When You are Forced to Root Against Your Own Country…to Try to Save It

We are less than two months into the most bizarre and threatening presidency in American history and Donald Trump has, if anything, exceeded expectations. While he has more than justified the dire anticipation of his opponents, many of his supporters have experienced a painful and unexpected jolt as well.

By taking a cleaver to government spending, letting loose a flamethrower-wielding, Asperger’s-afflicted engineer, firing or trying to fire tens of thousands of government workers, playing with economic policy like a yo-yo, and generally embarking on a campaign to create chaos, seemingly for its own sake, farmers, veterans, and the rural poor, three demographics that supported him overwhelmingly, have been shocked, shocked, that their interests have been either ignored or trampled on.

Already, there has been so much dissatisfaction in areas where Democrats are near-extinct that Kansas Senator Roger Marshall had to flee a town hall amid catcalls and accusations that he was selling veterans down the river. This sort of thing has happened enough that Republican leadership, courageous as always, has advised their congresspeople not to do any more town halls.

Farmers have also been put under great stress. In an opinion piece, “Tariffs Whack Trump Voters: Whatever happened to GOP concern for the working class?” the Wall Street Journal observed, “The President professes to love American farmers, but he apparently loves tariffs more. U.S. farmers are already being squeezed by low crop prices and inflation. Tariffs will increase their pain.”

Auto tariffs have been paused, but there is every chance they will be reinstated, which will hit rural drivers especially hard. Also in WSJ, “An Anderson Economic Group analysis estimated the 25% tariffs would raise the cost of a pickup assembled in North America by $8,000. Heavy-duty truck prices may also surge as they rely on parts from Canada and Mexico.”

Beyond any specific policy or initiative, many of which court disaster, Trump’s primary goal seems to be the acquisition of personal power, to be able to tell everyone both in government and outside of it what to do and when to do it, and assume his dictates will be followed without question by genuflecting worshipers. Although he clearly expects to be revered, he seems far more interested in being feared.

It is important, however, to differentiate Trump from the standard autocrat. Even the most detestable of them—Hitler, Stalin, Putin, among many, many others—were also nationalists. They had a genuine desire to Make Their Nations Great Again, and were willing, even eager, to trample on civil rights and employ torture and terror in order to do so. And yes, many were kleptocrats as well, but that did not deter them from working in what they viewed were, perverse as it may have been, the best interests of their country.

For Trump, Make America Great Again is merely a slogan, and advertising gimmick, a way to gull the naïve and the weak minded. He has never expressed, neither publicly nor by all accounts privately, even the slightest nationalistic fervor common to those to whom he has been compared.

Rather, his motivation to attain unbridled power seems twofold. First and foremost—by a lot—he wants to make money, money, money. Let it not be forgotten that he is reliably reported to have said before announcing his candidacy in 2016, “This will be the world’s greatest infomercial.” Even if that pronouncement is apocryphal, there is little question that adding more and more zeroes to his once-questionable net worth is, and has always been, the most important thing in his life.

The second is the desire shared by all bullies to gain satisfaction and a deep sense of well-being by pushing people around, preferably those who are weak and vulnerable. It is a motivation that eludes most of us, but is nonetheless unmistakable. In this way, Trump is more like, say, Idi Amin, than Hitler or Putin.

Still, regardless of motivation, autocracy often succeeds in the short term. Sweeping out the old and replacing it with, well, almost anything else, has been widely shown to have mass appeal. When the citizenry realizes how transitory or illusory those supposed achievements have been, it is almost always too late.

Thus, as extreme, misanthropic, and anti-democratic as Trump’s presidency seems to be, and how great the chance that he will eventually push the United States off an economic and political cliff, he could, for a time, seem to defy the odds and appear successful.

But in the United States, whose political institutions have been more or less solid for 240 years, there is a risk almost as great. It is that Trump somehow becomes normalized, that his behavior comes to be seen as merely a manifestation of the Democratic process, a reflection of the will of the people, all of which can be reversed if the people wish it.

Republicans seem desperate to promote that fantasy and Democrats currently seem helpless to deter it. But normalization of the Trump presidency will doom American democracy as surely as does Trump’s throwing…stuff…against the wall and hoping it sticks (as he once did with his hamburger).

And so, there is only one alternative that offers any hope.

He needs to fail. And he needs to fail spectacularly. His supporters who are now merely dissatisfied need to find out what it is like to be on the other end of the bully’s cudgel.

The harm, the pain, the injustice, the heartlessness that Trump will happily inflict on others was not enough to dissuade his voters. The only thing that will work is when real pain and injustice are inflicted on them. Farmers who grow food and care nothing for those who might starve, both here and around the world, need to see how it feels when their government stipends disappear. Rural residents who would not bat an eye when the lack of adequate medical care precipitates health care crises in American cities and in other nations, need to learn what it is like when health care crises hit their communities, as measles may do in West Texas. Those who bought into Ronald Reagan’s mantra that “government is the problem,” need to find out who will provide aid after their home is destroyed, ensure that they can see a doctor when they are ill, make certain they are not drinking poisoned water, or feed their children, when government is not there to fill in after the private center turns its back.

It is a terrible thing to be hoping that your country will fail, but like Russians whose sons were killed in Ukraine, or Germans who thought Hitler was just a passing phase, Americans have only a short time in which to wake up.

Our only hope is that circumstance shakes them hard enough that they do.