Trump

Our nation is in great trouble and we seem to have lost our collective minds as a result. Rather than focusing on actual solutions to the things that need solutions, we’re gravitating towards creating even greater problems that may well prove unsolvable. The very dissolution of the Republic is foreseeable in these circumstances.

Allow me to explain. We are fortunate in that we get to choose the people who create and enforce our policies and laws. It’s both a privilege and responsibility. Yet, too many of us do not see it as the grave responsibility to our fellow citizens that this opportunity entails. We do not participate in the process, or when we do, we do not take the time to understand the choices or the people we’re entrusting to make those decisions.

It’s been festering for more than a generation, this lack of civic responsibility. Our founders envisioned a democratic republic and provided the tools required to see that vision through. Even the greatest calamity to strike our nation, the Civil War, wasn’t a result of a failure of those tools. It came about from a deficiency in the nation’s moral character that couldn’t be solved by earnest debate. Yet, even the earnest men of the 1850’s would be shocked to see what has become of us. At the way so many of America’s citizens no longer care enough about the national character to do more than rant, rage and fire off a few nasty tweets.

Which brings us to the current election. At one time, there were 21 declared candidates for the Presidency of the United States. Twenty-One. Amazingly, none of those candidates has been able to elucidate a plan for how the country moves forward while handing the problems we currently face. On the Democrat side, we are given the choice of a septugenarian who wants to return a system of governance thoroughly discredited 25 years ago or a person of such low character that threat of indictment for corruption, murder and treason casts a gloomy shadow over her campaign.

The Republicans haven’t been any better. That the leading contender from that side of the aisle is nothing more than a self-aggrandizing carnival barker should be immensely obvious to even the most daft among us. Yet, somehow it escaped the millions pledging their support that the very character flaws they’ve spent the past eight years deriding the current president for, their champion exhibits.

This is beyond whether the Trump is a conservative or a liberal. This goes straight to our own deficiencies as a society. After all, if we weren’t as morally bankrupt as we’ve become, a third-rate reality TV personality, devoid of ideas and unable to even identify the real threats to the nation, would have been exactly what he should be: a public laughingstock, chased from the political process before the first chill winds of autumn blew. Instead, the modern day PT Barnum continues on, dragging the nation closer to self-immolation with every nonsensical statement he makes, egged on by a hallelujah chorus of sycophants unable to see the danger he represents to their own well being.

“Wait!” you cry. “The Trump speaks the truth I know, when no one else will!” you lament.

But does he?

His entire campaign is based on playing off the legitimate fears of the American people, and the continuing inaction of the Powers That Be to address them. A lackluster economy, a growing terrorist threat and changing mores have all left middle America wondering what happened, and left those who want to be led looking for what they perceive as a strong leader. Trump, whose entire life was built around being the ultimate huckster, the shyster, the carnival barker, selling himself in order to sell his services, is tailor made for this pathos. Ideas and thought are minimized; all that matters is being that perfect reflective surface in which everyone can see the things they want to see. It is Bill Clinton’s “I feel your pain” mantra on steroids. It is as fake as the winter is long. It is the proof that perception can be reality.

Were that all there was to Trump, we would survive (albeit not without pain). But what makes him far more dangerous to the nation is not campaign style nor the way he’s hoodwinked so many of you. We’ve survived empty suits in the Presidency before. We’ve even thrived with some. No, the danger of Trump lies in his history and the few policy positions he has taken. The Trump continuously demonstrates a Machiavellian tendency to get his way. Combined with his proposed solutions to America’s situation, you should be quaking at the very thought of a Trump presidency.

Those solutions are, at best, extra-constitutional. The electorate is supposedly upset over the last two administrations’ use of the Executive Order as a way to get around the Congress and enact policy against the will of the Congress and the people. Yet the idea that you would now support, unequivocally support, a man who plans to use that questionable instrument as a sledgehammer must be acknowledged. Too few of you have bothered to understand what Trump says, and what it means in practice. You do not want to hear that enacting those policies can only happen by suspending the Bill of Rights, a declaration of martial law, and the end of the United States as the world’s preeminent moral compass. In your rage and impotence, you cling to the megalomaniac and the promise of stability. Little do  you realize that attaching the nation to the whims of one such as Trump will bring us all to ruin.

So please, by all means, vote for Trump. Just remember that when you do, you aren’t just pulling on a lever in the voting booth. You are also pulling the handle on the toilet and flushing the United States of America away.