This document that boasts of denying safe haven to ‘ Corrupt and Un-Democratic Actors’ is part of America’s manufactured exceptionalism.
Maybe, as a slogan it works but in reality it is the typical document of imperial thinking… that these ‘Corrupt and Undemocratic Actors’ can only be products of foreign countries…preferably those that speak English in limited fashion and with accents that do not comport with white-skinned American descent.
That its application excludes the man who once made President and managed to evade all legal efforts to convict his “Engagement in Actions that Undermine Democratic Processes or Institutions” so successfully, that he is now a contender for the office again, decimates exceptionalism …as a positive.
The whole concept of this vaunted standing, as condensed by the intellect and eloquence of George Will, proved to be a foppish fancy when Trump, with his rancid character, brought his boorish brand of exceptionalism to the highest office in the land and the political world at large.
He is amusingly short of all the main ingredients—intellect and pluralism, the capacity to define and deliver happiness, the integrity to accept the rule of law as it applies to him and insatiably uses grievances and manufactured bleak outcomes as a governing tool.
And we’re just matching the “pellucid prose” and “elegant explanation” of George Will’s synopsis of exceptionalism which would never capture the moral decay of a Trump or debasement so low that his choice between evils would always be “the one he hadn’t tried before”…(Mae West.)
If ever there was a correlation between character and the US Constitution and its Laws, it was when Trump started getting indicted and summoned to defense in the nation’s courts of law. Then his reprehensible character was put on trial and on many levels the issue was settled.
That the system seems impotent in the face of Trump’s Corrupt and Undemocratic acts suggest that it was not conceived to withstand deceitful propensity of his magnitude or that it was formulated in contemplation of moral fiber and honor…all of which Trump has none.
Maybe the Constitution and Laws were formulated in a period of comparative purity when honor was apracticing virtue.
And because it never tested its in- house practitioners of Corrupt and Democratic Acts with the purposefulness and pursuit reserved for foreign actors, it was unprepared for its home grown criminals, those who would collude with foreigners to undermine democracy, use the office of presidency to solicit funding for money management endeavors of family members, share state secrets and even steal high secret national and international safety plans.
It is in this law-clotted society that America’s 45th President, a prolific scoff-law, corrupt and undemocratic actor, apprenticed. And he seemingly graduated suma cum laude more because of his innate propensity to subordinate moral law, than to find difficulty in committing any bad deed.
And this gave America and the world Donald John Trump- America’s 45th President…confessed sexual predator which should have been sufficient reason for the GOP to withdraw its support from him.
Turns out it is merely one on a long list of fiercely competing reasons.
He’s survived the snares of the law that jails foreign presidents in Americas prisons… Manuel Noriega. The under tone was that character matters…not the part of Noriega’s character that the CIA liked enough to keep him on its payroll. That is irony that will forever haunt these United States because the execution of its Constitution and its attendant laws which function with selective exclusion…and at the say- so of its nominated Justices.
These failures have made it legally permissible for this Trump character, stained by criminality- inclusive of rape -to swing through every loop hole and audition once again for the highest office in the land, wearing the barnacles of his indictments and mugshots as political trophies.
Democracy devouring itself is hardly an allegory, now.
Generally, the pride is that indictees, convicts or other moral failures are not allowed to ascend to public office- let alone national leadership- lest they taint the image of national morality.
Trump has now joined the ranks of the political unsavory… Argentina’s de Kirchner, Brazil’s Da Silva, Honduras’ Hernandez, ElSalvador’s Funes – just to name a few that the US Corrupt and Undemocratic Act would have denied visas….for character.
It’s more sardonic than ironic that America, which boasts of the maturity of its Democracy founded in 1796 with the peaceful transfer of power from George Washington to his successor, has now regressed in its ideals.
They were eroded in slow but consistent fashion when the Republican Party allowed Trump to run on its ticket, availed itself to his profanity – laced rallies and established a permission structure for his potty mouth, calling it political persona. That allowed for the entrenchment of this small thinker, fluent in pugilism and other base instincts, to amass kindred spirits in the form of anti democratic racists who became his enforcement arm.
We’ve since learned that the slow moving coup has always been a Conservative goal.
We’ve learned that the Senate approval of hundreds of unqualified Judges by Mitch McConnell, his stacking of the Supreme Court during Trump’s tenure and the take over of school boards by the Religious Right were all decades old plans hatched for a time, like when a President of very little thinking power past ego and an evil politician who would place Party over Country- Trump and McConnell -would line up in the White-house and Senate…like in years 2016 thru 2020.
We’ve also learned that the ‘dark money’ Law that was affirmed by the 2010 Supreme Court SCOTUS made it easy for the nation to be shaped by the affluent which BUYS THE RIGHT to decide what standards apply – and to whom.
Could be that this Democracy, with its shades of Plato extended by Aristotle on concept, wasn’t constructed with the foresight that is often ascribed to the forefathers. Not to assail their wisdom but it’s difficult to conceive that ‘Future and Progress” would ever cultivate a retrospective terrorist whose platform is what the founding fathers saw as imperfect…in their quest for ‘a more perfect union”. That’s the civil rendition of the nation giving birth to Trump
America’s traveling salesmen- its diplomatic corps- are now left to peddle this model of government that has failed at its origin.
Unsurprisingly, Trump’s criminality and that of his followers has occupied reams of paper, suggesting that it is some phenomenon, some case study on ‘Shared Psychosis’.
We chalk it up to ‘White Privilege’ …especially since America’s history shows that when legitimate calls by Medgar Evers, Marin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X (to name a few) to protest sub human treatment were answered by throngs of Black people seeking legitimization under a Constitution that guaranteed them that right, these freedom fighters they were summarily gunned down because they were not white.
America’s ‘cradle of democracy’ bona fides have been shattered by Trump. Armed with less intellect than ego and more need to be seen as what he was not equipped to be he has become a useful idiot for bad actors, both foreign and domestic.
For the record, it was not his genius but his lack there of that has brought America to its knees…as it has its traveling Sales Force… its Diplomatic Corps which sells this porous democracy for foreign aid to rulers who pledge more allegiance to America, its gift horse, than it does to its citizens.
Trump’s politics has mainstreamed what a post Lincoln presidency had worked to eradicate. He has singlehandedly devalued the currency of American Diplomacy and Exceptionalism. His politics has mainstreamed what a post Lincoln presidency had worked to eradicate.
Trump has singlehandedly devalued the currency of American Democracy.
As the face of the nation he is a veritable eyesore, compounded by his incoherence and inability to follow his own thoughts, as he switches premises mid sentence. His unique repulsiveness has inverted and upended national optimism about politics in a country that has at least two parties to choose from.
His latest riff is that “we live in a banana republic” he said
And, many of us agree…because he is actually allowed to run for the highest office in the land, arguably the world …as a multiple indictee, who has posted bond for rape .