Blowback A Warning to Save Democracy from the Next Trump

by Miles Taylor

I know how ugly it can get. I sat in the Oval Office as Donald Trump fantasized about replicating North Korea’s demilitarized zone on the U.S. southern border, replete with land mines, barbed wire, electric fences, and armed guards. Trump described in graphic detail the sharp, flesh-piercing spikes he wanted installed on the border wall, designed to maim climbers so bloodily that other migrants would be scared to follow suit. He mused about U.S. soldiers firing on civilians, knowing that if they blew the legs out from underneath pregnant mothers, it would keep them from reaching the border.

I heard gag-inducing comments about women, as Trump nitpicked their looks and television performances, including, most grotesquely, sexual references to his own daughter. Perversion aside, it was the ex-president’s inclination toward illegality that led me to quit. I witnessed Trump tell border patrol agents to ignore the law and to send arriving migrants right back into the hot-sun desert where they could die despite their legal right to claim asylum, offering to pardon anyone who got arrested for carrying out his directive.

First, we must open our eyes. A victim mentality has overcome voters since the Trump presidency, with Americans lamenting the brokenness of our politics, as if the unwelcome situation were a faultless mishap. We must be candid with ourselves. This isn’t happening to us; this is happening because of us.

In the end, I discovered that in politics, the real struggle is not us-versus-them. It is us-versus-us.

The process of election affords a moral certainty, that the office of President will never fall to the lot of any man who is not in an eminent degree endowed with the requisite qualifications. —ALEXANDER HAMILTON, FEDERALIST NO. 68, 1788