it further promotes the dumbing down of the populace when initiatives should be lifting all members of the population up through information and education to form a more perfect union. However, in doing so, it all makes it easier for to realize the agenda of individuals who play upon populist anger for personal gain.
Conclusion
This accounts for how Trump won. Trump successfully imposed his worldview on America, and America bought into it. This is
why he won over Harris: his message was, no
matter how wrong or how crazy, internally consistent whereas hers was not.
If you are a Trump supporter, it will matter little the way in which he won: ends justify the means. However, if you are one of the 70 percent or more of registered voters who did not vote for Trump, prospects for better days seem bleak.
As he promised he would, Trump moved quickly not to just impose his worldview, but cauterize that worldview into the social and political network. He understands from past experience he must move fast, initiating action primarily through executive order. This insulates him from elected officials who now support him but may do so less enthusiastically, as mid-term elections force a change in posture. It also gives him time to see how things play out and take actions necessary to ensure his power is etched in stone.
Some of these actions were anticipated, as the reinstated actions of his first term – for example, removing the United States from the Paris Accords. Others were anticipated through promises made during the campaign – for example, removing the United States from the World Health Organization, declaring an emergency over the southern border with Mexico, engaging in mass deportations if not internment (invoking the 1798 law used to justify Japanese internment camps during World War II), and pardoning the January 6th insurrectionists, among others. Trump has even pushed against what most believe are obvious constitutional limits, with his ordering an end to birthright citizenship.
Will he succeed in all? Maybe, maybe not. But he fully intends so. And it is the willingness to push against constitutional limits that initiates concern. As leaders with autorcratic tendencies have been wont to do when things don't go according to their desires, they simply use the constitution when it is to their advantage and ignore it when not. A most extreme case has been documented by Timothy Ruback. Writing in The Atlantic, Ryback demonstrates in a step-by-step account how Hitler used the constiuttion to shatter the constitution, effectively dismantling a democracy in just 53 days. "Invoking Article 1 of the Weimar Constitution, which stated that the government was an expression of the will of the people, Hitler informed the court that once he had achieved power through legal means, he intended to mold the government as he saw
fit."36
Mind you, Hitler remains an extreme example. But many have pointed to Trump's extreme narcissism, a narcissism that others have noted borders on if not encompasses its most extreme form, solipsism, where the individual forces his world view onto others without limit. Trump is not willing to accept limits on his power, or respond affirmatively to respected people, or recognized religious leaders like the Pope or Right Rev Mariann Budde, who, in a sermon before Trump at the inaugural prayer service, implored him to rethink or moderate his positions with the vulnerable. Not even on that day, the day when he had achieved his goal of returning to power, would Trump show some humanity, some grace. Instead, Trump called Budde a “Radical Left hard line Trump hater,” “ungracious,” “nasty” and “not compelling or smart.”37
Trump has not changed his stripes. He and his actions continue to pose a serious threat to America.
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