil would never pervade?

After the downfall of 2016, and then 2020’s Red Mirage, a little bird inside my gut whispered, Oh, really? Are you so sure? Another election, and another MAGA-infused outcome.

I put away the champagne bottle, and looked at James Carville with disdain. The exuberant grin that had been pasted on James’s face election night soon turned upside down. And as the week and the vote counting inched forward, I saw the usually pleasant politico turn into The Ragin’ Cajon. In TV interviews, he was a man of few words — maybe his mother taught him, If you can’t say anything nice… — but if looks could kill, well, history tells me to bloody well duck ‘n’ cover.

 

Law.com

But by the Saturday, James and I finally had reason to smile. I beamed as I finally raised a glass of bubbly to toast Biden’s win, and I know the whole world celebrated with me. That day felt so damn good. I exhaled for the first time in four years. Yet I knew by the next morning, Trumpism had not been eradicated. It was evident there would be no “Joenami.” And the faint thrum of a resurfacing scourge could be heard, as menacing and deadly as one of Hitler’s wolf pack U-boats, skulking through uncharted waters, readying for the kill.

That kind of fear held for too long turns into frustration, and as a Canadian, you say to yourself, “Okay, my American caring is over. If that bat-shit crazy country wants to hang itself and watch their rights and freedoms swirl down the crapper, fine, have at’er. Canada and the rest of NATO will march on without the MAGAmites!”

Throughout Trump’s first term, you could see the G7 leaders slowly pulling up their country’s draw bridges, stepping away from instead of engaging in further negotiations with the unhinged president, for nobody wanted to be ignored nor physically shoved aside nor brow-beaten by a mobster-wannabe.

I tried to pull back myself. I tried to wipe America from my mind. But as I tried, I heard a whirring sound in my head.

It was Eisenhower and Roosevelt spinning in their graves.

Patton, too, clawing at the soil, desperate to rise from the dead so he could slap Trump in the face with his riding gloves. And from his own resting place, General MacArthur hissed, “I shall return alright, to make this pipsqueak Donnie clean the West Point latrines with a toothbrush.

The generals were pissed.

Okay, I’m a writer. I have an imagination, and a wish or two…

No, Canada, the NATO countries, all had a responsibility to examine this dire cause and effect, and somehow… somehow… get the most powerful country in the world to stop drinking the damn Trumpism Kool Aid.

As the Grinch’s heart grew three sizes in a day, so could American’s desire to return to humanity in one election, through the hard work and decency found in Joe Biden. It’s odd how leaders will arrive when they are the most needed. It has happened in Canada and it has happened in the States. Maybe through the grace of God, the Trumpism tide has turned. Maybe America has seen the error of its ways and gave itself a second chance to right the ship, avoiding the sinking of the USS Republic by the deadly Trump berg.

Once Biden became the President Elect, the stock market soared over a 1,000 points, the G7 leaders quietly grinned, Dr. Fauci and the CDC scientists exhaled, and freedom-loving Americans ran out into the streets to rejoice. That kind of quiet assurance can literally be taken to the bank, and the hospital bed.

In the end, the only wall that had been built was the one around the White House, not to keep revellers out but to cage in the Bully from Queens. As transition hijinks, the Obama White House only unscrewed door hooks so the next Administration’s coats would fall to the floor. Conversely, the Trump White House is,

• ·         not authorizing the GSA to ascertain the election, so sensitive information can be exchanged,

• ·         firing moderates in the Pentagon in preparation for a possible coup, and if that doesn’t work,

• ·         executing the administrative equivalent to Hitler’s Scorched Earth policy, for if Donnie can’t be king of the castle, then he’ll wreck the damn castle.

And yet, amid this chaos, the world knows Biden will eventually and confidently take the wheel, and facilitate change. He will ensure solutions be found to problems by experts who live and breathe TRUTH and FACTS. And the mainstream media will again be able to freely cover those facts. The world will witness a strong captain at the helm, charting a steady governing course. Amid a raging respiratory pandemic, knowing this, the world today BREATHES.

And yet, the Trumpism question remains…

How do moderate Americans get through to those 70+ million Trump voters?

• ·         Can you educate the Latino community, especially in Florida and southern Texas, that South American socialism is NOT North American democracy?

• ·         Can there be an online awareness campaign developed, targeting ill-informed Trump voters of the disinformation being propagated on the Right?

• ·         Can Biden put through a Trumanesque Marshall Plan to retrain blue-collar workers to again earn a decent wage, not through antiquated fossil fuel manufacturing but through 21^st century, ecologically sustainable technologies?

• ·         Can America kill once and for all the Old Boys School misogyny and racism, and treat every individual on their character and merits instead of their country of origin and the colour of their skin?

• ·         Can these changes be steadily integrated, so people have time to accept change? Extremist, overnight acts will only have conservatives continue to fear the Left > this fear is why a lot of votes went to Trump in the 2020 election. Democrats won’t increase their base and make lasting change if they do it through bulldozing tactics. Are you listening, Bernie and AOC?

• ·         Can Trumpism — the witch’s cauldron of Fear and Rage — die a final death, by Americans owning up to their “ism” tendencies, for you cannot fix what you cannot see, and taking concerted steps to abandon such societal ills?

It’s a big row to hoe. And the Biden/Harris ticket won’t be able to do it alone. The sad fact is America has trust to rebuild, at home and abroad, and it’ll take time.

As a Canadian, I’m not sure I’ll ever watch an American election again without holding my breath. As we never look at Dallas’s Dealey Plaza the same way again nor D.C.’s Watergate complex,

CNN

New York’s Trump Tower will forever loom large as a menacing beast, with out-stretched gold-plated tendrils, hungering to swallow innocents whole if they should stray too close to its shadow.

Yes, Mr. Meacham, history does repeat, it doesn’t just rhyme, and with each go-around, more innocence is lost and more permanent damage is done.

Every time Fear and Rage rear their ugly head, every time politicians ignore the warning signs, ordinary people on both sides of the political spectrum pay the price. While the coronavirus may be a scourge we will beat in 2021, the Trumpvirus will linger for years to come.

Viruses rage tonight. In the end, I’m just not sure which one we should fear more.