Donald Trump , the end of America?
Donald Trump has recently been praised multiple times in the past few days by white supremacists for his weak and belated condemnation of the events of Charlottesville. Just today he tried to qualify his condemnation by bringing up “alt left” violence, got into a shouting match with the press and called them all fake news. This is a sign that Donald Trump is dangerous and could quite possibly spell the end of the United States, or at least the end of the era of normality and decency.
It started during his campaign, when he ran on a platform that was nationalistic, xenophobic, jingoistic and played right into people’s fears, the fear of immigrants, Muslims and Democrats. He gladly played on peoples fears by calling for a ban on all muslims and saying he wanted to surveil certain mosques. Trump vilified illegal immigrants throughout his campaign and beyond. He ran a campaign based on incredibly divisive ideas such as the Muslim ban, the wall and he was proud of the division he created. Now campaigns are usually divisive, but this, to my knowledge, takes the number one spot in this area.
The real problem comes now that he has been elected. He has continued on with some of his most divisive ideas, the wall and the Muslim ban are notable ones. This includes: his climate change denial and the continuing dismantling of environmental protections, his obsession with coal and coal jobs while renewables have far more job creation potential and are far safer for the environment.
The wall and anti Muslim and illegal immigrant rhetoric he has spewed is the gravest danger, it has emboldened the far right, the “alt right” if you will, a nice name for neo nazis, KKK, white nationalists, white supremacists and other xenophobic/racist organizations. These groups are many times heavily armed and quite radical. These are the groups that, if Donald Trump is impeached, very well may start an armed uprising, and many have threatened just that. Charlottesville was a good indication of the type of people we are dealing with, one of the group of white supremacists intentionally rammed his car into a crowd, killing Heather Heyer and injuring 19 more peaceful protesters. Deandre Harris was also severely beaten in these riots:
These people are quite willing to start a civil war for Trump, they have said as much themselves and Trump is perfectly willing to let them, as evidenced by when he refused to condemn their movement on Saturday when the rally and murder happened. His weak condemnation citing violence on multiple sides, drew praise from The Daily Stormer, a neo nazi website and his later, more forceful condemnation was praised by David Duke and Richard Spencer, both noted white supremacists.
Trump has also attacked the free press, citing his desire to open up libel laws so the press could be sued. He has also made it a habit to call any story that he does not like and/or does not agree with “fake news”, a tactic that has been adopted by his supporters. This has allowed Trump to dismiss any story that is critical of him, and his base eats it right up. It’s created a massive echo chamber for the right where “fake news” is ignored and only Fox, Breitbart and other right wing outlets stories are shared and read. Gone are the days where people look at multiple sources and fact check for themselves, Trump supporters take what Fox or Breitbart spoon feeds them and run with it. Some notable examples of this are: 3 million illegals voted, Pizzagate and the Seth Rich murder being the DNC. Any sources or facts you try to show them are immediately dismissed, it’s both incredibly frustrating and dangerous.
On top of all that Trump is destroying every political norm we have, he has hired the richest cabinet in history whom want to fundamentally change or disamntle the agency they are in charge of, he hired both his daughter and son in law to high level positions in the White House. He has created his own news network on Facebook to share news that is positive to him. He is absolutely uncensored and unthinking on Twitter, this has already caused a diplomatic incident, he has announced policy changes on Twitter, he has threatened foreign nations on Twitter. He has also attacked his opponents both in the political arena and in the media, usually on shallow subjects such as appearence.
All of this has combined into the perfect storm. Trump is a cult of personality who holds the most powerful office in the country with incredibly rich family and friends in power to back him, an armed cult like base that is willing and ready to take up arms for him should he be impeached and are immune to facts and reason. He also has a massive Twitter following to which he threatens other people, doxxes people, threatens other countries and is generally unstable and inflamatory.
All this has compounded the current state of political unrest: two diametrically opposed sides that are currently at odds. The president has done absolutely nothing to bridge this gap as past presidents have, in fact he has further widened this divide. I want to say the United States will survive this but with the current direction and speed I can’t say I know for a fact it will, at a bare minimum the United States will emerge from the other side of the Trump presidency a fundamentally changed nation, hopefully one that will never make the mistake of electing an unstable reality show host and mediocre businessman to the position of the president. One thing I do worry about in a post Trump USA, and this is heavily influenced by how long he is in office, how far will the goalposts for a good president be moved and will we manage to move them back to where they should be or will people settle?
