FROM BAD TO WORSE OR ELSE
The United States experience with Donald Trump’s second term as president is almost 60 days old. In two months, the nation under Trump’s leadership has alienated, threatened, and is now in a trade war with Canada and Mexico. We are estranged from our nearest neighbors and economic allies.
In two months, our nation has alienated and isolated itself from other nations in the North America Treaty Organization (NATO). Our nation has withdrawn its military and intelligence support to Ukraine. Instead, Trump has aligned the United States with Russia, the chief military and political threat to Europe and Ukraine.
In two months, our nation has threatened the sovereignty of Greenland and Panama. Those nations provide vital transportation (shipping) and other services for the Western Hemisphere.
In two months, the United States has experienced the worst outbreak of measles in decades. The stock markets have suffered heavy losses. Prices of household items and food have risen.
In two months, the United States has become more of a pariah than a partner concerning human rights, global security, environmental protection, and goodwill.
In two months, federal workers who protect public health, enforce federal laws on education, justice, defense, the arts, labor relations, and administering global aid and anti-poverty efforts have been summarily fired or furloughed, without cause and contrary to federal laws. Trump’s cabinet Secretary for Education has no prior education or experience in education policy and administration. His Justice Department leadership are loyal to him, not the Constitution of the United States.
Federal judges have blocked or overturned some of Trump’s actions, such as his attempts to fire everyone employed by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). As you read this essay, Trump has already demanded the impeachment of a federal judge who ordered the administration to not remove immigrants from the country without court orders.
By the way, Trump officials removed the immigrants anyway, claiming that they are members of a criminal gang. That allegation has not been supported by proof in any court proceeding that I know about. Have you seen it? Nor has any judge.
The Trump administration claims that deportation of the Venezuelan immigrants was done for national security reasons supported by classified evidence. But the federal courts have procedures for reviewing sensitive and classified material. Trump officials are more interesting in impeaching federal judges who interpret the Constitution according to the rule of law than in producing any evidence - classified or not - that proves any of the Venezuelan immigrants - not to mention hundreds of them - have done anything wrong.
Things will get worse. Eventually, innocent people will die from Trump’s policies and malicious leadership. Correction: more innocent people will die. We should never forget that millions of people were infected by the Covid virus during Trump’s first term as president. More than 400,000 people died in less than a year before voters fired Trump and Joe Biden became president.
Eventually more people will lose their jobs. More children and adults will die from preventable illnesses. Other people who protest Trump will be assaulted, detained, and removed from their families, neighborhoods, and confined in U.S. prisons and places of detention outside the U.S. The Trump administration will pay private prison contractors to house, clothe, feed, and mistreat then.
Trump now threatens the lives, liberty, and peace of millions of people across the United States and elsewhere. He will not voluntarily stop doing so. Instead, he will become more menacing, hateful, and vicious. Why? He is a sociopath.
The United States is at war with itself. Trump’s presidency is the worst threat to democracy and national security since the Civil War ended in 1865. Over 600,000 people died in that war.
How many people will die this time? How many others will be forever scarred? How many people will lose their homes, life savings, and their hope for justice?
What will you do about what is happening to our nation and the world because of Donald Trump’s Republican Party regime, which Baptist historian Bill Leonard has accurately dubbed “the Southern Baptist Convention at prayer”?
Will you oppose this fascist, racist, gangster capitalist, imperialist, techno-centrist, sexist, violent threat to our country, the world, and our posterity? Will you resist it? Will you defy Trump’s cruel aim to become a king? Or will you watch the death of democracy in the United States?
Trump’s war on democracy and our nation is not imminent. It is underway! It will not end until his political and capitalist gangsters have been ousted and replaced by people who love democracy, justice, liberty, truth, and peace. Expect resistance from fake Christians, so-called Christian and Jewish zionists, billionaire gangsters (Elon Musk, his technocratic buddies, Heritage Foundation funders), and other “hateful faithful” people of all stripes, income categories, and locations.
We must do that hard work. We need to do it with all our powers. Fear is not an excuse. Failure is not an option. We must fight for democracy or we will lose it.
From bad to worse is up to you and me, not Trump. The “or else” involves our fight to save democracy, and the future of the United States. Get accustomed to seeing, hearing, and repeating those words. Fight, organize, agitate, dissent, and resist however you can, all the time, with as many others as you can find.
We’re in a fight against people who have railed for generations against democracy, inclusion, justice, liberty, peace, and truth. This is no time for faint hearts, weak minds, timid actions, and pious words.