By Michael Randall
Donald Trump was elected to his second term as president by over 77,000,000 voters. He is their president but no one else’s. About 75,000,000 voted for Kamala Harris, while 89,000,000 of the “voting-eligible” population (not specifically registered voters) did not vote at all. That’s a testimony to the dangerous lack of interest in either candidate, and the poor work of both major political parties.
We are now three months into Trump’s second term and have witnessed him purposely cripple significant parts of the US government’s capabilities; terminate nearly all foreign aid to the world’s millions of most suffering people, support Russia’s goals in its invasion of Ukraine, abandon our allies in Europe (including our formative connection to NATO), initiate a poorly conceived, destructive series of tariffs, threaten the courts and the Federal Reserve bank’s governors, and illegally start to deport non-citizens (many with legal status in the US), denying them any legal defense of their right to be here. These are only a few of his transgressions, but all are designed to make him all powerful.
By these actions, he purposely is testing his capabilities, seeing if the courts, Wall Street and major corporations, the media, the legal profession, universities, and other key institutions will fight him hard enough to blunt his powerful assault on democracy. He hopes they will yield to his unilateral termination of their federally funded programs, and his threats, intimidation, humiliation and other brute measures designed to make American institutions and citizens submit to his imperial will.
If unimpeded, Trump will start to imprison or deport his political enemies and other oppositional citizens whom he finds irritating. If he can thrash more courts and universities into submission, if he continues to ignore the US Supreme Court, if more corporations start to bend the knee and kiss his ridiculous meme coins, America as we have known it will be lost. Simply put, Trump is a terminal cancer on the world and needs to be denied his desired dictatorial powers. Whatever means can be used to accomplish this are still uncertain, but evolving.
America’s autocratic adversaries, especially Russia and China, are elated to watch his work so far. They realize Trump is opening up new opportunities for their dictatorships throughout the world. He is vengeful, ignorant and cruel. Having been convicted of multiple felonies by a citizen jury, he has six bankruptcies to his discredit, and is a destroyer of other people’s small businesses and destroyer of their employees and families, and is multiply accused of sex assault. His disciples still adore him.
Understandably, Trumpers also are offended by urban elites’ patronizing behavior toward them, an irritating and unwarranted behavior by “progressive,” undeservedly arrogant people. Many of Trump’s voters are tired of democracy’s inefficient discussions and endless legal wrangling, and feel they would be happy with obedience to just one man’s rules and pronouncements.
Largely, they do not care about the pain and suffering of people in the outside world to whom Trump has cut off American aid, and they do not care about the sudden, steep decline in this country’s stature and world leadership. They do not yet feel the personal consequences that await them due to Trump’s actions, consequences which will trickle down to local levels over the coming months and years.
The stock market already has plunged into bear market territory, and the US dollar’s value has declined against a number of other currencies. But, most dangerous to the United States, is that sales of US treasury bonds (bonds we sell to investors so we can fund our massive national debt) have declined among world investors. These unfolding circumstances indicate that a growing number of world investors feel a loss of faith in the United States due to Trump’s policies and actions.
The US is growing more unstable as a safe investment haven, which hastens the day when the US currency no longer will be the world’s reserve currency. Eventually, perhaps sooner rather than later, thanks to Trump’s actions, our currency will give up that status to China’s currency. We would then not be able to pay our debts and our economy would collapse and, along with the rest of the world, the US would plunge into a deep, deadly economic depression. These outcomes could be our future, thanks to the poisoned fruit being fertilized and harvested by the Trump administration.
If you do not want to see these things happen, join public protests in the street. Urge moderate Republicans in Congress to find the courage to oppose Trump, to do what they know is right. So far, those elected officials are too frightened to defy him. Send money to the ACLU and other organizations that confront and legally challenge Trump and his highly capable but twisted subordinates.
