Trumptator

One book I didn't mention because I did not finish it was “Everything Trump Touches Dies: A Republican Strategist Gets Real About the Worst President Ever.” Rick Wilson. However, the title stayed with me especially as we move to the upcoming national election.

I believe it is fair to say, DJT is killing America. More deadly than COVID is the virus of Trumpism which is slowly infecting our national life, our national conversation, our institutions, our morals and values both at citizens and as elected officials.

Sadly, the poison of the Trump virus has been slowly working at the White House since DJT entered the race for our 45^th President. It started with lies, distractions, bullying of other candidates and attempts to pathologize his opponents and the media which would not bend their reporting to his liking.

Personally, I don't believe Trump is a smart person(smart people know how much they don't know) neither is he a wise person. Wise people learn to adapt throughout life to the expectations and requirements of the job or the mission they are undertaking. Trump bends the standards and expectations to fit his narcissistic outlook on the world. Being neither smart or wise, his anger and venom have sadly spread through his administration and beyond that to our national institutions.

I would never have believed one person could so poison and kill so much we hold sacred as a nation. He has surpassed my expectations and I have some deep sadness we are on a rapid decent into authoritarianism.

Everything Trump touches he poisons. He sullies the reputation of those who end up in his orbit, or attempts to crush them when they will not bend to his will or instructions. Early on some believed they could temper or moderate his worst features. They were proven wrong and quickly.

Over this past four years Trump has gathered a cabal around him that will stop at nothing to advance his agenda. We have watched the Border Patrol, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement descend into behaviors more in common with emerging nations led by dictatorial thugs than America. He has corrupted the Supreme Court with at least one morally corrupt man, and hobbled the Department of Justice making it his lap dog in the suppression of the first amendment rights to peacefully assemble and ask for grievances to be addressed. He has been heavy handed with threats regarding turning the military against citizens and using them to enforce Trump's law overreaching Governors, Mayors, and local law enforcement.

He tells his base he is unsure he will vacate the White House if he loses the upcoming election because by his definition if he fails to win, the Democrats must have cheated. Yet time and time again, his accusations against others are meant to deflect attention from himself. Trump, according to Trump, is always a winner, even when he has to cheat to win.

Trump has poisoned perhaps to death the Republican party, as he has bent and coerced party members and office holders to his reality and insisted on their loyalty. Those who lacked the integrity and courage to stand against his bullying “retired, resigned, retreated” to home believing that somehow they would not be engulfed in the coming storm. They will. And some of us will freely call them cowards. The refusal to stand against corruption and tyranny when one has been entrusted with such a terrible, awful responsibility to secure freedoms denied to some, safety for all, and the rule of law in my mind is not just cowardliness but also simple sedition. The United States has never had a “supreme” leader by any name you want to use—King, Emperor, or President for Life.

Without doubt we are watching this country slowly slide into authoritarianism under this president's mismanagement, his corruption, his undermining of all the checks and balance laid in the founding documents of this nation.

If this journal article sounds shrill, it is because we are moving ever closer to extinguishing the promise of this land, and putting in jeopardy the hope of all free peoples around the world.

That reality grieves me deeply.