You Think Getting Rid of Trump will Solve America’s Problems? Think again
Parikia, Paros Island, Greece, March 8th, 2020
Salaroche


This is in no way a one-off situation. Kicking Trump out of the White House in November will surely put a temporary halt on the harm he and his henchmen in his administration have been inflicting on the country, but that will not be the end of the story. It may not even be the end of Trump.

You think Fox News is going to disappear if Biden defeats Trump? You think all those fanatic idol-worshipers that presently cherish Trump will just go home and forget about their insane behavior of the past 4 years if he loses? You think Trump himself will just go hunker down in Mar a Lago to lick his wounds and forget about the whole thing? Well, think again for, if you think that way, you are dreaming.

And what about those shameless elected Republicans who sold their souls to Trumpism to avoid being the target of a presidential twitter storm? Guys like Lindsey Graham and Mitch McConnell? You think those guys will just go back to embracing any pre-Trump business-as-usual stance if they survive the elections? And, anyway, what would that business-as-usual be?

Remember back in 2012 when Mitch McConnell basically swore to make Obama a one-term president? What do you think he would swear to do this time around? Can you picture Reps. Matt Gaetz and Jim Jordan forgetting about their rabid pro-Trump ravings and go back to taking care of the business of putting the country forward?

Again, if you ever thought any of that, think again, for not even a tiny spec of good will can be expected from those Republicans if Trump does not win a second term.

So, let us just be aware that, as much as many of us would like it to be so, getting rid of Trump will not mark the end of this story. You think Trump is going to keep quiet for the rest of his days if he loses? No way. That guy would probably get his own hate-mongering propaganda program on Fox News or even start his own Cable channel with the financial cooperation of his billionaire friends and all those pro-Trump fundraiser organizations.

But salient above any other detrimental factors, there are those American sociopolitical divisions Trump has contributed to expose and deepen in the country, which are in no way trivial. Those are not wounds that can be easily healed. Try engaging in a conversation with any real Trumper and you will see what I mean.

Their sociopolitical resentment runs very deep in their minds. Yes, they often act like whining crybabies, almost as much as Donald Trump himself usually does, but they are dead serious about it and the idolatry they profess to Trump is in no way a joke. Is this disturbing to you in any sense?

“The country has gone through many trying times in the past”, some people tell me, “and if we survived then, we will most surely survive this time around too”, they say, and there is plenty of truth in what they tell me, except that this time we have some very influential factors that did not exist during any of the previous crises the country has gone through, namely Fox News and its right-wing ilk, which together give shape to that divisive ultra-conservative propaganda bullhorn that very loudly blares misinformation to the four corners of the country on a daily basis.

You think beating Trump in November is all it will take to solve the present American sociopolitical crisis? You think that once Trump is gone everything will go back to normal? Think again. Because if that is what you think you probably have been missing the forest for the trees these past few years.

Basically, the real problem is not Trump himself. He is merely a symptom and a symbol of it. The real problem lies in the sociopolitical and even economic resentment that has been brewing over the past few decades at the heart of large swaths of the American society.

Getting rid of Trump will surely be a good step forward in trying to bridge the fissures that keep widening between Americans but, unfortunately, it may only end up being like putting some cotton and a band aid over a deep wound to keep it from festering too fast. There is really much more to this than meets the eye.

In the view of some of us, at the heart of the matter lies the question of whether a majority of Americans have really understood the essential role the institutions of government play in the well-functioning of any Democracy, not to mention the American one.

Actually, when witnessing the performance some influential Republicans like Bill Barr and Mitch McConnell have displayed over these past few months, the question arises as to whether those guys actually believe in the value of Democracy itself.

The idea of a unitary government those guys embrace looks pretty much like the American version of some of those centralized authoritarian governments that are presently in place in some Northeast and Southeast Asian countries.

Proto-fascist ideas are nothing new in the American political playbook, in fact, they may even have been present since the inception of the country, but up to now no administration had advocated them in such an open manner as this administration has.

For example, none of the previous 44 presidents did ever cite the second article of the Constitution to claim he had the power to do whatever he wants, which may be comparable only to the French king Louis the XIV claiming “l’etat c’est moi” or “I am the State”, and if to that we add the fact that even when faced with such open presidential display of authoritarian instincts, no influential elected Republican raised the alarm, we have the kind of situation of which there has never been anything similar in the past.

Donald Trump is a clear exponent of all those anti-Democracy pro-authoritarian instincts that have usually lurked in the back corners of most right-wing Americanist political trends, but he did not come up with those tendencies himself, he did not first conceive them, he just embodies them very well, to the point of gaining the idolatry of those Americans predisposed to adopt and internalize them.

You still think beating Trump in November will be the end of this nightmarish American story? Think again for, if you do, you might have been missing the forest for the trees all the while. In a few words, there is much more to this than just the dangerous presence of that unfunny orange clown in the White House.

Can this situation get any better before it gets any worse? Hopefully so, but only time will tell. Meanwhile, it would be very good for the country if we could just get rid of that treacherous fool named Trump. Once that is done, we will just have to figure out how to best muddle through.

In the meantime…the beat goes on…

Salaroche