12-12-2021, 03:25 PM
Donald Trump has thrown a full barrel of monkey wrenches into American politics. Has anyone ever initiated a Presidential campaign against the incumbent seeking a second term only to win in the next term? Has any Presidential nominee had so many reprobate characteristics (sleazy business practices, connections to syndicates of organized crime, being a sexual predator. and having sympathy with dictatorial powers overseas?) Has anyone won the Presidency in the last century or so with lesser participation in public service? (Eisenhower had as solid a military career as is possible before becoming President, so he is no exception). Has anyone ever had fewer coherent policies? Has any Presidential nominee won the Presidency despite such overt expressions of religious bigotry and contempt for the unfortunate?
America ended up with a rogue before the Presidency, and someone who had no idea of the powers of and constraints upon the Presidency (contrary to myth, the President has few powers except those that Congress authorizes through assent) and bulldozed his way through? We have seen dress rehearsals for three particularly dangerous tendencies in a President. One is the formation of a police apparatus responsible to himself for command and for moral agenda. Second is an inability to recognize an electoral result that he disliked. The third is a scary coup that in recent revelations shows that it was not so spontaneous as it appeared at first.
Trump has achieved little as President except to select three dreadful Justices to the US Supreme Court, but he has shown where the seams lie in our political system. He might not be the one to exploit those, but someone with little character but inordinate ambition might.
I used to think that because of the literary heritage of America that includes William Shakespeare that we are immune to a Macbeth-like leader. I am no longer so smug about that.
America ended up with a rogue before the Presidency, and someone who had no idea of the powers of and constraints upon the Presidency (contrary to myth, the President has few powers except those that Congress authorizes through assent) and bulldozed his way through? We have seen dress rehearsals for three particularly dangerous tendencies in a President. One is the formation of a police apparatus responsible to himself for command and for moral agenda. Second is an inability to recognize an electoral result that he disliked. The third is a scary coup that in recent revelations shows that it was not so spontaneous as it appeared at first.
Trump has achieved little as President except to select three dreadful Justices to the US Supreme Court, but he has shown where the seams lie in our political system. He might not be the one to exploit those, but someone with little character but inordinate ambition might.
I used to think that because of the literary heritage of America that includes William Shakespeare that we are immune to a Macbeth-like leader. I am no longer so smug about that.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.