Trump's Troops

It’s hard for me to discern whether Trump is a power-drunk madman, a politically savvy con man, a malevolent fascist, a corrupt politician, an ignoramus, or a narcissistic teenage bully. All of the above seems about right. His supporters would argue he's a clever diplomat, a forceful businessman-economist-president who’s been mischaracterized by the mainstream media and who will revivify American industrial might. I do not subscribe to the latter, however.

Still, I tell myself—and my despairing friends—that he’s done some things right. Jumping in to bomb the mullahs and his contribution to the Abraham Accords are signal achievements. His motivations toward these ends, whether ignoble or noble, are irrelevant. If he can achieve a real peace agreement there, he would deserve the Nobel Prize. He also bullied the Europeans into paying their fair share against a revanchist Putin. On the other hand, he allowed the appearance of being Putin’s puppet—subject to salacious blackmail involving kiddy porn, with the Russian holding the kompromat.

Does it really matter what the underlying psychopathy is if he muddles through? Well, yes. He’s done so much damage to the norms of our society. Will future presidents seek the same unbridled power? The old question—do the ends justify the means? To what end, and at what cost? The damage to our institutions—are they permanent, or will they heal when Donald leaves the scene? Will we return to normalcy?

In 1932, before FDR was elected, the U.S. and world economies were on life support. Communism seemed a plausible alternative for many elite American intellectuals, many of whom were embedded in the labor movement and the entertainment business. They had sickened of the Hoover administration doing little to intubate the dying patient. Unemployment was at 25%, Americans were starving, standing in soup kitchen lines, and a “Bonus Army” of hungry, dispossessed World War I veterans camped out on the Anacostia Flats near Pennsylvania Avenue. President Hoover sent Douglas MacArthur with troops to disperse the starving men and their families. Major George S. Patton—yes, that Patton—rode around on horseback, directing armed cavalry against the veterans. Tear gas was used. The nation was treated to a spectacle of abuse: men who had fought to “make the world safe for democracy” herded into paddy wagons and gassed—again. Their makeshift shelters were burned. The national reaction was outrage, contributing to Hoover’s landslide defeat by FDR later that year.

In New York City in July 1863, amidst the Civil War, four days of draft riots decimated parts of the city. 120 people were killed. Lincoln had to dispatch troops to quell the violence. The rioters turned on Black residents, who fled from lower Manhattan to Harlem. Lincoln had no choice—but it was necessary. A murderous, sanguinary, savage war raged on, ultimately taking 700,000 American lives. Battlefields across the country, littered with bloated corpses, filled the lenses of Matthew Brady’s camera.

Trump, meanwhile, is doing his best to provoke his own civil war—having polarized, with the help of social media and Rupert Murdoch, the American public.

He says, without evidence, that “Democrat sanctuary cities” are rampant with crime and that the Army must intervene. He claims these cities can’t police their own streets. Has anyone actually seen cities burning down? Crime is down, according to government data.

What we do see is an accumulation of tech oligarch wealth unseen even in the Gilded Age—wealth that would make Rockefeller blush. Corruption at the highest levels that would embarrass Boss Tweed. And let’s not forget the retribution: Trump’s campaign of prosecutorial revenge against opponents, and even career law enforcement officials assigned to his cases.

From crisis to crisis—mostly manufactured as distractions from his dubious trade policies and tariffs, which have damaged and even bankrupted American farmers—he’s left a trail of consequences. The government has had to issue subsidies to make up for lost markets in China and elsewhere. Half of America’s soybeans were going to China. Yes, the Treasury is collecting more money, but to what effect? Trump’s zero-sum game will ultimately boomerang. The raw accumulation of power for its own sake always plays out to tragic denouements.

Nothing is ever completely bad or completely good. Responsible leadership should do more good than harm. Benjamin Franklin said at the Constitutional Convention, “This Constitution can only end in despotism when the people shall become so corrupted as to need despotic government.” Trump is pushing the envelope—but Americans must shoulder the blame and pay the price for electing him.