Dear America,
Until today, Trump has just been an American Sophist who seemed to have recruited 76 million voters somehow. But today, after hearing his absurd, invidious conceit in his speeches yesterday, his oxymoronic executive orders proclaiming an "energy emergency" concomitantly with his reversal of the Biden incentive initiative for development of wind energy projects off our coast lines and his ipsi dixit order reversing the citizenship-at-birth constitutional provision for those born in our country, America, I see Trump as not just a political anomaly that will occur once and then fade into history. He is no longer a bad joke that the sanctimonious Christian right wing is playing on us out of didactic dogmatism. He is an existential threat. He is the next Putin/Maduro/Orban of the autocrat class, and it is only a matter of time until he launches an effort to repeal the 22nd amendment to the constitution so that he can run for president as often as he wants to. He is venting his nihilistic narcissism and unless we take congress back from the Republicans in the mid-term elections, democratic America will be just a footnote in a world history that features the triumph of oligarchic feudalism, tyranny and repression as a mode of governance. Donald Trump is no longer a blip in our history. He is our anti-democratic future if the Republican party--the instrumentality by which Trump has returned to plague us is and will perdure--is allowed to maintain its congressional hegemony. The Republicans are Trump's captive instrumentality and they have fallen in line with his Machiavellian, self-serving claim that "only he" can achieve what the conservative constituency wants. Whether it serves posterity or not means nothing to them as long as they continue in power, both individually and as a party. The Republicans have capitulated to a would-be dictator, and as such they have built Trump's stairway to the throne of a self-proclaimed demigod. Donald Trump is a menace and the conservative Republican poltroons are nothing but his minions. Congratulations to them. They have finally descended to the shame and infamy they deserve.
Some of Trump's executive orders are downright diabolical. For example, he is restoring "Schedule F" as a category of federal worker, which will allow him to reclassify some jobs now held by career civil servants so as to fire them and replace them with his personal loyalists. He also signed an order implementing the "Department of Governmental Efficiency" so that his friend Elon Musk can determine what government agencies should exist and how fully they should be staffed. Other orders are just plain troglodytic. Already mentioned is Trump's desire to reverse the push toward further wind energy, but he also has ordered the reversal of the Biden administration's order initiated to require auto makers to reduce tail-pipe emissions for their manufactured fleets by making more electric vehicles. He has reiterated his first-term withdrawal from the Paris Agreement on climate change and remedying the trends in the wrong direction. Then there is the anti-social group of orders. He has promulgated his own legal principle that there are only two genders to the effect that sex-change treatment will be to no avail to those with what science and social science now call gender dysphoria. And there is the reversal of the Biden administration's ban on further offshore oil and gas drilling, even though the United States is currently the most prolific producer of fossil fuels in the world...in history. Thus, this measure will serve no purpose other than to enhance oil company profits and further enrich more of Trump's aspiring oligarchs beyond the obscene wealth they already possess, in connection with which he also wants to let those companies resume exploration of the Alaska reserve so that they can drill for even more excess petroleum than they already produce for export. And that is just some of the intellectual malfunction in which Trump has already indulged.
I would love to be wrong about all this, but I am sure I am not. The things Trump has mandated his government to do already are worthy of, and consistent with the past history of, Vladimir Putin in Russia. They are peremptory, self-serving, irrational and averse to the civil liberty of those who would protest or simply object to Trump's autocratic tendencies. Do not be surprised if people start going to jail just because they said things that Trump didn't like. I believe the consensus that Joe Biden and his administration were not persecuting Trump with a "weaponized" justice department, but Trump has expressed a desire to do exactly what he accused Biden of: weaponries the justice department and all other governmental agencies against his enemies, adversaries and critics evincing his shameless hypocrisy.
We're in for it, America. Trump will not sue or induce the prosecution of Jack Smith, the special prosecutor who brought the charges against Trump related to secret government documents and the January 6th insurrection. If such a case went to trial, Smith could produce on the record all of the evidence that led to the charges in the first place and then everyone would know that Trump really is the criminal that Smith charged him with being. But I believe that no one else is safe. Not even you.
Your friend,
Mike
Until today, Trump has just been an American Sophist who seemed to have recruited 76 million voters somehow. But today, after hearing his absurd, invidious conceit in his speeches yesterday, his oxymoronic executive orders proclaiming an "energy emergency" concomitantly with his reversal of the Biden incentive initiative for development of wind energy projects off our coast lines and his ipsi dixit order reversing the citizenship-at-birth constitutional provision for those born in our country, America, I see Trump as not just a political anomaly that will occur once and then fade into history. He is no longer a bad joke that the sanctimonious Christian right wing is playing on us out of didactic dogmatism. He is an existential threat. He is the next Putin/Maduro/Orban of the autocrat class, and it is only a matter of time until he launches an effort to repeal the 22nd amendment to the constitution so that he can run for president as often as he wants to. He is venting his nihilistic narcissism and unless we take congress back from the Republicans in the mid-term elections, democratic America will be just a footnote in a world history that features the triumph of oligarchic feudalism, tyranny and repression as a mode of governance. Donald Trump is no longer a blip in our history. He is our anti-democratic future if the Republican party--the instrumentality by which Trump has returned to plague us is and will perdure--is allowed to maintain its congressional hegemony. The Republicans are Trump's captive instrumentality and they have fallen in line with his Machiavellian, self-serving claim that "only he" can achieve what the conservative constituency wants. Whether it serves posterity or not means nothing to them as long as they continue in power, both individually and as a party. The Republicans have capitulated to a would-be dictator, and as such they have built Trump's stairway to the throne of a self-proclaimed demigod. Donald Trump is a menace and the conservative Republican poltroons are nothing but his minions. Congratulations to them. They have finally descended to the shame and infamy they deserve.
Some of Trump's executive orders are downright diabolical. For example, he is restoring "Schedule F" as a category of federal worker, which will allow him to reclassify some jobs now held by career civil servants so as to fire them and replace them with his personal loyalists. He also signed an order implementing the "Department of Governmental Efficiency" so that his friend Elon Musk can determine what government agencies should exist and how fully they should be staffed. Other orders are just plain troglodytic. Already mentioned is Trump's desire to reverse the push toward further wind energy, but he also has ordered the reversal of the Biden administration's order initiated to require auto makers to reduce tail-pipe emissions for their manufactured fleets by making more electric vehicles. He has reiterated his first-term withdrawal from the Paris Agreement on climate change and remedying the trends in the wrong direction. Then there is the anti-social group of orders. He has promulgated his own legal principle that there are only two genders to the effect that sex-change treatment will be to no avail to those with what science and social science now call gender dysphoria. And there is the reversal of the Biden administration's ban on further offshore oil and gas drilling, even though the United States is currently the most prolific producer of fossil fuels in the world...in history. Thus, this measure will serve no purpose other than to enhance oil company profits and further enrich more of Trump's aspiring oligarchs beyond the obscene wealth they already possess, in connection with which he also wants to let those companies resume exploration of the Alaska reserve so that they can drill for even more excess petroleum than they already produce for export. And that is just some of the intellectual malfunction in which Trump has already indulged.
I would love to be wrong about all this, but I am sure I am not. The things Trump has mandated his government to do already are worthy of, and consistent with the past history of, Vladimir Putin in Russia. They are peremptory, self-serving, irrational and averse to the civil liberty of those who would protest or simply object to Trump's autocratic tendencies. Do not be surprised if people start going to jail just because they said things that Trump didn't like. I believe the consensus that Joe Biden and his administration were not persecuting Trump with a "weaponized" justice department, but Trump has expressed a desire to do exactly what he accused Biden of: weaponries the justice department and all other governmental agencies against his enemies, adversaries and critics evincing his shameless hypocrisy.
We're in for it, America. Trump will not sue or induce the prosecution of Jack Smith, the special prosecutor who brought the charges against Trump related to secret government documents and the January 6th insurrection. If such a case went to trial, Smith could produce on the record all of the evidence that led to the charges in the first place and then everyone would know that Trump really is the criminal that Smith charged him with being. But I believe that no one else is safe. Not even you.
Your friend,
Mike
Leave a comment