Karl Marx had it wrong when he playfully suggested that: "History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce."
Donald Trump has reversed this order of things. His presidential ambitions, once no more than a tasteless joke, are now quickly leading our country, and all of mankind, into potential political and environmental tragedies of epic proportions.
Trump's first 60 days in office pose the greatest threat to the American experiment in democracy since our Civil War. His perversely aggressive polluting policies may tip our world into catastrophic global warming and an eventual major die-off of the human species.
Trump's is the most radical, autocratic, and incompetent government in United States history. The lives of billions of our children and grandchildren are being threatened by the manipulations of Trump and his small cabal of conspiracy theorists (led by the Rasputin-like Steve Bannon). They have already caused more damage in their sixty days than even I thought possible.
• Attack on Truth: Trump is world class in the volume, consistency, persistence, and transparency of his lies. His habitual mendacity, funny were it just his personal foible, is a dangerous giant step toward dictatorship when more than one third of the people either believe his lies or cynically choose to ignore them (GOP Congress this means you).
• Attack on Free Press: Our Founding Fathers disagreed about many things, but converged completely on the strongly shared belief that a free press is essential to democracy. Trump calls our free press the "enemy of the people" precisely because it is our most important protector of the two things he least respects- truth and democracy.
• Attack on Courts: Trump is challenging the court systems' authority to review his arbitrary dictums, using the excuse that his executive powers to protect "national security" supersede the court's duty to protect constitutional rights. Dictators always exploit "protecting the people" as a disguise for subjugating them. The definition of "national security" can be stretched broadly enough to cover just about any Trump power grab. So far the court system is holding up, but it is very early days and the future spine of the Supreme Court is much in doubt.
• Attack on Government: Trump is giving free rein to Steve Bannon's arrogant and autocratic ambition of "deconstructing the government." He has appointed the most egregiously inappropriate cabinet in history, composed of people most likely to destroy the effectiveness of the government agencies they are meant to lead- through ideology, conflict of interest, or raw incompetence (often an unsavory combination of all three). And to ensure cabinet members slavishly follow his destructive deconstruction mandate, Bannon has installed his own cadre of KGB-like political spies and bullies in each government agency.
• Attack on free elections: Trump's legitimacy as president is severely compromised by his enthusiastic use of the Russian connection to rig the election. Trump is Putin's creation, Putin's puppet, and Putin's biggest fan. Before the election, he publicly invited Putin to leak hacked Clinton data and many of his campaign cronies had deep Russian financial ties and/or met with representatives of the Russian government. The 'Manchurian Candidate' once seemed a far-fetched movie- now it is unfolding before our eyes.
• Attack on Environment: Trump is racing us forward to a tragic global warming tipping point. His cabinet is an all-star team of energy industry lackeys. The Environmental Protection Agency is muzzled, defunded, and castrated. And every catastrophic pollution policy finds Trump's favor. It seems likely that Trump will be responsible for more human deaths in the next century than any one person ever before in the history of the world.
• Attack on Healthcare: Obamacare needs reform, not repeal. We must cut the ridiculous prices and profitability of the medical industrial complex. Instead, Trumpcare radically reduces coverage and throws more money at the insurance and drug industries. Trumpcare is a betrayal of Trump's own voters who already have declining life expectancies due to inaccessible health care.
• Attack on Diplomacy: The future of the world depends on international cooperation to solve the inherently global problems of environmental degradation, water and energy depletion, overpopulation, civil war, migration, and epidemics. Trump does diplomacy by go-it-alone tweets and through a Secretary of State much more comfortable with his Russian buddies than with the American press corps.
• Attack on US Strategic Interests: Russia is Trump's friend, but is not America's friend. To pay his election debts, Trump is downgrading our NATO commitment and giving Russia a blank check in bullying Europe. Putin is clearly playing Trump for a chump. And slavish imitation is the sincerest form of flattery- Trump is trying to run the US government following Putin's KGB based playbook.
• Attack on Civility: Trump is one of the world's worst role models. His inflammatory speeches and tweets betray basic American decency and are creating a dangerously hostile and combustible national environment. Parents should protect their children from exposure to his bragging, lying, and terrible manners.
Trump is not crazy. We are- for electing him and letting him get away with this stuff. Promising to make America great again, Trump has instead made us small, vulgar, scary, and dangerous.
So far, the pushback against Trump's daily outrages has been pathetically weak. The Republican Party is now Republican in name only. It has been defeated and absorbed by Tea Party zealots, all too willing to enable opportunistic Trump as a willing vehicle for their fringe agenda. The Democratic Party, weak in victory, is pathetic in defeat. And a substantial minority of Americans are willing to believe Trump's lies and accept his abuse of power.
The only defenses are the free press, the courts, and public outrage. These are so far winning small battles, but show no signs of being able to contain Trump's ambitions or prevent the damage he is doing.
An outraged public is the best hope for stopping Trump's vendetta against common sense and American democracy. There are encouraging beginnings, but much more must be done. I will discuss solutions in a later blog- it is not too late to contain Trump and restore our societal sanity.