Trump and MAGA Help Wreck a Strong Country 12 Ways

If you get the reference, you're old enough to remember a better America

Once, the naivety of my youth (and also of my middle age) I thought that if we ever reached the point when there was widespread consensus that our nation was led by an authoritarian bully actively working to strip away our most basic freedoms that it would mark a low point.

Now, I know better. It can and will get worse before it gets better.

As for the consensus part of the equation, yes, we’re there. You can’t go to a website or unwrap the newspaper from around a dead fish without seeing a commentator declaring Trump an authoritarian, an autocrat, a dictator, a Hitler, a Stalin, a Mussolini, or an Orban. Stephen Miller, the tiny alien presence that sits inside the Trumpbot body and pulls the levers that make his mouth move and hateful lies come out, is more regularly compared to Heinrich Himmler than he is to any previous senior presidential advisor in U.S. history.

We’re there. Welcome to life in a shithole country.

I myself, have explored this theme a couple times this week. Once in my most recent Daily Beast column. Once in our “Words Matter” podcast with my partner in that program, the great Norm Ornstein, and with special guest Miles Taylor. Miles, formerly chief of staff in the Trump Department of Homeland Security during term number one, has more recently be branded a “traitor” by Trump for daring to speak out against our dear leader and his regime. I don’t often do this but I’d strongly encourage you to listen to the episode, entitled "Stop Waiting for Us to Become an Autocracy. We're Already There."

But you don’t need me to tell you we’re in a world of hurt. All you need to do is scroll through your favorite social media timeline. It only would’ve taken a few moments just this afternoon (I’m writing this on a Tuesday) to see stories of Trump threatening to jail anyone who protested against his Stalinist birthday parade, Trump urging the prosecution of the Governor of California for committing the crime of running for governor, Trump asserting that a few dozen protestors in downtown LA were insurrectionists threatening the stability of the nation, Trump therefore ordering more troops into LA, the Secretary of Defense ordering those troops to support the anti-immigrant round-ups of ICE, ICE announcing new round-ups targeting Democratic-voting cities and regions across America, Trump’s prosecutor in New Jersey indicting a sitting Congresswoman for doing her job, and Trump standing before a group of soldiers at Fort Bragg (carefully vetted to ensure there were no anti-Trumpers in sight of the cameras) and getting them to boo his predecessor while winning cheers for his decision to rename American military bases after racist traitors.

That was like an hour today. We’re so deep into the shit of authoritarianism it’s hard to see the sunlight anymore.

Trump Helps Destroy Strong Countries 12 Ways

When I was a kid, one of the most common commercials seen on kid oriented teevee was for Wonder Bread. The ads boasted that the soft, white, tasteless bread was fortified with vitamins and minerals and could therefore “help build strong bodies 12 ways.”

I thought of this recently as I was trying to keep track of the number of ways Trump and this administration were actively trying to wreck our country. Perhaps as a result of the television indoctrination of my youth, I came up with a dozen. (But that’s just where I stopped counting. Because I know there are many many more.)

I wanted to tabulate them because honestly, I think it is important among the torrent of horrific stories that we hear each day not be so distracted by any one angle of his attacks that we ignore others.

Some say, we need to focus on whatever the worst of these policies and actions are but I say, “no.” We need to develop enough bandwidth to see, understand and track them all because frankly, each is devastating, each contains crimes, each, unaddressed will do grave damage and take years or decades to recover from them. If recovery is possible. Which is not a sure thing.

Anyway, in no particular order (because, as I said, they’re all real bad) here is are the twelve. There are…

• …the things that will kill us. These include cutting funding for cancer and other vital scientific research initiatives, waging a campaign to replace those with expertise and knowledge in our national healthcare agencies with crackpots and anti-science freaks, kicking 20 million people off Medicaid and Medicare, kicking families in need of food assistance off SNAP, eliminating or gutting agencies that protect us from FEMA to the weather bureau, denying the dangerous reality of the climate crisis, promoting the use of fossil fuels that will pollute and poison us, eliminating regulations and regulators that protect the safety of our water, our food and the drugs we take, making it harder to get critical medicines and much much more.

• …the things that will divide us. These include using the government to attack blue states, seeking to impose the views of a tiny minority of extremists on the whole country, attacking those among us who are people of color and women by classifying all programs designed to end historic discrimination as unpermissible, seeking to target and limit the hard one rights and freedoms of the LGBTQ+ community, conducting anti-immigrant campaigns that target Latinos and Asians, identifying terminology they will not permit, identifying issues that inflame the country’s divisions and using them to distract from greater problems and seeking to enforce views on institutions that advance the extreme right’s racist, sexist agenda while trying to silence free discussion, free inquiry, academic freedom.

• …the things that will weaken our national security—hard power. Alienating our allies and weakening our alliances does. Attacking those who are fighting on our behalf—like Ukraine is a way to do this. Shutting down U.S. government agencies created to protect us against foreign election interference, corrupt activities of foreign oligarchs and governments, cyber attacks from Russia and planning to reduce intelligence community and key law enforcement budgets are other ways it is being done daily. Putting unqualified people atop the Pentagon, law enforcement and the intelligence community and effectively lobotomizing the national security apparatus by gutting and neutralizing the National Security Council also has a devastating impact.