A Warning

by Anonymous

West Wing aides were exchanging “best practices” for success in the Oval Office. The most salient advice? Forget the three points. Come in with one main point and repeat it—over and over again, even if the president inevitably goes off on tangents—until he gets it. Just keep steering the subject back to it. ONE point. Just that one point. Because you cannot focus the commander in chief’s attention on more than one goddamned thing over the course of a meeting, okay?

In other cases he thought of the funds as bargaining chips, as in the case of money earmarked by Congress to go to Ukraine, and tried to pause the funds for whatever purpose suited him at the moment, perhaps until he got something he wanted in return.

Trump’s view of loyalty, of course, is self-serving to the extreme.

Americans’ faith in the executive branch should be measured by their faith in the president himself and him alone, not by functionaries in his administration whose names never appeared on the ballot.

On campaign finance: “I think nobody knows more about campaign finance than I do, because I’m the biggest contributor.” On the courts: “I know more about courts than any human being on Earth.” On trade: “Nobody knows more about trade than me.” On taxes: “Nobody knows more about taxes than I do.” On ISIS: “I know more about ISIS than the generals do.” On the US government: “Nobody knows the system better than I do.” On technology: “Technology—nobody knows more about technology than me.” On drone technology, specifically: “I know more about drones than anybody. I know about every form of safety that you can have.”

There are no two ways about it. Trump is a bully. By intimidating others, he believes he can get what he wants, not what is fair. It’s a philosophy he brags about.

For all President Trump’s talk these days about Democrats trying to make America socialist, the reality is that he is the king of big government. The federal bureaucracy is just as large, centralized, careless with spending, and intrusive under Donald Trump as it was when Barack Obama was in office. In many cases, it’s bigger. This is an uncomfortable truth for Trump supporters.

Donald Trump has America back on the road to bankruptcy, an area where he has unparalleled expertise for a president of the United States.

I wonder if, in all his years in New York, Trump ever saw the words at the base of the Statue of Liberty, which read in part: “Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.” If he did, it didn’t mean anything to him.

On Donald Trump’s watch, the party has become less fiscally conservative, more divisive, less diverse, more anti-immigrant, and less relevant.

The net effect of the president’s war on democratic institutions is that he has turned the government of the United States into one of his companies: a badly managed enterprise defined by a sociopathic personality in the c-suite, rife with infighting, embroiled in lawsuits, falling deeper into debt, allergic to internal and external criticism, open to shady side deals, operating with limited oversight, and servicing its self-absorbed owner at the expense of its customers. We should have seen this one coming.

What he doesn’t see, especially with China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea, is that their governments are programmed to oppose us. They represent the opposite of our values. No “deal” will change that. Until their political systems shift fundamentally or they lose power, they will stand against the free and open international order America built. Like us, they will try to shape the world in their own image. Unlike us, their leaders don’t care about natural rights and are gearing up for a protracted competition.

plan. The president can say he wants to keep his enemies guessing, but we all know those are the words of a man without a plan.

I suppose some Americans don’t care about foreign policy until a threat reaches our shores. They should care, because the actions we take abroad—or don’t take—determine whether the United States is safe in the long run. Our friends are among the best stockades against foreign hostility. We’re talking about countries that come to our aid when disaster strikes; that stand up for us in contentious international disputes; that protect our ships, planes, and people; and that are willing to fight and die alongside our troops in remote deserts.

Donald Trump’s words do more than drive his team crazy. They are dividing Americans. He may start fights on Twitter and at the microphones, but we are continuing them at home. Political differences between Americans are now at record highs. Studies show that Republicans are becoming more partisan, unwilling to veer from the party line, and Democrats are doing the same. The one thing the two sides can agree on is that the phenomenon is real.

The problem is that people believe what he says because he’s the president, and Trump regularly—frequently—spreads false information that large majorities of the country accept as the truth.

Donald Trump brought an assortment of hangers-on into the White House. He collected assistants throughout the years, building an island of misfit apprentices. During the campaign, he gathered more. His operation was a magnet for third-rate talent, attracting the political equivalent of amateur day traders, the kind who liked to walk the line between risk-taking and indictments.

It’s not accurate to say Donald Trump is a dictator. Commentators who make such claims shouldn’t be taken seriously. However, it’s fair to say the president possesses clear authoritarian tendencies like very few presidents before him.

First, Hayek explained, an autocrat needs a group with questionable morals.

Second, the autocrat must expand the size of the subservient group.

Finally, Hayek said, authoritarian types need to weld the group together by appealing to their basic human weaknesses.

Trump Apologists see him as a means to personal influence and advancement. They want to be close to power. They are eager for stature they wouldn’t gain otherwise and are willing to excuse Trump’s actions to get it.

A voter may conclude that Donald Trump’s roller-coaster presidency is a faithful representation of what is happening in our society. They may argue that the 2016 presidential election resulted in the elevation of a man who embodied our country’s internal strife. His measure of wisdom, justice, courage, and temperance is a strong indicator of whether we are demonstrating those traits ourselves. Yet that doesn’t mean we have to submit to the malaise. We can admit that, although we ended up with the president we deserved the first time, we want better.

No matter what happens on Tuesday, November 3, 2020, Americans have another pressing review to conduct. It’s bigger than a presidential election. This particular duty doesn’t involve weighing individual candidates, or anyone running for public office for that matter. The task at hand is to judge someone far more important than the commander in chief, someone who will be illuminated by the national spotlight whether or not Donald Trump is reelected. Ourselves. The time has come to assess the civic fault lines spreading across our republic. The character of one man has widened the chasms of American political division, but if any good comes from the turmoil, hopefully it will be that it causes us to reinvestigate—and reinvigorate—the character of our nation.

If we look within ourselves and undertake the arduous task of moral repair, America can restore the soul of its political system. We can once again illuminate a pathway for others onto the vaunted plazas of open society.