Trump’s America is under attack from the law

What could possibly go wrong when the American president equates a legal search of his lawyer’s office to an “attack on (the) country?”

Gathered with the top U.S. brass to explore options to answer Syria’s chemical attack on its own citizens, many of them children, Trump used the premeeting photo-op as a platform to launch an uninvited and erratic attack of his own on investigators who are creeping ever nearer the Oval Office.

One self-evident response to the above question is that the president’s focus is obviously not where it needs to be when tragic events are eclipsed in his mind by his own political, personal and legal problems. But, that’s the least of our worries.

And make no mistake, we share the worries because, as the adage goes, when the U.S. sneezes Canada catches a cold. The U.S., however seems bound for a crisis that’s nearer a stroke than a sneeze, so Canadians would be wise to keep a wary eye on events in the former bastion of global democracy due south.

Any attack on America obviously assumes there is an attacker. In this case, the president perceives that to be the justice system. The warrant to search the offices and home of Trump’s lawyer Michael Cohen was sought by a U.S. Attorney and signed off by an American judge. The search was conducted by the FBI.

It is impossible to overstate the dangers to a nation governed by the rule of law when the leader of its executive branch decides those charged with the enforcement and administration of the law are enemies of the state.

We can only hope that “an attack on our country” was more Trumpian hyperbole – a notion from the same delusional mind that insists the sun suddenly appeared as he delivered his inaugural address. It didn’t.

Back to the problem at hand. The president took an oath that he will faithfully execute the duties of his office, and as commander-in-chief his primary duty to protect the nation from attack by enemies foreign or domestic.

The question then becomes, if and how President Trump will “protect” America from the threat of this perceived attack. His options are limited and fraught with constitutional peril, internecine strife and global instability.

The risk is heightened of presidential intercession with the Justice Department to end special counsel Robert Muller’s investigation of Trump-Russia ties, and to derail the investigation that has targeted Cohen. The latter legal imbroglio has roots in the payoff Cohen made to an adult film actor known as Stormy Daniels, who alleges carnal knowledge of Trump.

Any action from the president to subvert justice will almost certainly trigger a response from Congress, despite Republican majorities in both Houses. It is difficult to image that even members of the president’s own party can ignore presidential interference in the rule of law.

It is also difficult to imagine President Trump reacting rationally at home or abroad to an existential threat to his presidency.

The cavalcade of chaos that is the Trump presidency causes informed, rational people to wonder how America, the richest and most powerful nation on earth, came to this.

Journalist and deep-thinker Susan Jacoby attempts an answer in her best-seller The Age of American Unreason in a Culture of Lies. Jacoby doesn’t view Trump as the source problem so much as the product of a steady and unrelenting decline in logic, reason and the erosion of truth.

Many of the forces contributing to this decline in America are present in Canada, notably the reliance on unreliable sources of information that have become pervasive in the digital age.

Wilful ignorance, a truncated attention span that distracts us from intellectual pursuit with trivial infotainment, has delivered what Jacoby terms “junk thought.” Americans were drawn naturally to a presidential candidate that joined them in their blissful muddle, where the truth is whatever you want it to be.

How the story ends will depend on whether Donald Trump represents a future untethered to the rational, logical truth. Or, will he become a catalyst that turns Americans and the rest of us away from the dark places that disconnect us from what’s real, and back toward informed, rational thought.

As Trump himself would say, “we’ll see.”