Trump's Riding a Tiger all the Way to the End

Trump's aim is to destroy as much as he can as fast as he can

If I was asked what its like to live in the US now I would use the following analogy —imagine that you are in a car (lets call it a Tesla just for convenience) driven by someone high enough on their own supply to believe he can drive the car backwards at night while spitting out obscenities at anyone who gets in his way. You pass a world in flames— lines of people move slowly—impossible to tell if they are refugees or protestors fleeing wrecked communities while police car and fire engine sirens howl through night. But despite all the chaos and destruction the Tesla driver has causd it has no effect him. Trump continues to grin inanely like the Joker in a Batman movie. This is Trump world—a world fueled by a mixture of an insane thirst for vengeance and a child like recklessness to do as much damage in as short amount of time as possible to everything that his ”enemies” have held dear. And doing it all with zero empathy and maximum cruelty as he delights in our screams and our shouts of ‘please stop’

Whether Trump has tapped into the multiverse using Google’s new extra fast quantum chip we will never know. Maybe this is all a cost free joy ride into the unknown and Trump will escape from the wreckage without again being held accountable for his crimes. But the odds seem against this possiblity—he is really intent on slamming the Tesla into the wall just for the pure joy of seeing what happens when his fantasy of finally having no guard rails on himself finally comes true.

Isn’t there some method in the destructive madness you may ask? Yes in some ways there is—isn’t it ipart of his plan (as it was Hitlers’s) to reverse all our values? By dismantling key parts of the US government that relate to the spreading of liberal ideas—whether they relate to trying to feed the world’s hungry or enabling the US Department of Education’s to support US teachers and students ability to improve their critical thinking abilities he is making the world safer for Trumpism—the denial of ambiguity, the re-affirmation of a trite kind of patriotism and less than subtle racism and misogyny.

Second is the score setting starting with weaponizing the Department of Justice for its supposed “persecution” of the January 6 rioters. Then comes the removal of any effective monitoring so that his government cronies can steal or misspend billions tax payer dollars—so the removal of all Government Inspector Generals —statutorily required to root out all waste fraud and abuse was a necessary first step. Finally there is the effort to wreak world peace by siding with Russia against Ukraine and forcing Ukraine to make concessions to Russia under duress while applying no such pressure on Russia. The worst part of this nightmare is that he has only just begun in his suicidal jaunt with us on board.

The only good part of this saga is that the frenetic pace of this mad ride cannot continue and will eventually exhaust and burn them up.

It was Winston Churchill who stated in his famous address “Armistice—Or Peace?”just as Europe’s rogue dictators were threatening peace,

“Dictators ride to and fro upon tigers from which they dare not dismount. And the tigers are getting hungry.”

While its small solace to believe that the tiger Trump is now riding will eventually gobble him up for lunch he believes he knows when to get off the animals’ back. We shall see but I wouldn’t bet against the tiger since Trump’s frantic pace of attack is not possible to sustain.

Trump is not a fascist per se—but he is a cult leader looking for a world role. Propelled to power by a singular understanding of the weakness of liberal democracy that he grew up to exploit personally to the fullest, he has set his course—a far more radical one than he set in the first term. This time he wants to enjoy every presidential and non presidential power to the fullest and his direction is towards dismantling the democratic balance of power that made US leadership as a liberal democracy vital to 20th and 21st century world order.

So far the liberal establishment has lost its voice. Too shocked and stunned by the furor of the attacks against university and research funding and the relentless threats to deport immigrants and the wholesale destruction of whole government agencies without congressional assent to mount a coherent counter attack.

If Democrats are to have any chance of replacing him they have to focus

1. On slowing this reckless car ride down and present an alternative vision of the future. They need for example to repeat the mantra that cooperation with our allies instead of confrontation is more likely to yield positive economic results and lower inflation.

2.Showing the cost of his destructive behavior in terms of falling living standards as tariffs take effect, increased isolation from the world as NATO pushes for its own European strike force and nuclear umbrella, the threat of tech collapse as China makes aggressive moves against Taiwan etc.

3, Point to the illegality of his actions in the last 50 or so days and prepare for both hearings for when the dems take back the House in 2 years and commission on presidential misconduct as soon as he has left office. Let everyone know in the Trump administration that following orders will not exempt them

4.. Start admitting that you were too much the party of elites and billionaires and you have learned your lessons. As Togliatti’s “Lectures on Fascism” argued fascism comes in to answer problems what democrats have been unable to solve. “It is the failure of neo-liberalism in an environment of a vanquished left that provides the space for the growth of fascistic political movements. You need to make coalitions not on the basis of identity politics but on the basis of class and status. Dems have to have concrete plans to close the inequality gap by taxing the very rich and close the various loopholes that allow the rich to hide their wealth. Healthcare should be a right as should two years of post secondary education paid for by taxes on corporations.

5. National and local town meetings every month should invite the people taking away health insurance, benefits or cutting back on government services, reducing funds for NIH and medical research to justify their actions. If they decide not to show up-use the empty chair ploy to shame them.

Bottom line—we have a long way to go -but won’t defeat Trumpism through the usual politics. People don’t want to hear arguments they want solutions—credible ones. They also need a leader—and each town hall should be led off by a dem leader who can test out their leadership chops in the national spotlight.

We have to all collectively force him to dismount the tiger that will bring all our destruction even if the multiverse exists.