TODAY’S LITANY OF TRUMP DEPRAVITY
Dr. Common Good
Dr. Common Good has not had the chance to post for a little while, so this will be something of a “dump.”
Let’s take a quick inventory of Trump’s recent and continuing depredations on the United States and, for that matter, the world:
- Weaponizing the justice system in the U.S. – Vindictive, fabricated charges against his former opponents, including Letitia James, James Comey, Adam Schiff, among others – using illegally appointed prosecutors to do so, and abusing access to private information about their mortgages to gin up fabricated charges.
- Creating a conspicuous rule by patronage, and corruption on a scale never imagined in the U.S. (Nixon and the Teapot Dome scandals notwithstanding) – This includes a continuing slew of pardons that don’t even come close to meeting the customary justifications for granting. Trump’s pardons are either transactional or a reward for stoking Trump’s infantile ego; hence the pardon of convicted crypto executive Changpeng Zhao, whose Binance crypto exchange laundered money for terrorists, illegal narcotics trade, and others, but, of course, who provided a needed financial boost for the Trump family crypto business called World Liberty. Hence the influence-buying “gift” by Qatar of a $400 million dollar airplane, and granting the United Arab Emirates access to high-tech Nvidia computer chips, normally export-restricted for security reasons, following a promise of extensive investment. And the continuing, amateurish corruption by FBI Director Kash Patel, using DOJ jets for his pleasure trips and FBI security for his girlfriend. Oh, and a pardon for former Honduran president Juan Orlando Hernandez, a convicted, high-profile drug trafficker, because he gushed with praise for Trump, and because he was convicted during the Biden administration (a Trump automatic faux-pas).
- The continued implementation of an ugly, racist, fascist police state, including the abusive and illegal snatching of people off the streets, from schools, from homes, and even from courtrooms, by ICE agents with faces covered in black masks. And the unjustified use of national guard troops, ostensibly to “quell violence,” but in reality as nothing more than a show of thuggish force against cities, or mayors, who dare to defy Trump’s authoritarian demands. Along with that, there is the patent lying by DHS Secretary Kristi Noem, who claims, in the face of all evidence to the contrary, that ICE has not detained a single U.S. citizen.
- The arbitrary, capricious use of U.S. military force, or threat thereof, in violation of long-established rules of war – including the ongoing attacks on small boats that are alleged to be smuggling drugs to the U.S., again, without evidence. And the gratuitous killing of two unarmed men who were clinging to a boat that had already been destroyed. Then there are Trump’s bombastic threats of war against Venezuela and Columbia, smacking of 19th century jingoism. As a corollary, Trump has also openly interfered in elections, threatening, for example, to cut off U.S. aid to Honduras if his sycophantic “mini-me” (Nasry Asfura) did not win.
- The senseless destruction of America’s economic position in the world – including the chaotic and harmful tariffs which destroy markets for U.S. goods and raise prices for Americans, and the mindless, ignorant rejection of green energy and climate change — the consequence of which essentially hands the entire global market to China, which is assiduously pursuing dominance in this sector. Along with that, the refusal to extend subsidies for health insurance through the ACA exchange (some call it “Obamacare”), soon to price out millions of Americans who need health care, and the destructive skewing of the economy towards the small cluster of billionaires and corporate influencers and their symbiotic relationship with the Mafia-like Trump clan.
- The continued abandonment of our Western European allies and the undermining of efforts by Ukraine to fend off the Russians, driven in part by a pro-Putin, pro-authoritarian, retrograde, even anti-European political ideology personified, among others, by J.D. Vance, and spelled out in appalling detail in the Trump Administration’s newly released National Security Strategy.
- The continued evisceration of the once-admired scientific research institutions of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), stripping out their public data, and depleting the critical expertise that has for so long been the foundation of their reputation and importance for the public good. Along with that, there is the inane and dangerous destruction of a health care and immunization system built on generations of research, but now driven by conspiracies and quackery under the reign of the woefully unqualified RFK Jr.
- The ongoing attempt to destroy the free press, one of the cornerstones of American democracy – using the Federal Communications Commission to threaten television stations that do not fire or discipline comedians and other individuals who criticize Trump, kicking all normal journalistic organizations out of the White House and Pentagon press briefings in favor of the fawning MAGA media, and stripping National Public Radio of its funding.
- The nauseating display of ego by the this president, the likes of which has never been seen in the U.S. – plastering the Oval Office with tasteless gold ornamentation, destroying the East Wing of the White House (again, without legally required permits and approvals) in order to build a Versailles-like monument to himself, taking over the Kennedy Center and moving to rename it for himself, illegally appropriating the U.S. Institute of Peace and, of all Orwellian twists, renaming it the Donald J. Trump Institute of Peace, and – at the same time as he is eliminating National Park Service free days on Martin Luther King’s birthday and Juneteenth holidays – establishing a free day in honor of his birthday.
- The public abandonment of longstanding American values, including the support for democratic movements worldwide, the provision of humanitarian assistance and foreign aid to needy countries and peoples, a commitment to equal rights, a pluralist, welcoming society, freedom of religion, the rule of law and much more. However imperfectly these values have been practiced, they have at least been held as aspirational.
Once again, I must repeat. There is nothing about this that makes America great. Nothing.