Frank Bruni provides an effective rundown of President Trump's extreme and worrisome response to news that the FBI had raided the premises of Michael Cohen, his long-time consigliere, and I'd recommend it for some more color around events I referenced in my previous post. But while Bruni's conclusion that we should be "frightened" of what the president might do next is superficially reasonable, it's actually a point of view that suggests that both elected officials and the public at large are powerless to counteract our increasingly deranged president — and this, my friends, is actually part of the pickle we're in. It speaks to an underlying dynamic, charted by cannier observers than myself, in which the nation seems to exist in an abusive relationship with Donald Trump; he acts, and we react. But while there's admittedly plenty of evidence that we're stuck in a psychological showdown, it's also true that there are no literal constraints on either our legislators or the public at large to express their will, and exert their own powers, against the depredations of this president.
I agree that Trump is frightening, and that this is a frightening moment; but I, for one, really don't feel like being frightened, definitely not by a reality TV star who became famous for firing people, and who plenty of evidence shows colluded with a hostile foreign power to gain the presidency of the United States. Frankly, I'd rather dwell on other feelings I'm experiencing on a daily basis, like anger, and righteousness, and solidarity with the millions of other people in this country who appear to feel more or less exactly like I do.
The founding fathers were hyper-aware of all the things that might go wrong with a political system, both in general and with the one they were creating. Prevention of a despotic executive was a primary concern in the design of the U.S. Constitution; hence the separation of powers, and the mechanism of impeachment in a worst-case scenario. What we're encountering with Donald Trump would hardly strike them as something unusual; in fact, they'd probably be surprised we hadn't had to deal with such a figure until now.
This is no time for naivete. People like Donald Trump are part of the reason we have a government in the form that we do; and we can't just run around like headless chickens bemoaning the falling sky, when the very design of our country signals to us that the sky would inevitably fall at some point, you silly chickens! It stinks that one of our two parties (cough-cough! the GOP!) has embraced increasingly anti-democratic tactics and provided cover for Donald Trump's authoritarian tendencies. But let's face it — sooner or later, some asshole was going to come along and try to be king, or, OK, the BIGGEST STAR IN THE HISTORY OF PRESIDENTIAL TELEVISION EVER.
