Trump on a risky path
WHEN Donald Trump was elected, many feared what his presidency might do to the country. A year and a half into his term of office, the concerns have been justified.
He and his team are dismantling health care reform, erasing needed environmental protections, casting aside international treaties and agreements, exacerbating income inequality, and putting vulnerable communities at risk.
Troubling as these policies are, however, is the profound damage he has done to civil discourse and political culture, and the danger he poses to democracy. There are warning signs that he is taking the US down the path to authoritarian rule from which it will be difficult to recover.
What are those signs? An aggrieved and angry constituency, and a charismatic leader who is able to prey on their discontent by creating a breakdown of trust in democratic institutions and a fraying of social cohesion. These are the guideposts on the path to authoritarianism and they describe the trajectory of the Trump presidency.
There was a time to caution folks not to pay attention to Trump’s tweets or to listen to his nightclub-style stand-up comedy routines. They were distractions. He was making outrageous and obviously false statements only to take Press attention away from the destructive policies he was pursuing. He was, to be sure, engaging in classic misdirection.
As a case in point – in just the past week Trump has launched a number of “twitter rants” in which he repeatedly attacked a variety of “enemies”. There were 75 tweets targeting his foes: the media, the Department of Justice, the FBI, the courts, Democrats, and, of course, Hillary Clinton.
While all of this might be described as political gamesmanship or idle ranting it is in fact quite dangerous. Trump is, after all, the US president and his tweets are read by millions. They are given an even larger audience when repeated by a host of websites and talk radio programmes. All of this has enabled him to spin a narrative of distrust and discontent that has taken hold among his aggrieved supporters.
It took America two generations to put the lid on overt displays of racism. Racism didn’t go away but people learnt to be ashamed enough not to be public about it. In just a few years, Trump has blown off the lid, giving comfort to bigots of all stripes. He has used this and his other rhetoric to build his movement of discontent, all the while discrediting his opponents whether they be from the “other party”, law enforcement, or the media. This is how democracies are wounded and the path to authoritarianism is paved. There is danger ahead.