Facing a hard choice

Donald Trump entered the 2016 GOP primary to enhance the brand of the Trump Organization rather than to assume the burdens of office. He didn’t expect to win, but his campaign energized many who believed that time had diluted long-standing certainties in American life: certainty that the country is a shining city on a hill, a white nation under a Christian God, a land manifestly destined for perpetual expansion and world leadership.

Trump promised to restore that America and make it great again. His victory brought conservatives a new Gilded Age unburdened by regulations, evangelicals opportunity for Christian resurgence, white supremacists hopes for a whiter America, and labor and industry a market protected by national tariffs in an otherwise global economy. The achievement came at the cost of dismantling Barack Obama’s “administrative state” that evolved in response to an infinitely complex world in transition.

Yet the president struggles with foreign policy. Vladimir Putin’s Russia offers tempting financial opportunities to the Trump Organization if Trump can move the country beyond the constraints of the Cold War. Long-standing Cold War sentiment permeates much of public life, fostered by neoconservative hegemonists and liberal internationalists whose common goal is to shape a world order in the image of the United States.

We face a hard choice: Preserve the past and remain the same, or address the future and become something different. The rest of the world is moving on.

DAVID SIXBEY Flippin