After last week's post-election malaise, anxiety once again arises about the prospect of a Donald J. Trump presidency. Yes, the devil we know is better than the devil we don't, but the devil we have is so unknown, even to himself, that he might as well exist in negative space. The campaign revealed Trump to be a man of tyrannical tendencies, and although recently he risibly walked back some of his most egregious campaign promises, only the terminally deluded would hope for sanity from a plainly unbalanced man.
Since the election, the Southern Poverty Law Center, which monitors hate groups, has counted no less than three hundred incidents of election-related hate crimes and violence. The captain of a United Airlines flight from San Francisco to Puerta Vallarta had to calm passengers after a man in a “camo cap” told an African-American woman that he was “glad" he kept his guns, causing the woman to cry. Vandals spray-painted a swastika, an anti-gay slur, and “Heil Trump” on the side of an Episcopal church in Indiana. In its most recent annual report, the FBI marked a "sharp spike" in hate crimes; those against Muslims rose sixty-seven percent between 2014 an 2015.
Astonishingly, not to say hypocritically, Trump himself seems surprised by the violence. In a "60 Minutes" interview with correspondent Leslie Stahl, broadcast Sunday, he urged his supporters to “stop” their violent actions. It is a measure of the man’s incapacity for self-reflection—or reflection of any kind—that he should be startled by the savagery some of his supporters have shown. If you spend a year encouraging violence at large rallies, and then win the contest, how can it seem odd that your victory would embolden the more barbaric, and mentally disturbed, amongst your legions? It is to his dubious credit that Trump tried to put the kibosh on the brutality, but more than being too little too late, it’s so not of a piece with his pre-election rhetoric that the volte face actually gives the philistines cover to keep doing what they’re doing.
Since the election, the Southern Poverty Law Center, which monitors hate groups, has counted no less than three hundred incidents of election-related hate crimes and violence. The captain of a United Airlines flight from San Francisco to Puerta Vallarta had to calm passengers after a man in a “camo cap” told an African-American woman that he was “glad" he kept his guns, causing the woman to cry. Vandals spray-painted a swastika, an anti-gay slur, and “Heil Trump” on the side of an Episcopal church in Indiana. In its most recent annual report, the FBI marked a "sharp spike" in hate crimes; those against Muslims rose sixty-seven percent between 2014 an 2015.
Astonishingly, not to say hypocritically, Trump himself seems surprised by the violence. In a "60 Minutes" interview with correspondent Leslie Stahl, broadcast Sunday, he urged his supporters to “stop” their violent actions. It is a measure of the man’s incapacity for self-reflection—or reflection of any kind—that he should be startled by the savagery some of his supporters have shown. If you spend a year encouraging violence at large rallies, and then win the contest, how can it seem odd that your victory would embolden the more barbaric, and mentally disturbed, amongst your legions? It is to his dubious credit that Trump tried to put the kibosh on the brutality, but more than being too little too late, it’s so not of a piece with his pre-election rhetoric that the volte face actually gives the philistines cover to keep doing what they’re doing.
But Trump may have bigger things on his mind, such as--well, that he will soon be the President of the United States, and he and his team evidently have little idea about what that entails.
The New York Times reported today that staff shakeups have stalled Trump's already messy transition. It is hardly encouraging that Trump's team expressed surprise, last week, that President Obama's staff would not remain in White House after Jan. 20. (Note to novices: the incoming president entirely staffs the White House, and appoints roughly four thousand federal posts.) Reports suggest that the group has no clue about what it means to run the federal government--and they have roughly sixty-five days to figure it out. In a Washington Post opinion piece today, former State Department counselor and avowed "Never-Trumper" Eliot Cohen wrote, "The president-elect is surrounding himself with mediocrities whose chief qualification seems to be unquestioning loyalty," adding, "By all accounts, [Trump's] ignorance, and that of his entourage, about the executive branch is fathomless."
Little wonder, then, that in post-election photos last week, Trump himself appeared miserable and frightened.
The New York Times reported today that staff shakeups have stalled Trump's already messy transition. It is hardly encouraging that Trump's team expressed surprise, last week, that President Obama's staff would not remain in White House after Jan. 20. (Note to novices: the incoming president entirely staffs the White House, and appoints roughly four thousand federal posts.) Reports suggest that the group has no clue about what it means to run the federal government--and they have roughly sixty-five days to figure it out. In a Washington Post opinion piece today, former State Department counselor and avowed "Never-Trumper" Eliot Cohen wrote, "The president-elect is surrounding himself with mediocrities whose chief qualification seems to be unquestioning loyalty," adding, "By all accounts, [Trump's] ignorance, and that of his entourage, about the executive branch is fathomless."
Little wonder, then, that in post-election photos last week, Trump himself appeared miserable and frightened.
Early cabinet appointments certainly give pause. Trump and his
people are culling from a group of career clowns: names floated for key
positions include those of Sarah Palin, who was too bored to finish her term as governor
of Alaska; John Bolton, a United Nations-hating extremist from the George W. Bush administration; and former
New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, a close Trump confidant and loose cannon. And there’s little doubt that between the coal and oil lobbies, any
hope for a continuing if slow turn on climate change is now foregone.
Trump appointed Republican National Committee chairman Reince Priebus as his chief of staff, a sop to establishment Republicans (and perhaps to potentially jittery stock markets). By way of ballast, he made the odious Stephen K. Bannon his chief strategist and senior counselor. In August, Bannon, who appears physically if not temperamentally Falstaffian, left his post as executive chairman at Breitbart.com, the extreme-right website he ran after the death of its founder, Andrew Breitbart, to serve as chief executive officer of the Trump campaign. Conflict of interest questions sprout like mushrooms: does Bannon still have editorial ties to Breitbart—thereby making it, in the future, the press organ of the White House? Does he own stock in the company? Likely we shall never know; like Trump, he’s secretive about his finances.
Whatever else it does, Bannon's appointment makes what was once fringe—conspiracy theories, blatant racism, ethnonationalism, fact-free nativism—mainstream, and in the highest office in the land. If there is a hope that Trump’s reportedly conflict-intensive management style--he pits underlings against each other to stir conflict and spark ideas--will benefit the country at large, well, it seems a slim-to-none one. Per Cohen, in the Post, "They will turn on each other. No band of brothers this: rather the permanent campaign as waged by triumphalist rabble-rousers and demagogues, abetted by people out of their depth and unfit for the jobs they will hold, gripped by grievance, resentment and lurking insecurity. Their mistakes—because there will be mistakes—will be exceptional."
Trump appointed Republican National Committee chairman Reince Priebus as his chief of staff, a sop to establishment Republicans (and perhaps to potentially jittery stock markets). By way of ballast, he made the odious Stephen K. Bannon his chief strategist and senior counselor. In August, Bannon, who appears physically if not temperamentally Falstaffian, left his post as executive chairman at Breitbart.com, the extreme-right website he ran after the death of its founder, Andrew Breitbart, to serve as chief executive officer of the Trump campaign. Conflict of interest questions sprout like mushrooms: does Bannon still have editorial ties to Breitbart—thereby making it, in the future, the press organ of the White House? Does he own stock in the company? Likely we shall never know; like Trump, he’s secretive about his finances.
Whatever else it does, Bannon's appointment makes what was once fringe—conspiracy theories, blatant racism, ethnonationalism, fact-free nativism—mainstream, and in the highest office in the land. If there is a hope that Trump’s reportedly conflict-intensive management style--he pits underlings against each other to stir conflict and spark ideas--will benefit the country at large, well, it seems a slim-to-none one. Per Cohen, in the Post, "They will turn on each other. No band of brothers this: rather the permanent campaign as waged by triumphalist rabble-rousers and demagogues, abetted by people out of their depth and unfit for the jobs they will hold, gripped by grievance, resentment and lurking insecurity. Their mistakes—because there will be mistakes—will be exceptional."
Yet more worrying
are reports that Trump spoke by phone Monday with with Russian Federation President Vladimir Putin. The two leaders talked about opening up a Russian-U.S. dialogue, a notion that is anathema to intelligence experts and politicians across the spectrum. (Trade and diplomatic relations between the countries have degenerated in the wake of Russia's recent annexation of Crimea and intervention in the Syrian civil war.) Talking Points Memo reported in the summer that Trump, reeling from debt and blackballed by U.S. banks, relies on money from oligarchs close to Putin, and that Russian money flowed to Trump's campaign. It is no surprise, then, that Trump praised Putin during the campaign as a "great leader."
And that's not all. Paul Manafort stepped aside as Trump's campaign manager last summer in the wake of news reports revealing his consulting ties to Russian politicians (he supported a pro-Putin candidate). The Russian government maintained contact with the Trump campaign "entourage," according to Russian deputy foreign minister Sergei A. Ryabkov. In July, U.S. intelligence agencies had "high confidence" that Russian intelligence had hacked computer servers of the Democratic National Committee. It was hardly mysterious, if nonetheless galling, that caches of emails from that hack wound up dribbled into the public sphere by Wikileaks in the weeks leading up to the election.
And that's not all. Paul Manafort stepped aside as Trump's campaign manager last summer in the wake of news reports revealing his consulting ties to Russian politicians (he supported a pro-Putin candidate). The Russian government maintained contact with the Trump campaign "entourage," according to Russian deputy foreign minister Sergei A. Ryabkov. In July, U.S. intelligence agencies had "high confidence" that Russian intelligence had hacked computer servers of the Democratic National Committee. It was hardly mysterious, if nonetheless galling, that caches of emails from that hack wound up dribbled into the public sphere by Wikileaks in the weeks leading up to the election.
One continues to puzzle,
perhaps uselessly, over the question of how people could have voted for Trump.
Hillary Clinton is an able and sober politician, and might have made a fine president. But she was the wrong candidate for the moment: too much corruption “baggage,” too wonky, not inspiring enough. During the primaries, Bernie Sanders had the Zeitgeist momentum on the left. If he’d won the nomination, he might have been able to upend Trump by offering sensible policies to working Americans aching for a sane choice. The air went out of the balloon after Clinton clinched the nomination; Trump had energy behind him.
Hillary Clinton is an able and sober politician, and might have made a fine president. But she was the wrong candidate for the moment: too much corruption “baggage,” too wonky, not inspiring enough. During the primaries, Bernie Sanders had the Zeitgeist momentum on the left. If he’d won the nomination, he might have been able to upend Trump by offering sensible policies to working Americans aching for a sane choice. The air went out of the balloon after Clinton clinched the nomination; Trump had energy behind him.
There are other
complicated and complicating factors in this election (I'm looking at you, FBI director James Comey), but none of them eclipse, or fully explain, the phenomenon of Trump himself: a serial sexual predator, failed businessman and reality
television star; a self-aggrandizer with no evident capacity for empathy; a smoke-and-mirrors con man; and on and on and on.
That we have reached a point in American politics at which a candidate for the
land’s highest office not only wasn’t sunk by any one of the racist, demagogic
things Trump said, but indeed was not sunk by any of them, is bewildering in the extreme.
It is of little
comfort that Trump didn’t win the popular vote, and that the election was so
close. (Is anyone surprised that the dependably peevish Trump recently complained, on his beloved Twitter, about losing the popular vote?) He won, and will govern, and even he doesn’t know what that really means.
It is as if we, as a people, have called a bird-watcher to fix the clogged toilet when an experienced plumber would have been best for the job. Or, to flip the script, it’s as if someone who'd spent his life in a relatively low-paying public service job, who had never worked in the business sector, was suddenly appointed CEO of the world’s largest multi-billion-dollar corporation—and had two months not just to learn the business, but to learn about business itself.
Trump is experientially unqualified and temperamentally unfit to serve as President, and yet here he is, and here, alas, are we.
It is as if we, as a people, have called a bird-watcher to fix the clogged toilet when an experienced plumber would have been best for the job. Or, to flip the script, it’s as if someone who'd spent his life in a relatively low-paying public service job, who had never worked in the business sector, was suddenly appointed CEO of the world’s largest multi-billion-dollar corporation—and had two months not just to learn the business, but to learn about business itself.
Trump is experientially unqualified and temperamentally unfit to serve as President, and yet here he is, and here, alas, are we.
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