We have seen the likes of Trump before
After my column about local activism was published last week, a reader emailed me to say it was offensive and I was “obtuse” and “just plain unpatriotic.”
“Your opinion will only lead to more dissention among American voters. Shame on you.”
I am not ashamed to encourage people to dissent against the Donald J. Trump “regime,” I am only ashamed I didn’t do more sooner back when we were all laughing at him and were so sure he would never get elected.
From the get-go, Trump has shown us who he is.
He started with his campaign kickoff by calling Mexican immigrants rapists and murderers, denigrating millions of hard-working, religious, tax-paying families. Dehumanizing entire groups of people to persecute and ultimately exterminate them is the oldest trick in the book. Just ask the early Christians or 1930s European Jews or the 1990s Tutsis.
Trump is now taking bids to build a $21-$46 billion 2,000mile, 30-foot wall across our Southwest border that nobody wants and Mexico will not pay for, just to fulfill a stupid campaign promise.
Mr. “bighearted’s” immigration raiders are terrorizing legal and undocumented immigrants alike to the point where many are not sending their children to school, going to church or reporting crimes.
Hate crimes against them have soared and some of his followers now feel free to routinely harass women in jihabs on subways or walk into bars and blow away East Asians having drink.
Trump has name-called all of his foes – “lying Ted,” “little Marco,” “crooked Hillary,” “dishonest a bully.
He publicly encouraged Russia to hack Hillary Clinton, perhaps knowing they already were.
His followers have eaten it up until “lock her up” begins to sound an awful lot like “Sieg Heil.”
Oh, don’t tell me comparisons to Hitler are out of line; that bus slammed into a telephone pole long ago.
I’m expecting another Kristallnacht or Reichstag fire any day now, and if you don’t know what those mean, use that little computer you hold in your hand to look them up.
Trump has lied constantly and/or betrayed his complete disconnection to reality about the pettiest things so that there is no way of knowing when or if the next lie or delusion will take us sailing into a full-blown war.
“Three to five million illegal aliens voted against me ... Obama wiretapped me ... The elections were rigged ... The biggest crowd in history turned out for my inauguration ... Germany owes us hundreds of billions of dollars.”
He has installed billionaire corporate oligarchs with little or no knowledge of governance to head our administrative departments with a mandate to destroy them all while assuring us that he is “looking out for the little guy.”
He has been shamefully rude, crude and alienating to our closest allies: Australia, Germany, Mexico, all of Europe.
Even Israel Premier Benjamin Netanyahu was clearly befuddled by Trump’s failure to grasp even the rudiments of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. “Onestate, two-state, whatever you guys like.”
He is about to enormously disrupt our economy in the cause of “making better trade deals” and risking the entire planet with his war on the environment. Jobs are still going media,” like a schoolyard overseas.
He is trying to systematically delegitimize our democratic institutions – the Constitution, the independent judiciary, our free (so far) press, freedom of religion (twice attempted unconstitutional Muslim ban), the rule of law.
He continues to hold campaign rallies even though he was only just elected, seemingly for no other purpose than to feed his own megalomania and slam the media.
He promotes his own sources of propaganda – Breitbart, Infowars and other ultra-rightwing “fake news” sources and makes false accusations on Twitter.
Back in January, Trump’s dim bulb spokes-microwave Kellyanne Conway was incredulous on a Fox News Sunday show that members of the media had not already been fired criticize him.
This list is getting so long I have to go into shorthand here: Family members in the highest reaches of government; $3 million a weekend vacation and family protection costs to U.S. taxpayers; Emoluments Clause self-enrichment; “I can’t have a conflict of interest, I can’t be sued.”
Worst of all, he or his confidantes have, from all appearances, colluded with a hostile foreign power to influence our political process to help him get elected.
And if he has not done that, he and his idiot friends seem to be trying awfully hard to cover up … what exactly?
All of this – all of it – looks like a man trying to make himself into a dictator but failing so for daring to far through his own ineptitude.
I think our democratic institutions will withstand this, but we have underestimated him before.
And we are, in less than 100 days into Trump’s presidency, already in a full-blown constitutional crisis.
So, I do not think that I am being obtuse or unpatriotic for helping sound the alarm now, while we still can, but rather that I am being as patriotic as can be.
Donald Trump is something that we as Americans have never seen before, but history has. I