Trump Would Create A Fragile, Merciless State

She’s going to be voting for Kamala Harris, says Susan Ford Bales - daughter of former President Gerald Ford (R) – because the Democratic contender will “defend the rule of law and our Constitution.”

The Constitution is rightly central to her reasoning.

If Trump gets elected and breaks the Constitution to keep himself in power, he will be shattering the tool that has powered American dominance in the global struggle for leadership.

Right now, the Constitution is flawed – and the Founders knew that.  They incorporated ways to change it.  If the majority of people wanted a change, then the Constitution would accommodate the new reality.  That’s why we do not have slaves anymore. 

In this, the U.S. Constitution was fundamentally different from autocratic claims and stories based on (e.g.) authoritative origin, such as the Ten Commandments.  The Ten Commandments – being divine - forms a different model of law, and precludes any way to amend it. There is no Eleventh Commandment that says, “You can amend commandments by a two-thirds majority vote.”  

 Like the U.S. Constitution at the beginning, for example, the Ten Commandments endorsed slavery:  “You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or his male slave or female slave” (Exodus 20:17).  Unlike the Constitution,  as Yuval Noah Harari points out in his book “Nexus”, a result is that the biblical text still endorses slavery even today.

The American Constitution, however, is an evergreen legal understanding generated by fallible human beings. “We the People of the United States,” acknowledges the Constitution about its own origins, “in Order to form a more perfect Union…do ordain and establish this Constitution.”

Because of its acknowledgment that it is a human-made legal understanding, the U.S. Constitution indeed managed to form a powerful union – one that is flexible and invested with buy-in from everyone.

The genius of the U.S. Constitution is that by proudly admitting that it is a legal fiction created by human beings, it was able to provide mechanisms to reach agreement on amending itself and remedying its own injustices.

Its strength comes not from a universal power but from the power to repair.

Trump however is taking an I-am-god approach to power.  His word is law; his desire is final.

In that, he has been joined by a clinging cloak of billionaire wanna-be groupies, who are fighting hard for Trump’s – and their – accession to ultimate unchallenged power. 

They will form a new Mandate Of Heaven, designed so wealth always flows upward and people are servants of Their Word.

This form of government will be as frail as that of any autocracy, like those in Russia or China.  It will only have buy-in only from the few, and will be ripe for rapid overthrow.

There is little doubt that Trump sees himself as the irrefutable genius.

Trump’s beliefs come out in his plans: he has called for the execution of the former chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; he urges police to shoot shoplifters; he characterizes his political adversaries as subhuman “vermin” who must be “rooted out.”; and he has declared that immigrants from Latin America, Africa and Asia “poison the blood” of the United States.

More than 80 percent of evangelicals – who are of a mindset to go with autocratic power - voted for Trump, so he can claim the ‘mandate of heaven’.  Trump see himself living outside of time in the eternal moment, fighting in the here and now to win the battle at hand, episode by episode, according to author Dan McAdams.

“At the center of Trump’s personality lies a narrative vacuum, the space where the self-defining life story should be but never was. As such, Trump is rarely introspective, retrospective or prospective. There is no depth, no past and no future.”

When  Trump played himself on the series, “The Apprentice”, he invented an heroic role that he now lives every day.  Trump is a golden god in his mind.  He can do no wrong.  He will execute anyone on Death Row whenever he wants.  He will tear up the Constitution and attack Congress.

He is never wrong.  He is a Venn diagram with one circle.  To his followers he says “I am your warrior. I am your justice. And for those who have been wronged and betrayed, I am your retribution!”

That person will never admit to being wrong; he’d rather look stupid putting a sharpie on a weather map.

Of course, he would never know that he was looking stupid.

Outside Trump there is a gathering of billionaires who want to expand their power and fear that democracy will take it away.

His is relying more on billionaires in this campaign than he has in any other campaign…

The new theocracy includes billionaires like Peter Thiel (Paypal) and Elon Musk.

Elon Musk’s Tesla raked in $4.4 billion in profits and did not pay a single dollar in federal income tax (2018-2022).  Elon Musk received the largest pay package ever recorded for a company’s CEO.

Other companies that have paid their top executives more than they've paid in federal taxes in recent years are T-Mobile, AIG, NextEra, Darden, MetLife, Duke Energy, First Energy, DISH, Principal Financial, American Electrical Power, Kinder Morgan, Dominion, Oneok, Williams, Xcel Energy, NRG Energy, Salesforce, DTE Energy, Ameren, Sempra Energy, U.S. Steel, Entergy, AmerisourceBergen, PPL, CMS Energy, Evergy, Voya Financial, Atmos Energy, Alliant Energy, Match Group, UGI, and Agilent Tech.  Executives like these have an internal interest in promoting the new World of Trump – and tearing up the old Constitution.

This plutocracy will reinforce Trump’s belief in ruling from the top, with (e.g.) wealth transfers going to the rich; Ronald Reagan characterized it as a “trickle down” approach.  BTW, the London School of Economics says 50 years of such trickle-down tax cuts have only helped one group — the rich.

Trump’s 26 biggest billionaire backers, worth a combined $143 billion, have poured $162 million into his campaign.  They get rewarded with more tax cuts and lower wages for their workers.  The infamous Project 2025 will cut health care benefits and lower support for education; the project has been subtitled “How democracy dies.”

Then there is the ground-level cult.

People in a cult are much less likely to see beyond their beliefs.  America’s Founders were leery of religion not just because it was limiting, but because they had experience with narrow religiously-inspired strife in the Colonies.  They had seen the persecution of Baptists in Virginia by Congregationalists and Coode’s Rebellion in 1692 when Virginia and Maryland almost went to war. Cultists know very little about the world around them.  They are the uneducated story-swallowers.  Back to the example of bible: atheists and agnostics know more about religion than anyone else.  Religious practitioners (cult members) have a startling lack of knowledge.  One researcher explains why:  “American atheists and agnostics tend to be people who grew up in a religious tradition and consciously gave it up, often after a great deal of reflection and study.”

It is because America tolerates so many religions, in fact,  that it is the most generous nation in the world – and has been over the past decade at least. Thanksgiving celebrates Pilgrims fleeing oppression by the English government's official Christian church. That's why the Founders separated Church and State. 

Trump’s message of economic decline hits the mark for White uneducated voters, who have often lost out in the push for new jobs.

Consider what happened in Springfield, what with the immigrants eating the dogs and cats and so one, according to Trump and Vance. 

I recommend that you listen to this lady; the sarcasm just drips from her fangs.  It’s probably over the head of your average Republican voter, but this is roughly the point she is making: 

‘Immigrants have raised the minimum wage for both Springfield and Clark counties, they are paying income tax to the city that the city desperately needs, they are making some of the local losers look bad, they work overtime to buy up the dilapidated homes in Springfield then fixing them up to make them livable again and raising property values to the point where they passed $1-billion for the first time ever; they are helping to fund our government and beautify our community, spending money locally to the point where new restaurants and retail spaces pop up across the city – what absolute madness! – and now we have new businesses putting in new funds.  These immigrants get unfair advantages:  $292 in food stamps every month and $363 in cash.  Everybody knows that $655/month lets you live like a millionaire in Springfield.  Feeding the hungry in our community: this is lunacy!’

Trump and Vance probably know this, but their community of fascist haters does not, so the propaganda stirs them up with lies about immigrants. In truth, America needs more immigrants, because the population would otherwise drop like a sinkhole in Florida.

BTW, undocumented immigrants pay $100-billion in taxes annually – yet are unable to access social security or Medicare services.

Nicola Tesla was an immigrant, as were Joseph Pulitzer and Albert Einstein. If it weren’t for immigrants, neither Trump nor Vance would have wives.  OK, we let in Trump’s grandfather as well, but no system is perfect.

Immigrants bring hope, optimism, perseverance and a ferocious work ethic.  No wonder MAGA hates them.  The American Dream is still alive – if you have an IQ brighter than fridge light.

If immigrants were cut from the American work force the economy would go into a death-spiral:

So thanks, Don, this is the kind of strategic thinking that bankrupted seven of your companies. In fact, in the past 30 years, no major US company has filed for bankruptcy more than Trump.

No wonder he wants to control the country.  He’ll have an army to protect him from the process servers.

Which brings up a delicate point: do you want this man controlling our nuclear bombs?  He would probably use them first on Ukraine.

Trump-the-successful-CEO was a fantasy created for a television program.  Its Director has since apologized for “creating a monster”.

If Trump comes to power the American experiment in democracy and growth is pretty much done.

The social safety net would evaporate, with a cut in food stamps and in the number of people receiving them.

The Head Start program for free early childhood education would be turfed.

Medicaid would be cut “to disincentivize permanent dependence."  Cutting health programs would keep people sicker longer, exactly the opposite effect as the one Trump is after – but this is a typical backwards move.

Other backwards measures would include closure on student debt relief, defunding of the CPB network to destroy public broadcasting service, a ban on all traffic cameras, more public health crises like his Covid incompetence that killed millions of Americans, a denial of global climate change and a subsequent surge in weather disasters – with relief only going to states that voted for him – and a wholesale dumping of programs at the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Energy, and the National Oceanic and Space Administration.

These measures are being driven by greed.  Trump wants money from the fossil fuel industry, for example, and from the privatization of social services like education and health. 

He wants power, and he hates science and an independent media.  He hates being caught in lies.  His only choice is to stifle the sources of truth or stop talking.

An America that is a reflection of the character of Donald Trump would be a small, hateful and petty place, where innovation crumbles, interaction freezes, and doors of death-row open to the final hallway.

He is a petty, dangerous, stupid, malicious human being.  A nation in that image would be a place to escape from.

There is, of course, another way to stop him.  On November 5^th, your ballot is a bullet.

Volley fire!