THE ENEMY WITHIN

Dr. Common Good

It has by now become crystal clear the degree to which Donald Trump is effectively an enemy of all that this country stands for, or should stand for if we are true to the basic principles of democracy, justice, and rule of law that are the bedrock of the Constitution. I would not call any public official an enemy lightly, much less the president. But the grotesque spectacle that occurred yesterday in which Trump used federal police to violently clear out peaceful protesters so that he could stage a crude photo-op walk over to a church that did not invite or want him, and then have the gall to wield a bible in the air as he threatened demonstrators with violent force, calling himself the “law and order” president, a display that was preceded by bullying tweets, speeches and a call with governors during which he called for the military to go in and “dominate” the protestors, locking them up for long jail terms, and crudely bragging that he would do the job if “weak” governors who look like “jerks” would not, is the most appalling and alarming display of dictatorial thuggishness this writer has ever seen from a U.S. president. This is the stuff of Putin, or Dutarte, not an American president. On top of that, it is an odious and fraudulent charade from a man who doesn’t even have the guts to fire someone in person (except on his reality TV show), and who hid in the bunker of the White House while warning anyone thinking of breaching the fences that they would face “vicious dogs” and “ominous weapons.” He is as weak as he is vile, a “little man,” as CNN’s Anderson Cooper rightly called him.

And the entire time, not one word about the massive injustice that sparked the protests in the first place, the blatant police killing of George Floyd, the latest in a long line of such killings. Not a single word.

There is not one ounce of leadership in Trump. He has shown himself, day after day, to be ignorant, brutish, venal, narcissistic, vindictive and without a shred of empathy or principle. He is not capable of leading. His only qualifications are a lifetime of ruling his little house of cards by diktat, the creation of a phony reality-TV show persona, and the amassing (and manipulation) of a mountain of debt in service of a glitzy real-estate sham-pire. He knows less about the U.S. system of government than any immigrant who passes the citizenship test. And yet he is president, at a time when there is a national pandemic crisis (about which he has foundered, lied shamelessly, peddled quackery, and manipulated for political ends) and now a crisis of racial justice. No enemy of the United States could do better than this to mismanage a country and destroy its social fabric as well as basic governing principles, not to mention its global alliances and leadership position. In the space of three years, the world has witnessed the U.S. degenerate into a tin-pot, cartoon dictatorship-in-the-making, our once-admired scientific and policy expertise shredded in favor of know-nothing sycophants, our friends at arm’s length, and the credibility of our word and our principles evaporated.  

At this point, any Republicans who continue to justify or enable Trump’s wannabe autocracy (including Barr, McConnell and company) are equally culpable, and will be cast in this nation’s history as collaborators in calamity.

As I have said before, this is no longer a partisan issue. This is a national issue. Remember in November. Trump and Trumpism must be voted out, for the preservation and good of the country. We have all heard the explanations and reasons for his election in the first place. Points taken. This time, there is no excuse.