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.

Is there a peeing section in the swimming pool?

 

Soon, our four year ordeal will be over.  The minute that Joe Biden takes office will be the minute that Donald Trump can be indicted on State level charges of election fraud.  No amount of Federal pardons can keep any of the states from indicting an ex president.  In fact, it is possible that the mere acceptance of a federal pardon will provide the admission of state level crimes.

Even if Donald Trump spends the rest of his days in prison, the disease he represents is still affecting America.  There are still too many people whose lives have been destroyed by globalism, as our coastal elites have not provided safety nets, nor have they provided meaningful employment to those left behind by global trade.  The people in the heartland have a legitimate grievance against the coastal elites, as the elites have benefitted as the expense of the American working class.  

Although Trump is a grifter who played well out of his league, he finally got caught due to his own failings. Many of Trump's supporters never look inward to determine the nature of their problems. If they did, they would see that they continually make bad choices, and then blame their failures on others.  So it only makes sense that these people chose a "bigger than life" persona to represent their interests.  Unfortunately, they didn't bother to look at this man carefully.  If they did, they might have seen the grifter who no major American bank would lend money to.  They might have seen one of the few men who could lose money running casinos - something very hard to do in this world.  They might have seen a man who was posing to be a false messiah.  And they might have seen a very little man behind an emerald green curtain. In short, with a little bit of effort, they would have seen someone who had only his own interest at heart, and would play them for suckers once again.

Years ago, I read a news article about a young man in Appalachia who asked his state's senator for career advice.  The senator gave the young man honest advice, telling the young man to leave.  There was no opportunity for him in his state.  The senator realized that his  state's would retain political power if it cound keep poor people from moving away for better opportunities. Yet, he was honest enough to give good advice to the young man.  What would have you done if you were that senator?  And this is the nature of the problem for many in the heartland.  There are not enough good opportunities to go around, and politicians often have interests which conflict with the needs of the people they represent.

Many of the coal mining companies in Appalachia are winding down their operations.  They know that the days of coal as a fuel are numbered.  Some of these companies have tried to retrain people for their growing renewable energy businesses and were willing to relocate these employees.  Yet, many of these employees return to the soil of their birth, as they have strong family bonds.  They make a choice to return to a land of poverty for family ties, rather than to prosper in new areas.  How would many of our ancestors have thought about this, given that they came to America and severed ties with their old lands?  They loved families that they left behind.  But they realized that they needed to make better lives for themselves, and that the old country wouldn't be fertile soil for those lives.  Too bad that today's people aren't the risk takers their forebears were.

A while back, I attended therapy sessions with an unconventional therapist.  One of the metaphors he often used was the idea of choosing the same door every time one wanted to exit a room, and getting beaten up each time that door was chosen.  It was his way of trying to get me to choose differently when things weren't working the way I wanted. When I think of typical Trump supporters, they want to live in a way their great grandparents lived without dealing with the problems they face today.  They are not able to choose a different door, and they continually get beaten up when they open the same door again and again.  Success and failure in life depends on the choices we make, and no one can help us if we are excused from the results of our bad decisions.  

So where does this leave us with the populist disease for which Trump is a symptom?  For the short term, we probably need to look back into history to see a solution our government tried 85+ years ago - the WPA (Works Progress Administration).  This "socialist" program made work for many unemployed people, giving them a purpose in life, and some hope for the future.  When people are housed, clothed, and fed, they are less likely to support populist kleptocrats like Trump.  They are also unlikely to fall into the depths of despair and become self destructive.  But if they do, we need to treat these people without applying moral stigma. Instead, we need to find ways to make them choose the right paths in life.  "Little brother", not "Big Brother" must show the way out of despair.

You'll note that I've only mentioned Appalachia so far.  These same problems exist in urban areas as well.  Our economy is shifting to work that can be done anywhere, with a few minor exceptions. So we have to work with business to educate people for the jobs that need to be filled, and make sure that businesses hire the people we trained for these jobs.  Is this too much to ask?