Sowers: And if we get Trump again?
Arthur E. Sowers is a resident of Harbeson.
Frank Daniels’ most recent letter paints a picture of a political junkyard with Kamala Harris, Joe Biden, Barack Obama and Democrats in the center (“Zero leadership yields terrible results”). And he calls them all a bunch of Marxists and socialists. As a 100% “Make America Great Again” Trumper himself, he labels that picture with his “zero leadership” title because he thinks 100% of them 100% failed on 100% of everything they ever said or did. In reality, however, it recently came out all over the internet that over 400 economists signed an endorsement of Harris over Donald Trump. Not only that, but over 200 former Bush, McCain and Romney staffers came out endorsing Harris, too. And news on this came out in late August all over the internet. (Actually, separate lists of 2024 endorsements for both Harris and Trump are on Wikipedia. A quick look showed me they were roughly equal in size.)
Daniels neither brought up Trump’s continued lying, name calling and insults nor his unhinged public comments and demagoguery. That stuff will further exacerbate the divisiveness in this country. As a “businessman,” Trump’s track record includes six bankruptcies, involvement in over 3,500 lawsuits, many ongoing court cases, a felony conviction, record lying and encouragement of corruption. All of these foretell that we can expect additional chaos if he returns to the White House.
Trump nearly destroyed our democracy by trying to overthrow the 2020 election with lies that he still repeats. At the other end of the spectrum, he tried to fake an endorsement from Taylor Swift. Shortly after that, she endorsed Harris.
His plan to have a mass federal worker-firing purge followed by a replacement with inexperienced loyalist “yes men” will end up stopping, delaying, corrupting or causing errors in a lot of long-range business and government plans and processes. Trump’s mass deportation of immigrants would cost a lot of money and lead to a reduction in the size of our workforce. This reduction in the labor force would cause an increase in inflation. He would, sooner or later, probably abandon the United Nations, NATO, South Korea, Taiwan and Ukraine. We would lose allies, as well as world prestige.
MAGA people might like Trump’s slogan, “America First,” but as Trump turns up the knob on that idea, the rest of the world will see us as a surrogate of the Nazi slogan, “Deutschland über alles” (i.e., “Germany above everybody else”). This could lead to “boycott America” actions — like the worldwide sanctions placed on apartheid South Africa some decades ago. Trump’s wild declarations — like “We need to suspend the Constitution” — are more like part of a “self-destruct sequence” that will start turning the USA into a failed state, as stable government functions start falling apart (see the Wikipedia article, “Failed state”).
Frank Daniels’ earlier letter asked, “Why are some anti-Trumpers not endorsing Harris?”. He referred to a prior letter by Phil Spampinato (“Elect a leader to unite, not divide”). I read Spampinato’s letter and understood it to be giving reasons why we should not vote for Trump because nobody could be as bad as Trump. Daniels then trashed Spampinato and trashed all anti-Trumpers by saying they all have “Trump derangement syndrome.” There is a Wikipedia article about that, which says that TDS “is not an official medical diagnosis (ref. given). A 2021 research study found no evidence to support the existence of TDS among Trump detractors on the left, but instead found bias among his supporters (ref. given).” That article goes on to quote specific examples, and named the pro-Trump people, where the term was used the same way Trump uses the term “fake news” when someone asks him to explain something that contradicts him, and he cannot properly respond. It’s like a way to change the subject or just unilaterally end the discussion.
About the same time Daniels’ letter came out, Trump and J.D. Vance started pushing the “Haitian immigrants are eating pets in Springfield, Ohio” story. That story was soon totally debunked in all possible ways (for a summary, see my Daily State News letter (“Pet-eating claims are latest Trump knee-jerk reactions”). But the story doesn’t end there. On the internet are now many articles on a Haitian group filing criminal charges against Trump and Vance for spreading false claims. And, at the same time, reports are coming out now about neo-Nazi and hate groups getting all cranked up and energized over this. So, typically, Trump tries to “solve” a problem but fails and, instead, winds up creating two new problems.
Is Trump fit to be in office? Many polls say some 40%-45% of the voters say yes (i.e., “Make America Great Again” Trumpers and loyalists who will vote for anybody with an R after their name). But I did internet searches on these two keyword strings: “Trump psychiatrists” and “Trump psychologists.” And 100% of the links I got back said Trump is unfit for office. I even learned about a new term: pathocracy. Actually, it is an old but not widely used term for a political system run by people with serious personality disorders. The term actually originated long ago, when Nazi Germany and governance in the Soviet Union attracted interest from specialists, scholars and experts.
Reader reactions, pro or con, are welcomed at civiltalk@iniusa.org.
