We do live in historically relevant times. You and I are
unfortunate enough to have front row seats to the dismantling of the American
experiment from the inside out. Angry, brainwashed, short-sighted white American
voters managed to do what no military power could accomplish, and write the
last chapter to the story of a country founded on democratic ideals that were
eventually subverted by greed, racism and hubris. Everything the founding
fathers had hoped for, everything countless Americans died for during the Civil
War, everything civil rights protestors marched for, every great social
advancement Americans ever struggled for, will be under attack over the next
four years by Donald Trump. And with a Republican Congress, there is little
hope of stemming the fascist onslaught.
Every new day brings the announcement of another unholy
appointment by Trump. His administration will be a who’s who of democracy’s
enemies, a cadre of conservative ideologues who live in a reality of their own
making ripe with Aryan fantasies, internment camps and public executions. Trump
and his cohorts are convinced they can do the impossible and turn back the clock
of human progress to an imagined pre-Civil War era of bucolic mansions and happy
slaves.
Trump is the great white hope. His life of privilege and
excess mean nothing to his followers because it’s his mission that counts,
making America white again. In the process that is now underway, we clearly see
his list of priorities for America: Destroy public education, eliminate
environmental protections, give Wall Street the keys to the White House, revive
the drug war, stack the Supreme Court with conservatives, crush dissent, undo
the welfare safety net, privatize Social Security and Medicare, substitute news
with propaganda and, perhaps of utmost importance, fill his personal coffers to
overflowing.
There were a few people who saw this coming, but their
message reached a small minority of citizens who bother to look beyond the
corporate media for information. The prophets were never taken seriously and
had now power. No one in Trump’s America wants to hear from any smarty pants
know-it-all.
We are stepping into a new world thanks to our
president-elect, where the messiness of democracy will simply be dismissed in
favor of one man’s blind faith in his own decision-making capabilities. Who
needs a constitution when you have Donald Trump?
