Faulty Framers

Around 250 years ago, give or take, a group of mostly young, liberally educated men, imbued with revolutionary fervor and committed never again to live under authoritarian rule, argued and compromised their way to creating a nation based on enshrined, secular law and the unprecedented notion that its citizens would have the ultimate say on how and by whom they’d be governed. Perhaps, if the Framers had included women and non-whites, it’d have been more bulletproof. (As it were.)

Those men were farsighted and preternaturally brilliant, but not enough, tragically, to have envisioned the ease with which, centuries later, through a combination of dishonest media on one side and cowardly ones on the other, plus diminished public education and increasingly militant Christian nationalism, not to mention an ideological Supreme Court removing voting protections and allowing anonymous millions of dollars to buy elections, citizens could become enthralled by a pathological liar, fake Christian, malignant narcissist seeking power for personal aggrandizement and vengeance against those who’ve seen him as he is and called him on it.

During his popular-vote-losing “presidency,” Trump appointed 44 cabinet-level people, 40 of whom are now urging us not to vote for him. His highest-ranking general has described him as “fascist to the core.” His former Secretaries of State and Defense, among others, warn of existential danger should he regain the presidency. His consistently-debunked election lies are believed by nearly half the country and are the basis for legislatures in Republican states limiting access to voting by people likely to vote against them, under the pretext of preventing fraud, which, except for the occasional Republican, is virtually nonexistent. 

Trump treats truthfulness like he did his first two wives. He’s offering nothing that promotes the general welfare, establishes justice, ensures domestic tranquility, or secures the blessings of liberty for ourselves and our posterity. It’s as if, in MAGA world, those prefatory Constitutional ideals were written in disappearing ink. Now, his utterances are mostly mephitic lies and promises to punish “migrants,” whom he describes as genetically-inferior murderers and rapists who’ll “break into your kitchen and slit your throat.”

People leaving his rallies must be doing so when he wanders away from feeding their lust for retribution or calling Kamala Harris “retarded,” and into bizarre discursions about sharks, batteries, and cannibals. Or, as just happened, standing on stage, mute, for 39 minutes. 

Lies excuse hate. Hate excuses lies. The latest instance of dangerously delusional MAGA behavior comes from North Carolina, where, following Trump’s and his smarter clone’s fulminating falsehoods about the Biden administration’s response to devastating hurricanes, FEMA removed workers from hard-hit Rutherford County because of threats of harm to them. And not just North Carolina.

Lies like that, endangering others, are the epitome of Trumpism and Trump, reflecting who he is and what he’ll do if given another chance. This time, though, there’d be no generals or Secretaries to dissuade him. Who doubts that Trump, if hearing about those FEMA incidents, would say what he did when told January 6 rioters were threatening the life of his Vice President: “So what?”

Given Trump’s obvious decline, torrential lying, and fascist foghorns (not dog whistles), that the election remains close means his supporters aren’t rationalizing his promise of wrathful dictatorship; they WELCOME it. Nearly half of America must relish imagining Trump, as he told Fox’s Maria Bartiromo last week, loosing our military on “radical left lunatics.” He mentioned Adam Schiff and, later, Nancy Pelosi; but he means all liberals. "The enemy within," he calls us, speaking fluent Fascist. 

Other than that, what does Trump offer those supporters? Few are wealthy enough to receive his tax cuts. Many are benefitting from Obamacare, which Trump has promised to end. All will suffer the consequences of unregulated pollution. They, not other countries, will pay higher prices and face the inflation his tariffs will cause. And, because Trump will ignore it, their grandchildren will have to live, if they can, with intolerable climate change.

No, it must be delighted anticipation of seeing millions of darker-skinned people rounded up and sent to detention camps awaiting deportation. And, because Trump would appoint a willing Attorney General, it’s visualizing President Biden, Vice President Harris, Governors Walz and Newsom, the Clintons, truthful reporters, Merrick Garland, and every prosecutor pursuing Trump’s crimes, arrested and tried by a military tribunal before being locked away. (Some, evidently, will vote for him because he’s lying.) 

Trump’s promise of Constitution-ignoring, punitive autocracy, his racism, misogyny, and xenophobia are increasingly obvious, though some, like Virginia’s Governor Younkin, would have you believe otherwise. Trumpists act offended when accused of sharing those views, but to vote for him is to enable and, therefore, to approve of them. It’s to reject America’s foundational ideals.

When nearly half the electorate is defenseless against malign manipulation, autocracy arrives and democracy departs. Our eighteenth-century founders believed they’d prevented it. It wasn’t the only thing they got wrong.