"If Trump is an Existential Threat to American Democracy, then..."

 Ex-is-ten-tial  adjective  relating to the existence of a thing; a concern with the continuing existence of something; i.e. existential climate change threatens the existence of life forms.  

It is a difficult word to define, but as an adjective linked to the noun "threat" and used in reference to Trump as a politician, the meaning is clear.  The manner in which Trump operates as a businessman, and subsequently has operated as a politician and President of the United States makes him an existential threat to American democracy.  He has no understanding of the Constitution, and no appreciation for the values it embodies.  He's a demagogue who demands personal loyalty, not patriotism, from his followers.  His god is the dollar, and he's made it clear that while he loves Evangelical votes and support, he won't convert to their brand of Christianity, preferring the prosperity gospel cult, from which he chooses his "spiritual" advisors. 

But we are now well beyond defining Trump as an existential threat to democracy.  He has proven this statement to be true.  

So what do we do about it?  

Being Bold and Taking Risks Wasn't on the Agenda

Trump was re-elected in spite of the fact that he has been convicted of sexual assault, and indicted for inciting insurrection and stealing classified documents.  Our justice department failed, over a four year period during which the politics were favorable, to bring him to trial.  There are multiple reasons why our system failed, but it was mainly because when the threat needed to be evaluated and considered for what it really was, it wasn't taken seriously.  And when the obstacles to a resolution became apparent, the party in power was not willing to use its power to remove the obstacles.  

Yes, that would have required some very risky and bold moves.  It would have meant getting rid of the sacred Senate filibuster, something that needed to happen a long time ago, and letting a majority of votes work for the good of the people.  Of course, when the other party is in power, they'd take advantage of it.  They already do as much as they think they can get away with doing.  But if they'd done it when Biden was in the White House, amending the Judiciary Act and letting him appoint five more liberal justices to the Supreme Court, several things could have been accomplished.  

The court could have taken the insurrection case themselves, and determined Trump was an insurrectionist, disqualified to run for public office.  Or, they could have expidited his trial in the federal system, undercutting his delaying tactics leading to a quick verdict.  There would have been no ridiculous, unconstitutional and inherently corrupt ruling on Presidential immunity from prosecution.  And Roe would have been saved.  

But apparently, not enough Democrats, including the President, really believed that Trump was an existential threat to American Democracy.  Not even to the point where they were willing to use the powers of the Presidency to expidite the insurrection trial.  It was a four year term of "business as usual," with an ineffective and useless justice department right at the time we needed boldness and risk the most.

So What's the Difference Between Trump's First Term and This One? 

Let's cut to the chase.  While Democrats have been messing around with their political protocol, trying not to look political, and still trying to make a system of political compromise work that the GOP abandoned two decades back, a pseudo-Christian, neo-Nazi, white supremacist, Christian nationalist group called the Heritage Foundation, which is what the old Moral Majority and Christian Coalition of Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson has become, put together a plan to take over the government of the United States and turn it from a constitutional democracy, where all of its citizens have a voice, into an oligarchy, where only Caucasians who acknowledge the pseudo-Christian cult philosophy of the power structure have any say at all.  

And I remain unconvinced that they did not use their power and influence, in the places where they have it, to steal the election by falsifying the election results.   

We are seeing a systematic implementation of Project 2025.  Everything Trump is doing is related to following, in some fashion, the steps they have outlined to gain control of the government before they put their full blown agenda into place.  They've been delayed along the way by some pushback, mainly through legal channels and gaps in the federal judiciary where they did not control the judicial appointments.  And they are somewhat handicapped by the fact that Trump had his own agenda for who he wanted in certain cabinet positions, so there are some non-Project 2025 appointees, like RFK Jr. and Tulsi Gabbard, who are more Putin tools than Heritage Foundation hacks.  

But, one of the hard facts of what is developing is that the Democrats are, once again, slow to act in the wake of the election, and stone deaf to suggestions of things that could be done before Trump took office to at least throw up some obstacles to slow them down. Every day that goes by is a day that they do something to advance their white supremacist, Christian nationalist agenda.  And every day that goes by that the opposition and resistance to it is stymied trying to figure out what to do and how to do it is a day they gain toward achieving their goal. 

We keep seeing Democratic leadership meet with Trump, try to work with Trump, compromise with Trump, crawl down to Mar-a-Lago or up to the White House. That won't work.  That looks a lot like feathering their own nest, and protecting their own interests. When will we learn, that Trump is always going to make it look like Democrats are crawling to him on his own terms, and he considers everyone that does a personal victory?  And it's only Caucasian Democrats that seem to be susceptible to this temptation.  

We're Not Completely Powerless

Those of us who voted for Democrats in the last election have expectations of those politicians that they need to understand and meet if they are going to continue to win the trust of the voters.  And that includes no compromise with the Trump administration.  We don't have control of Congress, but the margins are very small, and we can stop things in the Senate.  It also seems that one of the biggest values we are getting from protests and from conducting "empty chair" town hall meetings is pressure on Republicans who are very vulnerable at the ballot box.  

It appears that the DNC is actually shaking off its moribund condition by giving its support to an idea called The People's Cabinet, an idea put forward by Timothy Snyder, whose observations of a similar idea from Great Britain received a lot of positive feedback in this country from those in opposition to the Trump administration.  A "shadow cabinet" gives the opposition a place to provide immediate feedback and speak directly to the media with a unified voice of opposition.  Apparently, the DNC is taking some initiative to support this idea and get it going, hopefully moving with speed that we're not used to seeing from them.  

And I think we still need to push hard with every possible issue and tool that can be used against Trump, from the fact that he's still not been brought to trial for insurrection, or for stealing classified documents from the White House, and keep up the pressure that moves toward a constitutional resolution of the problem we are facing, either his forced resignation from the Presidency, or by convincing enough members of Congress on their side, whatever that might take, to decide that it is more expedient for their future if he is gone.  The Signal scandal, which is still unresolved but has been left smoldering, not in flames by Democrats, and the open manipulation of the stock market that we saw with his schizophrenic tariff "policy," which can't really be called a policy, would have had enough political ramifications for any other administration to leverage major change.  

This is Trump's weakness.  His ego will not permit him to admit mistakes.  Why Democrats have not long since learned how to make that work for them, I cannot fathom.  His niece has written several volumes of strategy that are available in every bookstore in America, and from multiple on-line providers.  That might require some key Democratic leaders putting themselves in a direct line of fire, and believe me, I understand that there is real personal, physical danger involved in that.  But I think our country is at the point where it needs a hero.  

It is inevitable, given the total and complete lack of experience, qualification and intellect, of the agenda-driven sycophants Trump has appointed to his cabinet, that they will continue to make massive political and logistical mistakes that will affect large swaths of Americans.  So when someone like Kristi Noem, or Tulsi Gabbard, or RFK Jr. puts their incompetence on display, the opposition needs to zero in, and make sure that even the media silos have to address the incompetence, and get a good look at the emptiness behind the eyes and the robotic lack of character that is displayed.  Make sure they know they will be blamed for the disaster.  

I am thankful for those who have stood up.  Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez have really kept the Democratic party in the game at this point.  The millions of Americans who turned out for last weekend's rallies, most of whom were quite passionate and very well informed, were, at least in part, motivated by what this 83 year old United States Senator, and this 35 year old United States Congresswoman have done.  They were already active and engaged, they saw this danger for what it was and have given their best to keep the stream of information flowing and the opposition continuing.  They got it.  If Bernie had been in charge of the Senate in 2021, when we had a slim majority, he wouldn't have quit until the filibuster was broken and the Supreme Court was packed with liberals.  

And we wouldn't be where we are now.  

This is Already Outside the Boundaries of Partisanship.  It's a Movement. 

I've joined in with Indivisible, and  I will continue to write here as long as it is possible to do so.  I started this blog in 2020, and it is completely voluntary, not supported by any political entity demanding quid pro quo loyalty in exchange for favorable words.  I could not participate in the rallies last weekend, I suffer from diabetic foot problems that limit my ability to get into those kinds of venues, and I can't walk far.  But I join in the discussions on Signal, I contribute, carefully where my limited resources allow, but still contribute, and I vote in every election.  

It seems like a lot of Americans have difficulty learning their lesson.  The first article I wrote here, on Christmas Day, 2020, was about just how bad the first Trump administration had been, in comparison to all previous Presidencies, and how it didn't really take a whole lot of time for many people who had voted for him, and almost everyone who didn't, to realize that he has no real substance, he's an image, and everything he touches fails, including money ventures at which he thinks he is an expert.  And now here we are, just a little over five months after he was "elected," and 60% of the country wishes that had never happened.  Again.  

We get trapped inside ideology, inside media silos, and in an age of massive and instant electronic communication, we can avoid seeing the world we live in as a whole by simply turning off a few switches, and turning on a few others that lead to fantasy rather than reality.  How many Americans are even aware of George Washington's farewell address, or the fact that we have, as a country, become so much of what he warned us about not becoming, that it is not likely he would recognize the United States as the country he helped found if he came back from the dead and observed.  

One of my angles is showing, directly, how the claims of Evangelicals who have become politicized by support for Trump, actually have to abandon their faith in the Christian gospel in order to do so.  I have a good theological education and background that helps, and there is a growing group of followers here who have come to that conclusion themselves.  I hope I helped.  The branch of American Evangelicalism that has incorporated Trump's right wing extremism into their doctrine and practice can no longer be defined, biblically, as "Christian," since it only reflects the destructive evil of the extremists to whom it is loyal.  It now seems that many of those who were caught up in this are waking up to the reality of the perversion and evil reflected by MAGA. 

If Trump is an existential threat to American democracy, then we need to wake up to this as a fact, and do all we can, within the boundaries of the rule of law in our constitutional democracy, to eliminate the threat.