I predict Donald Trump, as U.S. President, will go down in history as an astonishingly incoherent, self-absorbed leader embedded in a political system giving excessive powers to someone who believes his own will is paramount.
By his extraordinarily disruptive and relentless misuse of this power, I believe Trump will impel the rest of us – everywhere – to stand up, push back and establish a coherent model for conduct and beliefs, one that will move us, together, into a truly equitable future, both locally (in the U.S.) and globally.
Trump’s embedded personal qualities – his disdain for the opinions of others, his intense reactivity, his indifference towards separating fact from fiction (especially when boasting), his compulsion to seek personal revenge and his lack of interest in the broad lessons of history are legendary. As a result, many of his past business practices have probably been illegal – and often flagrantly unsuccessful – and his treatment of both associates and opponents erratic and destructive.
Now he’s even shamelessly selling self-glorifying trinkets, like any run-of-the-mill circus huckster.
Trump told a reporter in the 1980s that the board room in Trump Tower wasn’t really a board room because there was no actual board – there was just him. And he liked it that way.
Trump’s under-informed mind is tied to a bygone world in which rich white men from Europe ruled, women were subservient or instruments of pleasure, force could be used openly to suppress dissent, and the natural world was simply a “resource” to be exploited for human purposes.
But Trump could never have done this alone.
The United States is a young nation, set in the most temperate and accommodating part of the so-called “New World."
European settlers who came to the Americas exploited the fact that the Indigenous population, totalling 90-110 million, was being exterminated by European viruses, creating the illusion the land was empty.
Then they simply seized it. Their prideful enthusiasm drew wave after wave of well-armed newcomers bursting with similar notions of superiority – including over Mother Nature.
African slaves further enhanced settler hubris, contributing to the fullest expression of the colonial capitalist extractivist economic system still accepted today – even though it’s clearly disturbing the critical functions of planet Earth.
When the 13 British colonies rebelled and formed the United States of America, their leaders naively created an electoral system that only requires 270 voters to elect a president – with enormous powers – and a Supreme Court that has zero ethical rules. They also gradually elevated corporations into legal “persons” with almost unlimited rights.
Donald Trump is revelling in these weaknesses in the American “system," which allows a few rich to get fabulously rich, while the many poor and disadvantaged steadily increase in number.
Today the U.S. is controlled by a small group of billionaires, clustered around Trump’s presidential powers, ethically unhinged but wielding global influence.
This gross imbalance cannot last.
It will arouse ordinary Americans – and thoughtful, well-informed persons everywhere – to finally act to prevent such flagrant abuse of power from ever happening again.
Warren Bell is a long-time family physician in Salmon Arm with a consuming interest and involvement in community and global affairs.
