December 23, 2018
Despite unified Republican control of the federal government, we head into Christmas in the midst of our third government shutdown this year, all because Trump refuses to sign a continuing resolution to fund the government unless Congress includes a $5 billion appropriation for his racist, unnecessary, border wall. Trump is heedless to the impact that being furloughed three days before Christmas will have on 800,000 federal workers, many of whom live paycheck to paycheck, (Source: “The Impact,” by Steve Mufson and Lisa Rein, The Washington Post, 12/21/18).
Like Mary Shelley’s Dr. Frankenstein, Congressional Republicans have watched in horror as the monster they created has spiraled out of control. Not content to wreak havoc in the lives of people of color and LGBTQ people, Trump is busily doing the bidding of his Moscow overlords, much to the chagrin of his warmongering base.
Empowered by the office, Trump translates his most contemptible personal qualities into grotesque policy initiatives, as evidenced by his faithless and uninformed foreign policy where all that matters is assuaging Trump’s ego or currying favor with autocrats. Word is that Trump decided to withdraw from Syria after a call with Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan, credulously accepting Erdogan’s promise to “finish off ISIS,” (Source: “Trump call with Turkish leader led to U.S. pullout from Syria,” by Matthew Lee and Susannah George, (AP), The Washington Post, 12/21/18).
Similarly, Trump’s truculence on the wall was precipitated by the dressing down he received from the right wing media circus, who bashed him for being insufficiently hateful. Trump had been prepared to accept a compromise on the wall until bottle blond harpy, Ann Coulter, taunted that if he failed to build the wall, “Trump will just have been a joke presidency who scammed the American people, and amused the populists for a while, but he’ll have no legacy whatsoever,” (Source: “How Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter Goaded Trump Closer to a Government Shutdown,” by Jay Willis, GQ.com, 12/21/18).
Thus here we are, two days before Christmas, with our shuttered federal government serving as a metaphor for Republican governing philosophy. Under Trump and the Republicans, the platonic ideal of E pluribus unum is being replaced with “America First,” with its clear echoes of a white nationalist and xenophobic past. In Trump’s America, everything is transactional and nothing is sacred.
The dysfunction and rot on display can easily breed cynicism and apathy, which dishonest “both sidesism” reporting only encourages. Never-Trumpers seek to sanitize their party’s role in creating Trump by engaging in lazy hagiography masquerading as history. They invoke “Saint” Ronnie’s famous quote, “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down that wall,” as a rebuke to Trump’s border wall obsession. Such clever cherry picking conveniently omits Reagan’s nod to white supremacists by launching his presidential campaign with a speech on ‘states’ rights at the Neshoba County Fair, seven miles from Philadelphia, Mississippi, where civil rights workers, Goodman, Chaney and Schwerner were murdered for registering Black people to vote. They omit Reagan’s eager embrace of war profiteering foreign policy that exploded into the Iran-Contra scandal.
The truth is that Trump has much more in common with Reagan than Republicans or Beltway pundits would care to admit. Like Reagan, Trump is a Democrat turned Republican. Like Reagan, Trump parlayed show business fame into political power. Just as Reagan had Cabinet members working to conceal the early signs of his dementia, Trump is surrounded by advisors whose job is to contain or thwart his irrational impulses. If we ever hope to crawl our way back to any semblance of normalcy, we must be clear eyed about how we got here. Trump is nothing more than fruit of the poisonous tree.