D. Allan Kerr
| Columnist
After learning Donald Trump had been re-elected president of the United States, my initial reaction was the simple hope he doesn’t frig things up like he did the first time. You remember — collapsed economy, soaring unemployment, stock market crash, zombie apocalypse, etc.
My next thought was that if Kamala Harris was a sore loser, she could run around the country for the next four years lying about a rigged election.
But most importantly, I realized that now we’re going to see Trump’s true intentions as our country’s chief executive. And we have to be ready to challenge him if necessary.
His apologists have assured us repeatedly, all evidence to the contrary, Trump is not the fascist he appears to be to most of us paying attention. Let’s hope they’re right. Let’s hope his lunatic rantings are just hyperbolic exercises shared to pump up his supporters and colorfully illustrate his arguments.
But if they’re wrong, and if he feels emboldened to extend his authority beyond the intent of the U.S. Constitution, I don’t believe anyone in his inner circle will try to dissuade him. Gutless politicians like Lindsay Graham and creepy sycophants like Tucker Carlson will only cheer him on and tell him he’s great, no matter what. This time around, there will be no Mike Pence or John Kelly or Bill Barr to stand up for the parameters established by our Founding Fathers.
Trump is still the crooked unhinged whackjob he was before Nov. 5, and that’s disturbing enough. But toss in his despotic tendencies and you have reason to be concerned.
Trump 2.0 will be a different creature from the guy we saw the first time around — he’ll be unshackled by inconveniences like legal guidelines. Starting now, we have to pay closer attention to just not his rambling rhetoric but his actions as well. Typically, it seems we leave lawmakers alone to sort out the minutia of governance. After all, most of us have jobs, families, homes, community responsibilities and so forth. Not much time left over to make sure folks in Washington, D.C., are behaving.
We no longer have that luxury. Those who want to preserve democracy will have to be vigilant and call him out if Trump emerges as “America’s Hitler” (hey, those are his new VP’s words, not mine!) over the next four years. If you look back at the history of the past century’s more notorious leaders, they don’t typically transform a democratic nation into a dictatorship overnight. The changes are made incrementally, and we’d be smart to challenge them right after conception.
That doesn’t mean assaulting our own nation’s Capitol Building and physically attacking cops like rabid hooligans, as we saw from the “law and order” party in January 2021. We can take to the streets and be loud and strong without being destructive. We can make sure our elected representatives in Washington know they’ll be expected to defend the Constitution if it comes to that.
For now, we should take note of those with whom Trump chooses to surround himself in his next administration. I personally can’t see how anyone with self-respect can put themselves in a position of likely public humiliation and subservience under this guy. I also don’t think it’s too much to ask for appointees with qualifications beyond total acquiescence to Donald Trump – like, say, smarmy Fox News gasbag and prospective Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth.
Hey, maybe Trump will turn out to be the genius he claims. He was clearly overmatched by the job his first time around, as evidenced by his failure to accomplish two of his biggest 2016 campaign promises — building a wall; repealing and replacing Obamacare — and his bumbling mismanagement of the COVID pandemic, but maybe he learned from previous mistakes. Maybe he can actually solve inflation and immigration and spread world peace, all within the boundaries of the law. It would definitely make our lives easier if he did.
Just to establish a sort of benchmark going forward, on Election Day last week the gas price at my local pump was $2.72. The Dow Jones Industrial Average finished the day at 42,223 points, after closing above 43,000 for the first time in history just last month. (Prior to Joe Biden’s 2020 election, the Dow had never closed higher than 30,000.) The S&P 500 closed at 5,783. The national unemployment rate was 4.1. The United States currently has the highest Gross Domestic Product ranking in the world at $29,167.78 trillion, followed distantly by China at $18,273,36 trillion, according to International Monetary Fund data. I’m listing these to serve as a reference point during the second Trump term, because numbers don’t lie.
I got to hang out with a couple of my kids in western Massachusetts this past weekend, and at one point we groused about this rocking-yourself-in-a-corner response seen from some Kamala supporters since the election. My son Cody suggested a more muscular and constructive alternative.
“Just don’t give an inch!” he said. “If Trump wants to do good, let him. If he wants to do bad, don’t f–g let him.”
In other words, Trump supporters who bitched for four years after Joe Biden won 81 million votes in 2020 better not expect the rest of us to roll over and show our belly for the next four years.
D. Allan Kerr would love to see Ivy Leaguer Pete Hegseth tell a Black or female Army officer who survived the grueling rigors of West Point for four years they’re only wearing their uniform because they’re a diversity hire.
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Publish date : 2024-11-15 22:05:00
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