By Sid Schwab / Herald Columnist
It was inevitable. Once Donald Trump realized he had our Republican-led Congress underthumbed, and that six servile Supremes would give him a double-oh license to abuse power any way he chose, and that our helplessly MAGAfied co-citizens would weep with joy as he stuck it to the libs (tinyurl.com/stick2us), he abandoned yet another campaign lie: namely, that he’d be a “Peace President.”
Why stop at impoverishing the poor and indicting truth-tellers? Or, based on lies, sending troops to American cities to incite violence that hadn’t existed till then? For Trump, unchecked abuse at home evolves to threatening Venezuela, and to extra-judicial maritime murder, about which he said, in his uniquely presidential phrasing, “I think we’re just going to kill people that are bringing drugs into our country. OK? We’re going to kill them, you know, they’re going to be, like, dead. OK.”
Trump has provided no evidence that the people he’s killing were smuggling drugs or headed to America, and since he knew where they were, he could have captured them. But when two unexpectedly survived, they were sent home immediately. Why? U.S. Rep. Sara Jacobs, D-Calif., said she was told in a Pentagon briefing “that they do not need to positively identify individuals on the vessel to do the strikes” and that was part of the reason why the administration has not sought to detain or prosecute survivors, “because they could not satisfy the evidentiary burden.” Meanwhile, corpses are washing up on Trinidad’s beaches (tinyurl.com/2Trinidad).
It’s also a lie that the Venezuelan boats were carrying fentanyl (Politifact: tinyurl.com/4drugfacts). What decent American can countenance their country becoming an outlaw nation, flouting our own and international laws? Or, in the case of MAGA, thrill to it?
Reviled in NYC in his younger years, for his amorality, corruption and ostentatious preening, mocked by social elites into whose circles he so desperately wanted to be received, ridiculed in the tabloids, and, reportedly, having complicated relationships with his parents (Independent: tinyurl.com/nolove4DJT), the roots of his psychopathy are evident; assuming his kind is made, not born. Unrestrained by laws created to protect against it, cheered on by Republicans who know better and MAGAs who don’t, Trump’s autocratic “presidency” will only get more damaging.
Occupying the Oval Office, which, as of this writing, is defiled but not yet demolished, is a dangerous man behaving dangerously. And whereas it’s unsurprising that, among several billion humans, there are some such men, it’s incomprehensible that there are millions of Americans who are blind to the harm that is sure to affect them, too. My Christian friends find it inexplicable that anyone who calls themself Christian can continue to support Trump. Likewise, anyone who considers themself a patriotic American, which, at minimum, ought to mean people who value our Constitution and the rule of law. Who think free and fair elections and democracy are worth protecting; who know lies when they see them.
And so it is that Trump, who knows nothing of history nor cares to learn, has ordered the resumption of nuclear testing, undoing decades of disaster-averting, diplomatic achievement. It will restart an expensive and dangerous arms race, a fact understood by everyone but Trump (New York Times gift article: tinyurl.com/nukes4us), who longs to be seen as the potential destroyer of worlds, before whom the world shudders in fear (YouTube: tinyurl.com/vishnu4u).
Also the destroyer of truth. And decency. No president in our history has said anything about a predecessor comparable to what Trump has about President Joe Biden: “He is a CRIMINAL AND SHOULD BE IN JAIL. A MAJOR LOWLIFE AND FAILURE. An ugly person, both inside and out! I beat him badly, and love watching him squirm now.” The first three sentences were spoken while looking into a mirror. The last is the lie he tells himself — a defining MAGA belief — followed by the only truth he’s ever revealed. The “president” of what was once the greatest and closest to honorable country on Earth, is a hateful, dishonest, rapacious man; a nascent dictator, embarrassing us in the eyes of the world; incapable of empathy for any but himself; a man who, while ignoring people out of work and a court order to fund SNAP benefits, flaunts an ostentatiously remodeled bathroom and hosts a gilded-age party for his wealthy pals at his “you’ll never belong” club. That’s who he is.
Consider this a plea to honorable people who voted for Trump thinking they’d be getting some sort of greatness and not just his promised retribution (Alternet: tinyurl.com/retribution4u), to recall that, in a democracy, leadership requires far more than what they’re getting. Honesty, for one, and respectability, generosity, inclusion. A plea to demand more of their party — and of themselves — than defending the indefensible. Surely there are enough of them to vote America back to pre-Trump greatness.
In Tuesday’s elections, in which Democrats won up and down ballots everywhere, hope glimmers. Republican ventriloquist dummies with Trump’s hand up … there, are claiming election fraud. Maybe, though, the less-dummied will sense that challenging him now requires less courage than before.
Email Sid Schwab at columnsid@gmail.com.
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