It’s been awhile since I’ve written one of these THREAT (Trump Human Rights Erosion And Termination) Watch posts, which I began writing a week after Trump’s election.
It’s definitely time for another one. Not because Trump has done anything unusually outrageous or frightening lately. He hasn’t. He’s been steadily outrageous and frightening in word and deed from day one. He continues to trod down the path he stomped out, campaign speech by campaign speech, tweet by tweet, beginning in the election season and continuing during his two years in office. Though he has done damage to the country and the office of the presidency in ways which may not be remedied in our lifetimes, he hasn’t irreparably harmed the country.
Yet.
The only reason Trump hasn’t done more harm is because the country’s basic institutions have held him in check. The courts have reversed, delayed and curtailed much of what he wanted to do. Once in awhile Congress puts a check on one of Trump’s schemes, usually in the foreign policy arena. Rarely, but it happens. And the media—Bless and keep the media, our first line of defense against tyranny!—has stayed strong and independent. The more Trump calls the truth-telling media the Enemy of the People and purveyors of Fake News, the harder reporters work to tell the truth.
Trump should also be held in check by the conventions of the office which say the president is bound by court decisions, by congressional laws and oversight and, possibly most important, by a sense of what’s right. A president should have a reasonable amount of honor as well as a sense of shame. When he’s done something wrong, or even worse, when he’s been caught at it, he should say, “I shouldn’t have done that. I’d better back off, maybe even try and make amends. I learned my lesson on that one.”
And therein lies the greatest threat Trump presents to the country. He is unbound by the norms of law, society and human decency. He’ll lie, cheat and steal, whatever it takes. When he’s caught in a lie, he lies harder, repeating the lie more often and ever more outrageously. When the courts rule against him, sometimes he ignores them and other times he works around them, violating the spirit of the court’s ruling, trying to find a way to do what he wants in spite of their pesky judicial meddling.
This is nothing new. He’s always been this way. But it’s gotten worse lately.
Some recent cases in point:
The court ordered the Trump administration to stop regular separations of children from their families at the border. Yet, according to the federal judge monitoring the situation, 245 children have been taken away from their families since the order. To make things worse, the responsible agencies still aren’t keeping track of where some of the recently removed children are located.
The Trump administration has been pushing for a citizenship question on the 2020 census. Courts have ruled against it twice. Starting in January, right after the first judge blocked the citizenship question, plans began for Homeland Security to provide detailed information about non-citizens living in the U.S. to the Census Bureau: their immigration status, “full names and addresses, birth dates and places, as well as Social Security numbers and highly sensitive alien registration numbers.” It’s an unprecedented move which would give the Census Bureau more information than it would be able to obtain during its normal information gathering process.
Trump’s war on journalists is being waged in earnest at the border. He knows on-the-scene reporting is what raised the alarm about the way families and their children seeking asylum were being treated. So the administration disseminated a list of journalists and activists who were working at the border. These people are stopped, questioned, have their cellphones taken and are sometimes forbidden from crossing into Mexico.
None of these actions go anywhere near as far as Trump would like to go, and that’s the real concern. Though Trump may be unbound by the norms of law, society and human decency, he’s still bound by restrictions which can be placed on the executive by its two coequal branches of government, the legislative and the judicial. And he hates it. He just hates it. He has done what he can to neuter the legislative branch of the government by turning congressional Republicans into frightened lap dogs. He’s been less successful at neutralizing the power of the judicial branch, which he complains about regularly. If he can take away the power of the judiciary to keep a lid on his authority, he can make the executive the only fully functioning branch of government, giving him the power to ram through his agenda free of checks and balances.
And then there’s the fourth estate, which Trump loves to hate. Freedom of the press is the enemy of authoritarians like Trump. He desperately wants to change the libel laws so he can sue the media into submission, since his verbal assaults aren’t getting the job done.
Of all the things Trump admires about Putin, Kim Jong Un and the other dictatorial strongmen of the world, it may be their control over the press he loves most. I imagine he’s salivating as he watches the fate of a proposed law in Russia, which would allow the government to fine or jail anyone who insults the government or spreads what Putin considers “Fake News.” Trump would kill to have a law like that for his very own.
This article appears in Mar 7-13, 2019.
Mr. Safier’s Analysis of Donald Trump is Correct!! I will add the Following:
Donald Trump, I my view, is NOT fit to service in the Office of President of the United States. He is Mentally Unstable and has undermined the very nature of our Constitutional Democracy with Three Co-Equal Branches of Government, as well as our Independent and Free Press. His statements regarding His Russian Mentor and “Friendship” with the Thug Putin threatens the National Security of our Country.
If Special Counsel Robert Mueller Investigation produces evidence of Trump’s Manipulative Collaboration of the Electoral Process with the Russians so as to Assist in his Election, his “Election”, in fact, is Illegitimate and Illegal. All his Executive Orders, Appointments, including those to the Supreme Court, and signed Legislation are Illegitimate as well and must be Retracted since he was not properly Elected.
In addition, Donald Trump’s “America First” policy with the mantra “We Will Win”!! is nothing more than the repackaging of the Social Darwinism of the 19th century; the application of Darwin’s “Survival of the Fittest” to Human Society.
White European Supremacists used Darwin’s Theory of Evolution to justify the “White European Race” Superiority, Socially, Politically, and Economically, to the rest of Human Society. Trump is claiming the same for the United States.
This view of Human Society was used by Hitler to justify the Holocaust with the removal of those that the Nazis considered inferior. It also considers social welfare programs, such as Medicare and Medicaid as contrary to “social improvement” by perpetuating those with “inferior genetics”.
Trump’s Neo-Nazi Social Darwinism, a reflection of our mere Animal Nature, once again, demonstrates his complete lack in Understanding the very Nature of Human Society; our Inherent Relatedness, Commonality, and Mutual Dependence; Domestically and Internationally.
In Supporting Donald Trump, the GOP has ignored the Welfare of our Country, putting Party Politics as their main Considerations!!! Why? So as to maintain the GOP Power and Privileged Positions in Government: at both the National and State Levels. They have effectively destroyed themselves as Representatives in Our Constitutional Democracy.
Trump will be removed from Office before 2020!!! His Supporters in the US Congress will be Booted Out of Office in the 2020 National Elections. Democrats, including Social Democrats, will control both the House and Senate!!
The media? CNN is being sued for $250M. MSNBC is next. Fraudulent, manipulative and partisan. We knew it when Donna Brazille fed the debate questions to Hillary in advance of the Presidential debate. Your goals are no worthier than anybody elses.
You just think yours are.
Ask this question of the ignorant voters about Medicare. “How much should your paycheck be reduced to cover Medicare for all, a thousand or fifteen hundred a month?”
Do they really believe it will be free? Did their last scheme (the ACA) lower premiums and insure all the uninsured?
Selective memories.
What independent media? The media is largely a corporate-owned construct that maintains an illusion of independence while supporting the overall policies of its corporate ownership – among other things mass immigration to provide a cheap and docile workforce.
Tchump has indeed done irreparable harm already. Endless idiotic mischaracterizations by the corporate media notwithstanding, new stretches of border wall have already been built, and more is imminent. Billions of dollars are being wasted on this senseless, racist, useless wall that does clear and lasting harm to communities, wildlife, and treasured wildlands along the border. Private landowners along the Texas border are helpless to stop it as the government seizes their land to pursue this monumental folly. Will they ever get their land back? Will the wall be torn down? You’re kidding, right?
How about the victims of all the hate crimes and mass shootings that have skyrocketed under Tchump, who has encouraged fascists, racists, and legions of angry white men to come out from under their rocks and lash out at the first easy target? Are their lives “reparable”??
How about the international standing that he’s squandered–will that ever be restored? The U.S. is a global laughingstock now as our petulant, psychotic president blunders from one diplomatic debacle to another.
How about Venezuela? The corporate media do no fact-checking at all when Tchump spews a bunch of lies about Venezuela. On the contrary, the corporate media are actively beating the drum for yet another illegal coup in Venezuela. How about the people there who have been harmed by the ruthless U.S. sanctions or the violence the U.S. has spawned in yet another attempt to undo the results of free and fair elections and illegally overthrow a Latin American president.
The list goes on. If you can’t see these harms, and if you think the media will somehow save us from them, then you’re living in liberal la-la land.
Skinnyman, my neighbor is from Venezuela, and she would definitely love to share her story of the oppression and poverty under the socialist government. First hand account. I think I’d much rather believe some one who actually lived through it, than someone who enjoys and takes for granted the life of luxury ( food, Medical, home, bank account, car, ) yet at the very same time condemning the one who gave him, or her, the opportunity to earn, their way to success. WORK, WORK, WORK. the key to success.