A Troubled America

How did we get here?  Where, exactly are we?

I have spent much of my life reading and blogging about American politics, but nothing I’ve seen before has prepared me for what has happened these past weeks.  Increasingly, it feels as though the country is careening out of control and heading straight off a cliff — and nothing can slow it down.  I fear that we are on our way to an autocratic system of government:

“An autocracy is a system of government in which supreme power is concentrated in the hands of one person, whose decisions are subject to neither external legal restraints nor regularized mechanisms of popular control (except perhaps for the implicit threat of a coup d'état or mass insurrection).”

We have a president fully prepared to violate the Constitution. We have allegations that his advisers might have worked directly with a foreign government to win the presidential election. We have a Congress indifferent to these potential crises and focused instead on repealing legislation that will literally cause premature hardships of thousands of Americans. It’s almost hard to take all of this in. It’s a disorienting and surreal moment in our history, and the worst part is that last week might have represented the calm before the true storm.

What is in this Inaugural message?  “We are one nation — and their pain is our pain. Their dreams are our dreams; and their success will be our success. We share one heart, one home, and one glorious destiny.”  Troubling words; something un-American. It will take time to digest, if possible.

Are the many allegations correct or are they just that, allegations?  But, unfortunately there is so much angst among Americans. We don’t know who or what to believe and trust.

As if this isn’t bad enough, we are also a week away from what will unambiguously be a constitutional crisis — namely Trump’s refusal to disentangle himself from his various business enterprises. It’s not an exaggeration to say that the moment Trump took the oath of office, he was in violation of the Constitution’s emoluments clause, which bans the president from taking gifts or payments from a foreign entity or individual. 

Since Trump does not believe that conflict of interest laws apply to him and that he’s under no obligation to ensure that he is not profiting from being president, he takes office under an ethical cloud that we’ve never seen in the 240-year history of the United States.

Emoluments Clause — Heritage Foundation

No Title of Nobility shall be granted by the United States: And no Person holding any Office of Profit or Trust under them, shall, without the Consent of the Congress, accept of any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State.

Of course, Congress could take steps to rectify this issue.  But this is not going to happen!

Taken all together, this confluence of events represents perhaps the most profound and political crisis that this country has faced since Watergate.

And during this period, people are talking about “normalizing Trump,”  

broadly defined as the act of treating his sexism, xenophobia and fascist dog-whistles as just another policy difference against equally valid opponents. This trend, born largely by a combination of cognitive dissonance and access, is being accelerated now that Trump has won the election, and its continuation, if left unchecked, could undermine opposition for years to come.

The Oxford English Dictionary defines normalize as “to make normal; to bring or return to a normal or standard condition or state.” It’s a word, then, as nebulous and conditional as the idea of normalcy itself — and one whose many meanings have been debated throughout a campaign season of unusual self-scrutiny within America’s professional political class.

The mainstays—Washington Post, New York Times and CNN—while frequently critical, are covering Trump’s transition as they would any other. President Obama, Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders have all issued statements recognizing Trump’s legitimacy and pleading we give him a chance.

But this is wrong, both tactically and ethically. Trump isn’t normal and he should never be treated as such, regardless of what President Obama and Clinton and Sanders say. These people are politicians, bound by a different covenant. The media, namely progressive media, is subject to no such charge. The overall message of normalizing Trump is that you can steamroll women, LGBT people, the disabled, Muslims, and people of color, yet everything will be okay so long as you win. Indeed, when asked if he thought his rhetoric had gone too far, Trump responded, “No, I won.” This is the logic of a fascist, and liberals are acquiescing to him by pivoting to “Trump as our kooky uncle” normalization mode.

And let us not forget, Martin Luther King and the role of Civil Rights leader John Lewis.

“Where Do We Go from Here” was MLK’s analysis of the state of American race relations and the movement after a decade of U.S. civil rights struggles. “With Selma and the Voting Rights Act one phase of development in the civil rights revolution came to an end,” he observed. King believed that the next phase in the movement would bring its own challenges, as African Americans continued to make demands for better jobs, higher wages, decent housing, an education equal to that of whites, and a guarantee that the rights won in the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 would be enforced by the federal government. He warned that, “The persistence of racism in depth and the dawning awareness that Negro demands will necessitate structural changes in society have generated a new phase of white resistance in North and South.”

Over the past few years we have seen many acts of racism and hate crimes against young black men and violence against churches and gathering places along with questionable court decisions/outcomes not delivering fair and honest justice.  

And what can we do about these evils?  The only thing we can be certain of is when good men and women are determined to improve the social condition — success can be realized.