By Ken Dammand / Herald Forum
I submitted a letter to the editor that was published in The Herald on Oct. 26, 2008, and is more relevant today than it was then.
The thesis was that every terrorist attack involved a betrayal of trust and that destroying our ability to trust one another, and our institutions, would allow greed, racism and fear to bring our country down just as destroying a small element of the World Trade Center’s structural integrity allowed gravity to do the real destruction of the buildings.
That was fourteen years ago, after eight years of what I thought would be the most deceitful and manipulative presidency the United States would ever let itself endure. How little I knew. But my conclusion about trust was spot on. Trust was, and is, the target of every terrorist attack and if anything could bring our country down it would be the destruction of our ability to trust one another and our institutions.
In 2015, Donald Trump asked Americans, “What have you got to lose?” He has since more than answered that question.
He has destroyed our ability to trust our news resources, intelligence and police agencies, justice department, Congress, election officials, the Centers for Disease Control, the courts, science and even our own lying eyes. Of course, he’s had plenty of help doing this. But no one else has played anywhere near as profound a role in putting us in this dangerous situation.
Trump’s astounding litany of easily refutable lies and his doubling down on them despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary has set a record-low standard for honesty of public figures and elected officials. His denial of his legitimate defeat in the most thoroughly observed, audited, and legally audited election in world history is the ultimate example of this.
The damage already done to our democracy may prove to be fatal. He has convinced a sizable proportion of the American electorate that election officials cannot be trusted and the 2020 election was stolen from him. He convinced a significant number of them that they were justified and obligated to go to the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, and physically prevent the peaceful transfer of power that has been the crown jewel of our political experiment. They failed, but not by much, and not before inflicting horrible and ongoing damage to our democracy.
He, who had the power to bring this violent event to a stop with a single word, betrayed the trust of the American people by choosing to watch from the safety of the White House for over three hours while the bedlam ensued. And he continues to stoke the flames of distrust, laying the ground for similar mischief in upcoming elections. Worse, a quivering bunch of Republican toadies also betrayed the trust of the American people when they failed to hold him accountable for his obvious crimes.
Terrorists seeking the collapse of our country would deny us the ability to trust one another and our institutions. Trump has helped them immeasurably but for a different goal. He aspires to dictatorial power for himself. The only hope for the survival of our country as anything even vaguely resembling a democracy is that enough reasonable rank-and-file Republicans realize the threat he poses and work against the backers of this would-be dictator.
We must encourage this as diplomatically as possible. Democrats aren’t perfect. But they are committed to the continuation of our democracy. Trump and his MAGA Republicans are not.
Ken Dammand, a regular contributor to Herald letters to the editor, lives in Tulalip.
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