The looming threat

Our former president's mug shot.  

No matter what they say about Trump, things could be worse.  The man was totally incompetant and not able to change the nature of our political system, but he came close to doing so.  He normalized being openly hateful of vulnerable minorities, and unleashed a movement of malcontents which will likely survive his potential incarceration. 

So why do I say that there is a looming threat?

Several things have happened as a result of this man's time in office.  First, this man has said that if he regains the office of president, he will attempt to consolidate political power in the executive branch.  This is dangerous, as our system was designed to work (or, not work, as of late) with the powers of each branch of government being checked and balanced by the other two.  Second, this man has only anger to propel him.  He has never forgiven the public, nor the honest officials that some may have elected, for not putting him in office for a second term.  What revenge would he try to take at the expense of his perceived enemies?  Most elected leaders in his party are afraid of his cult, and are following his mob to stay in office.

But what happens if this man is not nominated to be his party's presidential nominee?  Will the followers of his cult believe that the elections weren't rigged?  On 01/06/21, we saw the violence that his cult was capable of.  Could it happen again?  What if the man were convicted in one of the courts? Even worse would be the chaos that might happen if the election were close.  For years, Americans have been self-selecting into like-minded communities.  People live in communication bubbles where they select news from sources that reinforce their views, and find it hard to imagine how others could have different views when "the truth" should be self apparent.  If you lived in Rural America, watched Fox "News" on a regular basis, and have been trained by your church to see the world in binary terms, would you be able to challenge the orthodoxy that you've been fed for years?  Wouldn't you want to defend your country from "criminals" from the left?

Years ago, Senator John McClain held a campaign rally where one of his loyal GOP constituents started labeling then Senator Barack Obama as a communist traitor.  Senator McClain interrupted this woman, saying that Senator Obama was a good man with whom he had political differences.  Could anyone see this happening today, where radicals from the far right are calling for President Biden's impeachment? The leaders of one political party have enough "sober" people to govern, while the other's leaders are afraid of the mob who elected our former president.

In 2016, our former president ran for office with the campaign slogan:  

Make America Great Again

Did any of his constituents ever ask: 

When did America stop being great?  

Why is America not great anymore?  

What needs to be done to make America great again?

I never heard any of these questions answered to my satisfaction.  Instead, MAGA anger comes from people who have lost their place in society.  They see our former president as someone who would (at least) give lip service to their feelings, if not restore their former positions in the larger society.

The next year, the former president held a campaign rally in Charlottesville, where he effectively said that there were good people in the neo-Nazi movement :

“You had some very bad people in that group,

 but you also had people that were very fine people, on both sides.”

Once a person implies that there some good neo-Nazis, where does permission to act on one's hatred end?  I can still remember chants of:

"Jews will not replace us!"

As if any self respecting Jew would want for his/her children to grow up with skills so limited that they could not earn a good living.  What successful person of any ethnic group would want for their child to become a bagger at the local Piggly Wiggly?  Many of the MAGAloons are poorly educated, resistant to change, and follow bombastic leaders without bothering to ask: "Does what they are saying make sense?"  They gravitate to "strongmen" who say things that validate their feelings, and not to people who understand the nuances of objective truths.

So, what is the looming threat?

In short, the threat is that our ex-president has unleashed a monster that can not be sent back to its cave before it causes a lot of destruction.  As I started writing this, Jacksonville, FL is dealing with the aftermath of a white nationalist killing 3 black people at a local supermarket.  What will it take to stop this?  I don't know.  But if the ex-president again comes anywhere near the levers of power, god help us.

Understanding our problems from a historical perspective

In order to understand what is going on with this year's election, one has to understand history. In short, one has to understand what led up to the Great Depression, what led up to Iraq War #1, the Bill Clinton presidency, the George Bush (#43) presidency (especially the response to 9/11), and the Obama presidency.  In the light of history, everything going on makes sense, and I'm still surprised that only the Libertarians have emerged to be a potential disruptor for this election.

Let's look at the Bush #43 presidency first.  He was elected with the mantra of "Compassionate Conservatism" infusing his campaign.  One would have expected him to be a president who focused on domestic affairs.  He did push a reactionary conservative agenda to appease the hard liners of the GOP base, and did appoint many conservatives to the courts. But 9/11 threw him and the rest of the country for a loop.  Politically, he couldn't allow another terrorist attack to occur without an appropriate amount of security theater - so we built up much of our dysfunctional security infrastructure in his reign.  But he also had to get us into a never-ending war, where we disrupted the power structure in Iraq, allowing ISIS to form.

Next, we have to look back at the Bill Clinton presidency.  Bill was a sex addict (no surprise, FDR and JFK also "suffered" from this affliction).  But Bill succeeded beyond anyone's expectations, leaving the US with a treasury that was spending less than it was taking in. Yet, his presidency was marred with scandals (something common in politics), and his wife was tarred with the same brush that tarred him.

Bush had a choice - should he borrow to pay America's bills for a war in Afghanistan, or should he raise taxes to pay for the war?  He chose to borrow AND decided to cut taxes - leaving whoever would following him with very tough choices - do we cut the military or social spending budgets, and which line items are sacred?  Luckily these tax cuts were temporary, and would expire after he left office.  They were designed to make a Democratic president look bad, as no Democrat would touch social spending - so he would have to let the tax cuts expire, allowing the GOP to claim he raised taxes.

The GOP has a mantra of "Less regulation brings on greater prosperity."  When the economy collapsed in 2008, a smart GOP candidate would have to ask the question: "What happens if we continue our dysfunctional policies?  Could we have another Great Depression?"  And I'll bet that John McClain realized this in 2008.  Could he tell his party's loyalists that they needed to pump money into the economy AND impose new regulations on the banking sector of the economy?  Of course not.  So he made a decision that he'll never admit making - to trash his chances of being elected President by nominating Sarah Palin for the office of Vice President.  (But he had to play dumb.  Any hint that he threw the election would damage his stature in the GOP - and he hasn't admitted that he did this yet, and I doubt he ever will....)  John McCain was very aware of what happened to Herbert Hoover.  His administration was blamed for the Great Depression, and the Democrats held the office of the President for 20 years under FDR and Truman.  I'm pretty sure that McCain figured that the GOP could brush Bush #43 under the rug, and possibly tarnish the Democrat (Obama) so the GOP could win in 2012.

Obama is elected in 2008.  We know from recent history that the GOP opposed everything he tried to do to prevent a Great Depression.  But both Bush #43's advisors and Obama's advisors were working to script legislation to prevent the worst from happening. And Obama was more successful than expected, in spite of the GOP.  He knew not to shred the social safety net while things were getting worse, and then to take away the extra support when things got better.  No matter what people did to find scandal in his administration, his was the cleanest we've had in decades.

During Obama's administration, the GOP regained control of congress.  And repealing Obamacare became a new mantra.  Hillary Clinton takes on the job of Secretary of State, dealing with many of the foreign policy decisions that Obama doesn't have the time to make, being involved in the domestic economy and its problems.  But this places her back in the cross hairs of the GOP's attacks on her.  If they could have convicted her of anything, they probably would have done so.  But the most they could do is to tarnish the reputation of a woman because she was married to a president of the opposition party who was very successful and very flawed.

The GOP congress was ineffectual in delivering on its many problems, and many in the base stopped believing in the lies told by its elite. So, Donald Trump became a great disruptor.  Voting for Trump was a vote against the GOP elite.  Sadly, Trump is a person who leaves anyone and anything he touches poorer for knowing him.  But one would have to know his history to think he's anything other than a successful entrepreneur.  

At the same time, the Democratic elite was also shown to be worthless, leaving fertile ground for Bernie Sanders' candidacy.  If it weren't for Bernie NOT realizing how powerful his message and candidacy would become, and how the Democratic party's elite structured things for Hillary to win, he might have just pulled up the upset of the century.

Now we have Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump as our presumptive nominees.  They have the lowest approval ratings in decades.  And the Libertarian, Gary Johnson is polling in the double digit range.  Will he be able to keep polling this high and get into the debates?  I'm not sure, but he is another disruptor. If Johnson were to win any electoral votes, and if neither Trump or Clinton win a majority of electoral votes, the presidential election could go to the House of Representatives.  Would the majority GOP states vote for Trump, or would they do something embarrassing like voting for Clinton?  I suspect that neither candidate would be acceptable, and this would leave the Libertarian (who is, I believe, a former GOP governor) as the only palatable choice. 

Could this scenario happen?  It's highly unlikely, but we've seen the strangest things happen this year, and I'm not ruling out even stranger things from happening.....