August 26, 2017
We keep wondering where the bottom is. When will Trump’s lethal combination of cruelty, racism, incompetence and abuse of power reach its nadir? Or better still, when will that combination prove a bridge too far for those in the co-equal branches of government, such that they are compelled to stop him?
Yesterday was the perfect storm of actions to showcase the fact that Trump is far from hitting the bottom. First, Trump issued a formal directive to the military to enact the ban on transgender troops serving in the military. Then, as Texas braced for what looked to be the worst storm to hit the state in twelve years, Trump was a study in fecklessness, wishing Texans, “good luck,” while boarding a helicopter to Camp David. Although the current FEMA Director is well regarded, Homeland Security, which oversees FEMA, as been without a director since John Kelly was brought over to clean house as White House Chief of Staff. Meanwhile, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which includes the National Weather Service and National Hurricane Center, is still leaderless. (Source: “Trump Administration Faces Hurricane Harvey, Its First Major Natural Disaster,” Nicholas Fandos, The New York Times, 8/26/17).
Although it may seem as though the departure of that punctilious Nazi without a portfolio, Sebastian Gorka, from The White House is good news, he has simply outlived his usefulness. Trump no longer needs to delegate the job of saying racist things in public.
The truths revealed by Trump’s pardon of the unrepentantly racist and sadistic criminal, Joe Arpaio, are far worse than the indifference shown by his handling of Harvey. Other presidential pardons have been controversial Both Bill Clinton’s pardon of Marc Rich and Gerald Ford’s pardoning of Richard Nixon were problematic because both gave the appearance of a quid pro quo. Particularly in the case of Nixon, where barely a month elapsed between his resignation and Ford’s pardon, many Americans felt strongly that Nixon needed to answer for his crimes.
Trump’s pardon of Arpaio is of a different order of magnitude. In addition to Arpaio’s long history of racially profiling Latinos, which led to his conviction for criminal contempt, he has an extensive record of truly reprehensible, viciously sadistic behavior. Arpaio ran a tent city outdoor jail that he himself proudly compared to a concentration camp. He neglected hundreds of child sex abuse cases, yet sent an “investigator” to Hawaii on the trail of President Obama’s birth certificate. He faked an assassination plot against himself that cost an innocent man four years in jail and Maricopa County $1 million in damages. Inmates in his jail were served rotten food, deprived medical treatment and beaten to death. (Source: Phoenix New Times, Twitter thread with links 8/25/17). Trump pardoned a kindred spirit: a brutal, publicity-obsessed racist who couldn’t competently perform the basic functions of his job.
The handwriting is on the wall. Since Trump has discovered that Congress is unwilling to check his unconstitutional abuse of the presidency to enrich himself, he is now testing the boundaries to determine whether Congress will allow him to abuse his power in order to victimize marginalized communities. Clearly Trump has decided that if he can’t be respected, he will be content to be feared.
With his actions in the last two weeks, Trump has signaled clearly that he will not stop until his “enemies” – Black people, Latino people, the LGBT community, Jewish people and the Press – are violently disposed of, whether by the state or by newly empowered white supremacist goons. It is equally clear that Congress seems incapable of lifting a finger, unless we force them to. I don’t know about you, but I won’t be sitting at home eating sheet cake, waiting for them to come for me.
#Arpaiopardondisgrace
In the March 2017 issue of Atlantic Monthly there’s a great article entitled “How to Build an Autocracy”.
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/03/how-to-build-an-autocracy/513872/
The opening pages envision the world in 2021 on the eve of Donald Trump’s 2nd term as president. It is terrifying. Terrifying because it feels so plausible.
One of the points that the author, David Frum, brings up is the fact that the number of legitimate, true democracies worldwide is going down. And he writes: “Within many of the remaining democracies, the quality of governance has deteriorated.”
We are there. We are in that deteriorating moment. Perhaps we have been for a while (partisan politics and all) and now the pace is just so crazily out of control that we can’t help but notice.
The timidity of our Congress, the voices that condemn the actions but won’t repudiate the man, the insufficient sense of urgency around this national disaster is horrifying.
So, no – we can’t hang out at home eating sheet cake (though I have to say my heart sort of broke for her in that moment because I really understood that sense of helplessness). We have to use the best tool available.
In 2018, we have make our voices heard and VOTE in record numbers nationwide. We have to change the power of balance in Washington and stop this commandant-in-chief.
Yes, this was by David Frum, a former Bush speechwriter who was and is horrified by Trump.