Dear America,
I read the opinion section of the New York Times yesterday and I was somewhat dismayed by the tenor of normalcy that pervaded the commentary offered there. Of course it was critical of Trump and of his position on everything he is doing in the way of usurping the power of others, including both houses of congress. Like the authors of those pieces, I am not surprised by the fact that the hegemonic Republican Party has been co-opted and cowed by Trump's naked bullying. They are poltroons to a man and woman, and they are opportunists to the quick. The combination must have made Trump's mouth water when he decided to run for president again. His party--and I reiterate...HIS party--was kneeling before him waiting for the opportunity to kiss his ring, and they were obviously committed to suffering his abuse in the hope of self-service. The executive orders for the conduct of government business in ways that would have seemed straight out of some perverse fairy tail about a dysfunctional and tyrannical king before Trump walked back into the White House have poured down upon the nation like a pure acid rain, but the critics seem not to be noticing that this isn't just some aberrant behavior on the part of an aberrant personality. They seem to be taking all this to be a blip in our history rather than a turning tide. But let me make an analogy in the hope of shaking our polity out of its relative ennui.
Suppose that the Gaza Strip had another name. Suppose it was called, say, the Sudetenland. I'm sure you see where I'm going with this, but let me finish. Now say that the West Bank of the Jordan River had another name too. Let's say it was called, um, Ethiopia. Finally, let's say that Trump's minion wasn't running something called DOGE. After all, that was the name of the mayor of Venice in the old days, and I'm leaning toward something more suggestive of reality. Let's say the DOGE was actually called, the Schutzstaffel, otherwise known as SS. If you think about these allegorical references in terms of what is being done now under the putative aegis of the presidency, it all suggests another insinuation of illicit power that turned out to be not so innocuous, and certainly not benign. You see where I'm going now, don't you. What I'm saying in case you don't is that all of Trump's misappropriations of power may be as insignificant as the critics think they are. It may be the case that Trump is just making psychotic gestures the way any megalomaniac would and in the final act, he will retire from the scene and his successor will assume the duty to undo all of Trump's pathological gestures. I'm hoping that too...just like the opinion writers in The Times. But my fear is that soon the press won't be so free to publish such overt criticism, polite as it may seem, for fear of the law suits that Trump has already begun filing against members of the press and news organization threatening to thrust his critics into financial ruination if they make too fine a point of Trump's ominous behavior. That's right, I said ominous, not just untoward or crass. Donald Trump's presidency is foreboding, not just ugly or inconvenient, which leads me back to my analogy.
If you measure the mood of the country, even taking into account that just shy of 77 million voters elected Trump not by the "mandate" that he claims was but by a thin plurality of only about 1.5% of the voting electorate, you can't help but notice that there are a lot of people willing to adopt Trump's more vicious inclinations. Then add the fact that in the current world, autocrats are not particularly unusual, and they seem always to have ascended to power by an initially at-least-purportedly legitimate election and you can see what we are looking at in our not too distant future. You can also see that the nation's power source, our erstwhile democratic system, may not stand up to the subtly sub rosa baser instincts of that same electoral plurality that elected Trump, and in that light, the Sudetenland, Ethiopia and the SS evoke names other than Trump, Netanyahu and Musk. And they evoke events other than balancing the budget and feeding and healing the poor of the world. They dispel what could become the myth of American beneficence and our American experiment. They become an ominous overlord controlling most, if not all, of the rest of the world.
Paranoia? If that's what you think, I'm rooting for you to be right. But if you feel the same apprehension that I do, I wish us all luck.
Your friend,
Mike
I read the opinion section of the New York Times yesterday and I was somewhat dismayed by the tenor of normalcy that pervaded the commentary offered there. Of course it was critical of Trump and of his position on everything he is doing in the way of usurping the power of others, including both houses of congress. Like the authors of those pieces, I am not surprised by the fact that the hegemonic Republican Party has been co-opted and cowed by Trump's naked bullying. They are poltroons to a man and woman, and they are opportunists to the quick. The combination must have made Trump's mouth water when he decided to run for president again. His party--and I reiterate...HIS party--was kneeling before him waiting for the opportunity to kiss his ring, and they were obviously committed to suffering his abuse in the hope of self-service. The executive orders for the conduct of government business in ways that would have seemed straight out of some perverse fairy tail about a dysfunctional and tyrannical king before Trump walked back into the White House have poured down upon the nation like a pure acid rain, but the critics seem not to be noticing that this isn't just some aberrant behavior on the part of an aberrant personality. They seem to be taking all this to be a blip in our history rather than a turning tide. But let me make an analogy in the hope of shaking our polity out of its relative ennui.
Suppose that the Gaza Strip had another name. Suppose it was called, say, the Sudetenland. I'm sure you see where I'm going with this, but let me finish. Now say that the West Bank of the Jordan River had another name too. Let's say it was called, um, Ethiopia. Finally, let's say that Trump's minion wasn't running something called DOGE. After all, that was the name of the mayor of Venice in the old days, and I'm leaning toward something more suggestive of reality. Let's say the DOGE was actually called, the Schutzstaffel, otherwise known as SS. If you think about these allegorical references in terms of what is being done now under the putative aegis of the presidency, it all suggests another insinuation of illicit power that turned out to be not so innocuous, and certainly not benign. You see where I'm going now, don't you. What I'm saying in case you don't is that all of Trump's misappropriations of power may be as insignificant as the critics think they are. It may be the case that Trump is just making psychotic gestures the way any megalomaniac would and in the final act, he will retire from the scene and his successor will assume the duty to undo all of Trump's pathological gestures. I'm hoping that too...just like the opinion writers in The Times. But my fear is that soon the press won't be so free to publish such overt criticism, polite as it may seem, for fear of the law suits that Trump has already begun filing against members of the press and news organization threatening to thrust his critics into financial ruination if they make too fine a point of Trump's ominous behavior. That's right, I said ominous, not just untoward or crass. Donald Trump's presidency is foreboding, not just ugly or inconvenient, which leads me back to my analogy.
If you measure the mood of the country, even taking into account that just shy of 77 million voters elected Trump not by the "mandate" that he claims was but by a thin plurality of only about 1.5% of the voting electorate, you can't help but notice that there are a lot of people willing to adopt Trump's more vicious inclinations. Then add the fact that in the current world, autocrats are not particularly unusual, and they seem always to have ascended to power by an initially at-least-purportedly legitimate election and you can see what we are looking at in our not too distant future. You can also see that the nation's power source, our erstwhile democratic system, may not stand up to the subtly sub rosa baser instincts of that same electoral plurality that elected Trump, and in that light, the Sudetenland, Ethiopia and the SS evoke names other than Trump, Netanyahu and Musk. And they evoke events other than balancing the budget and feeding and healing the poor of the world. They dispel what could become the myth of American beneficence and our American experiment. They become an ominous overlord controlling most, if not all, of the rest of the world.
Paranoia? If that's what you think, I'm rooting for you to be right. But if you feel the same apprehension that I do, I wish us all luck.
Your friend,
Mike
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