Is This Business As Usual?

Is This Business As Usual?

          After Donald Trump’s rally in North Carolina last night the obvious and somewhat anticipated conclusion by the press (a body I still trust on such topics) is that the attacks on the Squad (Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich), Ilhan Omar (D-Minn) and Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass)) were tactical and purposeful to give the President a target for his campaign rhetoric and an “enemy” to galvanize his base.  Listening to the sickening chants of “Send her back, send her back” brought the same sort of horror to mind that the “lock her up, lock her up” chants brought to the 2016 election.  Only this time the chants are openly racist and not directed at some supposed moral high ground of deeds that were illegal (supposed email corruption), but they are directed at the freedom of these duly-elected members of Congress and rightful U.S. citizens (three of whom were born here) to speak their minds as per their Constitutional right and as per their Congressional obligation to their constituents.

          The irony of the moment is not lost on anyone that Trump standing up and decrying that the language and spirit of the Squad’s comments is vulgar and debasing spring from a gutter-mouthed bigot who regularly uses more vile language than any president before him and who disrespects constitutional norms every moment of his candidacy and term in office.  His rhetoric has been proven to be more controversial and more slanderous than anything the Squad has ever dreamed of saying.  Now this does not endorse vulgarity and demeaning rhetoric by anyone.  We can all agree that the level of our national dialogue has been degraded and is sorely in need of rehabilitation or at least a mouthful of soap.  But my question is whether this is the new normal?  Is this business as usual?

          When I stop the madness for a moment and sit back and reflect, I think we are beyond normalcy.  Cheap trick politics is one thing.  Donald Segretti’s dirty bag of tricks were just that, tricks played at the margin to help Richard Nixon’s candidacy.  But Donald Trump has elevated his game to a whole new level where the main message is the dirty tactic itself.  He is anti-immigration and anti-people of color because his party is demographically fearful of the future, which has them squarely moving to minority status in this country in a matter of years.  His team is scared to death of what is inevitable, so they must gerrymander, wall themselves into the castle and generally spit at anyone at the gates or already in the compound that does not look exactly like them.  This is now blatantly obvious and very, very scary stuff.  This is the stuff of genocide and revolution.  This is the stuff of historic battles of good versus evil. This is not normal.

          And here’s the scariest thing; it is all right before our eyes, like everything Donald Trump does.  He somehow thinks that telling it like it is and being bold enough to do things in the open will save him from prosecution for it all.  Perhaps it is about being too stupid to know better, but I think not.  I think it is an actual (perhaps visceral and not cognitive) strategic approach.  If you can’t hide it, flaunt it and then say it can’t be wrong to do since you did it openly.  This is not normal.

          The struggle which took place in the backchannels of the RNC for many years and was a dirty little secret, is now out in the open for everyone in the world to see and stand aghast at.  We have a minority base in this country which Trump has tapped into and given a broad global stage for that is literally working against everything this country has stood for over 250 years.  It is against immigration, against inclusion, against civil liberties, against decency and humanity and against the common and ethical goals that we have all shared (even though there has always been some degree of conflict and interpretation at the fringes).  We are close to being in a battle in the streets as we have ever seen since the Civil War. This is not normal.

          I had dinner with an old friend who is 82 years old and has been a fiscally conservative and pragmatic businessman (extremely well educated and intelligent) for his whole life.  He surprised me by telling me that he was planning to spend time next year in a major swing state like Arizona doing whatever he can to help turn the electoral time in favor of anyone nominated that can depose Trump.  I have never known him to be politically active and he is anything but a rabble rouser at his age.  He is a man of substance both financially and intellectually and he hates to pay taxes as much as anyone I know.  But he has seen what Trump has been doing to the country and he has heard from all his friends overseas (he travels outside of the US probably four months of the year) and the concern over Trump cannot be expressed strongly enough. This is not normal.

          We literally have had our country hijacked by a madman.  Someone always feels their country has been hijacked, but rarely do they have such blatant evidence of wrong-minded and wrong-acting behavior as we have seen over the past 30 months.  The quality of the people who will work in his administration in abysmally low and even with that low bar, he cannot fill countless vacancies.  I heard it put best as the notion that nobody wants to be the guy holding Mussolini’s coat.  The articles this week about the empty offices in the Pentagon are actually at the level of national security crisis. This is not normal.

          Nothing about our country or our situation in the geopolitical sphere will ever be normal again.  Business as usual has ceased to exist for us.  It seems that all the strategizing in Washington is how to either insure that he is removed from office next year at the latest or how he can be reinstated for another four years.  Both groups seem prepared to declare failure in their goal to be a catastrophic event that needs an abnormal response.  We have a new reality and we must do everything in our power to change the situation as soon as possible.  Our business as usual is now about fighting to regain some shred of what made this country the safe-haven for the world as opposed to the pariah of the world it now appears to be.