I am frightened. Seriously frightened for our people, our nation, and yes, myself, in a way I never have been before. We have a President of the United States who delights in sowing chaos and threatening this nation’s stability at home and abroad.
What he is doing and saying is also threatening to tear our country apart.
Not just destroy our alliances and respect for us abroad. Not just ruin us financially, though he is doing those things too. He is destroying respect for our government.
Yesterday, for example, when it was clear that Congressional leaders in both parties had reached agreement on a continuing resolution to keep the government running for six weeks, Donald Trump had what is being aptly described as a temper tantrum.
Trump loudly bellowed that he wouldn’t accept the deal, that if he didn’t get his way and the billions he wanted for his crazy border wall, he’d shut the government down.
The day got worse after that. Trump, often with jeering contempt, regularly rejects the advice of those close to him on matters of policy they know more about.
Secretary of Defense James Mattis, the one cabinet member who still commands widespread respect, resigned after the President decided to pull our troops out of Syria. As he often does, Trump totally ignored the military and diplomatic advice of someone who knows far more about both things than he ever will.
When that became public, Trump, after first lying and saying his defense secretary was just retiring, next said that he might pull our troops out of Afghanistan as well. For the first time, I actually began to wonder whether Trump is an agent of or being blackmailed by Russia.
Regardless, he seems emotionally about two and a half years old.
We have never seen anything like this before. I remember the Cuban Missile Crisis, and my sixth-grade teacher telling us there was probably going to be a nuclear war. I remember Watergate, and wondering if Richard Nixon would obey the U.S. Supreme Court. I remember worrying about nuclear war again under Ronald Reagan, and September 11th and all that followed.
But it never occurred to me that any of those Presidents were mentally unstable, or willing to put their own petty and spiteful emotional needs ahead of what was best for our nation.
But that’s where we are now. I had thought I would talk today about the pettiness and spitefulness of the Republicans in the Michigan legislature, who spent much of this lame duck session doing things like trying to take power away from the offices of governor, attorney general and secretary of state, all jobs the GOP lost decisively in last month’s election.
They made it harder to protect the environment, and took pay and sick leave benefits away from low-income workers, after preventing a state vote on the issue.
But what they and Trump are doing are part of an ugly trend nationally. Yes, we have an accidental President who is clearly the most unfit man in history to hold that office.
Yes, he has stirred up and given legitimacy to the worst elements in the American soul, from racism to irrational hatred and fear of immigrants.
Beyond him, however, we have a generation of politicians who couldn’t care less about the common good, about democracy, who gleefully delight in making it harder for Americans to vote, or in making sure the people can’t overturn laws they hate.
This is a greater threat to America than any external threat we’ve ever faced.
We have to hope we will do better at facing and fighting it next year.
