We have crossed the line.
The US under Trump is now a rogue nation.
We have elected for a second time a terrible, terrible human being who is destroying this country and all the good it has stood for since its founding. And he has unearthed our dark side, always present but suppressed by good people everywhere until now.
It is really easy to let it all pass by, to ignore it, tell yourself it will pass, that we go through these phases. I don’t think so. We cannot throw up our hands and hope it goes away.
To understand why, we have to first make a decent accounting of Trump’s depraved behavior. It is behavior that is sullying our reputation in the world. The criminal acts are another matter. The felonies. The $80 million courtroom judgment for sexually assaulting E. Jean Carroll in a New York City department store. The Epstein saga that continues to play out. We know what’s really in those files and how it all happened. And it is so ugly that we will want to turn away. When we finally find out the full Epstein story, it will make Harvey Weinstein look like a tea party.
We will be faced with the criminality once Trump leaves office – investigations, prosecutions. The press, led by the NY Times and new media outlets, will do their job and gradually uncover much of the corruption. Whether to prosecute or, as Obama did with the bankers in 2008, move forward. Those are political decisions that will take their course.
But our purpose today is the historic decline of the U.S. reputation around the world since 2016. Say what you want about George W. Bush on Iraq – billions squandered, hundreds of thousands dead and injured, lives ruined, lies about weapons of mass destruction.
But at least Bush based the Iraq debacle on some sort of ideal – that we had an obligation to fight terrorism, that we had a moral position at stake.
Same with Obama on the corrupt bankers in 2008. He made a decision to let them go so the country could move ahead and not squander his political capital and first term by prosecuting wrongdoers at the expense of economic recovery. (I believed you could do both)
Trump has none of this. I have now realized way too late that Trump is just one big TV show. He sees life in two week increments, like his reality show The Apprentice. When the story line runs out, say kidnapping the leader of Venezuela, he moves on to Cuba and then on to Iran. Then the pope. And now he is seeking to vacate the connection of more January 6 insurrectionists.
And a cartoon of Trump as Jesus tending to the sick, which his team then took down after complaints from catholics.
“…a whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again.”
In the words of conservative writer David Brooks, a long time Republican voter who got his start at William F. Buckley’s right-wing National Review:
“Maximum malevolence….To threaten to wipe out a civilization. It is an assertion of true evil.’’
Brooks goes on: “Narcissists tend toward disinhibition as they age. They get more themselves.’’
Trump is now like the drunk uncle at dinner who thinks he can say whatever he wants. The more you put guidelines around him, the worse it gets. Brooks harkens back to Caligula, who killed anyone who disagreed.
The founders of this country feared that a rogue president could run through a Congress like a “whale through a net….Now their worst nightmare is happening,’’ Brooks said.
I’ve said this before and have been wrong. But I always believed that at some point, Trump’s incompetence would bring him down, that his disgusting, lying, made-up actions would bring him down, that the payoffs and grift would bring him down.
It has not happened because the line of decency in this country has moved to places we never expected.
Congressman Eric Swallwell thought he could abuse staffers and no one would care. Congressman Tony Gonzales thought he could have a sexual affair with a staffer who then killed herself and no one would care. Trump thinks that he can threaten a war crime of genocide against Iran and no one will care.
But eventually, the incompetence and hubris catch up. Trump went to war for revenge. Everything he does is about revenge. It has nothing to do with policy or helping people. It is ALL fake. It is ALL a lie. Nothing he says can be trusted.
He went to war in Iran because Netanyahu persuaded him to, because he hates Biden and Obama for signing the nuclear deal with Iran. He is threatened by anyone who disagrees with him.
Again – we have become numb to this behavior. So do me a favor and read the following statement from Trump on his social media account. Say it out loud and ask yourself if it makes you feel good that an American president is saying this.
“Tuesday will be Power Plant Day, and Bridge Day, all wrapped up in one, in Iran,” and adding, “Open the F***in’ Strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell – JUST WATCH!”
Just saying that is a war crime. The Nuremberg tribunals after World War II established the principle that words carry weight.
Trump defenders point to the “madman theory.’’ That by looking and sounding deranged, the Iranians will cave for fear of annihilation. That these words are a negotiation tactic. They are wrong. The words are wrong. They are immoral. And they are a crime.
The 90 million people who live in Iran have it much tougher than we do. They are willing to endure a lot more pain than we are. They don’t look forward to Netflix at night and In & Out Burger. They are surviving a religious, fantastical regime. Imagine what Iranian families are thinking when they hear and read Trump’s words.
Imagine what the Germans and Japanese are thinking. The Canadians.
After World War II, we didn’t take over Europe via the spoils of victory. We helped rebuild it. We fed hungry people. We forgave Japan for bombing Pearl Harbor and helped build a democracy there. Presidents of both parties, Truman to Eisenhower and Kennedy to Nixon, Carter to Reagan, helped design and shape a post World War II era of rules and behavior that has worked for 80 plus years.
Trump despises rules. He hates working with others. He must be above everyone else and needs people to be beneath him.
The writer Fareed Zakaria fears that the damage done by Trump, the distrust that has been sown throughout the world, will take a generation to recover, if ever.
No one trusts us anymore. India and Canada are talking to the Chinese because they no longer trust the U.S. The Chinese electric car industry is eating our lunch as we lurch around the world demanding more fossil fuels, even though solar is now cheaper.
The whole thing is insane. And the question becomes whether a citizenry poisoned by runaway capitalism and wealth creation, oblivious to the injury being caused as we are served infinite scrolling on Instagram, can recover the democracy muscle. It has been done before in the 1890s and the 1930s. But it takes people to stand up and be counted. To get off the couch.
It is a lot to ask. It would help if people generally looked to for leadership would actually DO something. As the country comes down around us, where are Barack Obama and George W. Bush? Michelle Obama and Laura Bush? Where is Lebron James? Where is Mitt Romney? Where for that matter, is the entire women’s and men’s professional basketball association. Where is Planned Parenthood? Where are the Steelworkers? The churches? How much longer will evangelical Christians, who bet the farm on Trump to get rid of abortion, tolerate this abusive behavior? Aren’t they the moral ones?
When is someone gonna say what Mario Savio said at Berkeley in 1964, that sometimes the machine is so odious that participation is immoral and that you have to throw yourself at the gears to make it stop?
Most of us don’t have the luxury of protesting every day, of throwing sand in Trump’s gears. But Lebron James does. So does the Catholic Church. So does George W. Bush. I know that Bush is disgusted by Trump. Half the Republican senators and half of the people who now work for Trump say he is crazy. But they say it after work, at a bar, in the dark. Yet they do nothing. Why?
This will end at some point. Trump will go. Whether by age and infirmity or by criminal prosecution or whatever. But he will go. And we will be left to pick up the pieces, to apologize to our friends and allies around the world and put our government and society back together. It will be a monumental task.
And that task will have to be performed in the midst of an AI take-over of an already weak society. It will be very very hard.
Are we up to it?