Trump’s Last Hoorah – ‘The World’s Most Dangerous Man’ (#358)

The 45th President of The United States of America, Donald J. Trump, had made it very clear that he was not going silently into the political night after his election loss to President-elect Joseph Robinette Biden Jr. Throughout his first term in Office, Trump had also made it clear that he had no intentions of accepting any election results but his own win, which was the repeat of what he had said during his 2016 Campaign. His consistent stance has been - ‘Elections are rigged, except if I win’ - and since then, this has been his war cry – ‘All Elections are rigged, except if I win’. So, when he legitimately lost the 2020 Election to Joe Biden, and by a lot - both the Electoral College votes, and the Popular vote - he declared war on America and incited a violent insurrection that horrified the majority of Americans, and the rest of the World.

According to extensive and lifelong observations of Trump’s family members, friends, close advisers such as his personal lawyers, and those that have worked for him in the private sector, and in the White House (and God only knows there have been enough books written on him by them), Trump has a penchant for cheating; and according to his niece, Mary Lea Trump, a Doctorate in Clinical Psychology - for most of his life, Trump has won by cheating, and he will do anything to win at all cost. Mary Trump calls him the 'World’s most dangerous man’.

Trump’s unashamed public statements, such as the 'Elections are rigged, except if I win’, confirm his need to cheat. His insistence that all elections are rigged, or stolen from him, confirm his ease with cheating through blatant and provable lies. But Trump knows that if he repeats his lies often enough, and they are picked up and amplified by the Republican Party, and the Right-Wing media, his Base will listen and believe...and that is exactly where his Base’s is today, convinced beyond a doubt that the Democrats ‘stole’ the election and robbed Trump.

This is in spite of the November 3rd, 2020 Election results being confirmed by every source in America - the election officials across the country; the courts; the Supreme Court of the United States; and the very States themselves, Democrat and Republican run – they have all repeatedly confirmed that Trump lost the election to Joe Biden, even after multiple recounts. However, Trump cannot leave it at that because his carefully cultivated delusional self-image cannot deal with such a public loss, and his lifelong habit of winning by cheating demands that he would rather burn America down than concede his loss to ‘Sleepy Joe’, his disastrously underestimated political opponent who trounced him both at Electoral and Popular votes.

So Trump engineered an insurrection in anticipation of a possible (and anticipated) loss. A violent insurrection that at least symbolically ‘Burned the Capitol down’, while both Houses were in attendance carrying out the Nation’s pressing business, confirming Trump’s loss and declaring the new President-elect, Joe Biden. In other words, Trump engineered a full-on attack on America, so that he could cheat and win at any cost. Additionally, because he has been enabled and abetted for all these years, as President, by all the other Republican Senators and Congressmen, some of whom still back him instead of America, Trump has been successful at convincing the Republican and Conservative ‘Base’ that he wins, when he actually loses, and that his lies are in fact the truth, when they are not.

For most Republicans, ‘Alternate Facts’ are now the reality, and Trump's lies ‘their truth’. This false conviction of the Base ensures this domestic terrorism and insurrection is not by any means over for America because even if Trump is no longer in Office, the fires he has lit so gleefully, of division and hate, will continue to burn long after his exit from the political stage.

The question is, why do so many Americans (mostly Republican) choose to believe his blatant lies, and why, even those that know and readily acknowledge he lies just about everything, choose to ignore his lies, and do his bidding anyway. As they have done by coming from all parts of the country to gather in Washington to attack America’s seat of Government, the Capitol?

The answer lies (pardon the pun) in that percentage of the American population, about 40% to 43% (his unchanging Base according to the polls) that yearn for the good old days of unquestioned assumption of American economic and military greatness, and of uncontested White Supremacy within the country. It is quite apparent that overwhelmingly, with a few exceptions, most of his Base is made up of mostly self-professed Conservative and Republican, White-Supremacist, Neo-Nazis, Bigots and Racists who thrill at his open validation of them. Both of these assumptions, America’s economic and military greatness, and general White Supremacy are now contested, and in doubt, which makes those in his Base fearful and frustrated at America changing, and very, very angry - and very, very dangerous.

America is economically being caught-up to, and is about to be surpassed. Its hereto uncontested economic ‘greatness’ is now being openly contested by an emerging economic Super-Power, China, whose economic size and global clout is fast overtaking America’s economic size and global influence. In the coming years, China is universally projected to become the 'World’s biggest economy’. The days of uncontested ‘White Supremacy’ started to wane with the retreat of Colonialism around the World, and the premise of White ‘Aaryan Superiority’ was decisively defeated in the Second World War, with the defeat of Hitler’s Nazis.

Within America, the country’s political landscape started to change with the change in ‘Civil Rights’ (Black Americans posed much less of a threat while they were disenfranchised politically), and the country’s complexion changed with the gradual change in the racial mix of the population itself through the more recent decades of greater ‘coloured’ immigration, as the demographics slowly but steadily reflected the global population, which is mostly non-white.

As America’s population grows to be increasingly non-white, the insecurity of some segment of White America grows with it, and Trump and his closest ‘Advisers’, like Steve Bannon, and Stephen Miller latched on to that insecurity and greatly amplified it, particularly to gain and retain social, political and economic power. They used Right-Wing media such as Fox News and the myriad other radical ‘Conservative’ platforms to blare conspiracy theories, and lies, and propaganda, to fire-up the Base and keep themselves funded, and politically and economically relevant.

The historic latent racial hate present in America, and the sense of entitlement and divinely ordained racial superiority of White Americans, was accepted and sanctioned in great part by (all) the old European & British Churches, which considered ‘native races’ in the ‘conquered New Worlds’ to be ‘less’ and therefore subservient to the White ‘Christian’ Colonizers.

With the Churches’ blessings, and with them the de-facto divine sanction, the resources, including the natives in the New Worlds were to be exploited, including enslaved, and if need be, to be exterminated for the benefit of the ‘White Masters’ - and that ‘White’ domination cultivated hundreds of years of a sense of superiority that is prevalent even now, and is extremely difficult to change, and even more difficult to give up; and of course ignores even greater number of centuries of ‘non-white supremacy’ of older civilizations.

Still, some of the above may explain the absurd and almost sinful worship and support of Trump by the wilfully blind ‘American Christian Right’, in spite of his decidedly and openly un-Christian life and views. It is incredibly difficult to fathom his acceptance by the otherwise rather sanctimonious ‘Conservative Evangelical Christians’, considering Trump’s divisive and hateful, and incredibly destructive social, environmental and immigration policies - including the stripping of little children from the arms of their refuge seeking parents, and caging them indefinitely and carelessly so that many of them are lost, even to the system that caged them. It is the kind of hypocrisy that would make Christ roll in his grave if he were still there. But such blatant hypocrisy now surrounds Trump and is the quintessential ‘Conservative and Republican’ norm.

Politically, Trump and his ‘Advisers’ tapped into and exploited the insecurity of the 40 some odd percent of fearful White America, and flamed it into open hatred, division, rebellion and social and ideological war. Ironically, this movement of Trump’s has been so successful that he has convinced these unhappy and insecure Americans that Putin and Russia are preferable to their fellow Democrat Americans, and America’s brand of Democracy. They now openly prefer fascism, racism, and a fake Democracy, Putin-style, with Trump as a ‘Putin-style’ dictatorship that runs elections as ‘I win if I win - and I win, even if I lose’. Trump has been an avid fan of his most admired and respected political and financial guru, Vladimir Putin, ever since his bankrupt business life was saved by loads of shady Russian money of murky ownership. 

To add to this story, within the Republican and Conservative mainstream political movement the enemy is now the ‘Antifa’ (the anti-fascist and anti-racist movement in America) and ironically, America and its Allies were exactly ‘Antifa’ in the Second World War, anti-fascist and anti-racist, while Hitler and his Nazis were the despicable ‘fascists and racists’. America’s Republican Right-Wing now prefer the values, language, policies, and symbols of Hitler’s Nazis, rather than American anti-fascist and anti-racist values. A number of the Trump’s mob attacking the Capital wore the Nazi symbols and even had 6MWE (6 Million Jews Were not Enough*) emblazoned on their “Auschwitz’ hoodies. Now the American Right is riddled with White-Supremacists and Neo-Nazis with links to the European fascists and Nazis that have incredibly and unfortunately resurfaced.

The 4 years of Trump’s Presidency have been noteworthy for his attacks on the two primary causes of American insecurity:

Trump has not been shy in promoting his ‘great rebuild’ and promotion of American Military Supremacy, and in doing so triggered another nuclear arms race with countries like North Korea, China, Russia. By destabilizing decades of global détente, Trump caused great consternation among allies and foes alike. Yet he consistently fed the fear and the insecurities running rampant in his Base and they loved him for it – fear of immigrants and the changing demographics; and fear of China’s growing economic and military might.

Trump started with the stoking of the fear of Muslims, Mexicans and minorities, and of the rights of Black Americans. He fostered fear of those who would fight Right-Wing radicalism in the USA and the World. He declared war and discredited and made culprits of all the American institutions of the rule-of-law, especially the intelligence agencies and the FBI, and all media that would not support him, no questions asked, like his favourite the sycophantic Fox News did. Additionally, he steered his increasing delusional and paranoid supporters to fringe Alt-Right and conspiracy laden outlets and platforms, no matter how deranged and damaging they were.

Trump took every moment of his Presidency to push his version of reality that would keep him in power, regardless of how verifiably unreal and untruthful it was. And in doing so, he altered the Republican Party into his own image, untruthful, detached from reality, unpatriotic and willing to destroy the rule-of-law in support of him, even if it destroyed America. Just like Trump, the Republicans falsely and publicly declared their love for the country as a propaganda, even as they openly discredited its institutions, and undermined its Constitution. It was an ongoing Republican charade, year after year of his seditious Presidency, to gain and keep political power at all cost, for his and their own selfish gains and ambitions.

Now, the Base is really riled-up by the consistently cycled conspiracy theories spun by Trump and the willing sycophantic Republican law-makers, who for their political careers went along and actively perpetuated his lies and conspiracies. As a result, at the time of the ‘peaceful transfer of power’, America exploded in furious, violent, and horrific insurrection that killed 5 people and smashed the halls and chambers of the Capitol, the seat of America’s Government itself, and threatened the lives of the US Vice-President, Senators, and Congressmen and women there, trying to do their Constitutional duty.

This violent insurrection was made possible by Trump being allowed to spin his lies endlessly with no checks on the spreading of those lies by the Republican lawmakers, the Fox News type of outlets, and by the Social Media companies. Now they, including Trump, are recanting, to a degree, their falsehoods and their culpability, in the horror of the violence that exploded on the Capitol. But it is too late. The political powder-keg was packed for years with highly inflammable ideological, political, social misinformation, and racially divisive materials, and Trump, on the day of the confirmation of his loss by his own Vice President, lit the fuse and watched with his family gleefully, while all that America has stood for burned in a violent insurrection.

* Thank you Ms. Sophia for correcting us that it was not 9 but 6 and capital letter now in the correct places.