Donald Trump: Time magazine’s “Person of the Year” for 2016?
For those inclined to make such comparisons, it should be noted that Time’s then-Man of the Year seventy-eight years earlier, in 1938, was Adolph Hitler.
1938 vs. 2016
Of Herr Hitler, they wrote, “To those who watched the closing events of the year it seemed more than probable that the Man of 1938 may make 1939 a year to be remembered.” Nine months later, he did just that.
In like fashion, I think we can expect Herr Trump to make 2017 a memorable year. Hopefully, this will be done without him instigating World War Three, or attempting to stifle what free press we have left, or packing the Supreme Court with Scalia- (or perhaps worse yet, Thomas-) like justices.
I have written earlier about the talk encouraging people to “give him a chance;” to wait and see how he will actually govern. I’m waiting to see if he will govern at all, or if the next four years will be a stream-of-consciousness Twitter tirade, interrupted at times by photo ops with foreign businessmen and politicians at one of Herr Trump’s golf resorts, punctuated with pronouncements engineered by the regime’s éminence grise, Steve Bannon. If this pre-governing phase provides any clues (and it emphatically does), we should consider ourselves fortunate if that’s all the worse it is.
Other things written about Herr Hitler in that 1938 Man of the Year article should also give us pause. Among them is the description of Hitler as “moody, brooding,” “half educated,” and a “man of no trade and few interests … whose reading has always been very limited.” The people inspired by Hitler were described as a “demagogic, ignorant, desperate movement,” satisfying the “craving of large sections of the politically immature German people for strong, masterful leadership.”
Are you concerned yet? Well, there’s more.
Time pointed out that Herr Hitler’s solution to unemployment (the relocation of factories and jobs to Italy, or Mexico, not being an issue at the time) was “a far-reaching program of public works; … an intense rearmament program, including a huge standing army;” and “… putting political enemies and Jewish, Communist and Socialist jobholders in concentration camps.”
Oh, wait, that last one doesn’t apply to Herr Trump. Right? Well, there was that now-supposedly-disavowed letter to the Energy Department, a 74-point demand looking for, among other things, the names of all employees who have worked on President Obama’s climate initiatives; in other words, people who actually believe in science.
But, oh no, nothing to see here. No witch hunt, no inquisition. Move along now.
The potential for serious damage to our country and our democracy is real, and looming. The keys to the various departments of the federal government are being handed over to people who dislike the mission of the department they will soon head, or who haven’t the slightest clue about the workings of government, or both; and they will be led (insofar as leading will be done) by a man who knows little about, and cares less for, the laws, customs, and strictures of our government. I know: Some people have been saying for years that the government should be run like a business, and that a non-politician should run it. That theory will now get a test run, in real time, with real consequences, and we will all have a front row seat.
If we have to endure this (and we do), it would at least have been nice if the businessman elevated to the presidency had been truly successful, and had not presided over a family-run operation that was treated like a personal fiefdom, or a piggy bank, part of whose success has rested upon stiffing people who provided them with materials and services. But that’s not who 107,105 voters in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan have given us (yes, only 107,105), and it’s going to take the vigilant efforts of hundreds of thousands – no, millions – of us to remind Herr Trump and his cohorts that the laws of this country apply equally to all of us, even him. Especially him, in fact.
The need for this vigilance has been made clear by the thin-skinned Herr Trump’s distant relationship with the truth, and in particular his constant efforts to shape the truth to reflect the high regard in which he holds himself. Among these was a comment made during a New York Times interview on 22 November of this year, in which he said, “The law’s totally on my side; the president can’t have a conflict of interest.”
This is eerily reminiscent of something Richard Nixon claimed in May 1977, during an interview with David Frost. In the course of discussing his actions as president, Nixon said, “If the president does it, that means it’s not illegal.”
Oh, really? And how exactly did that work out for you, sir?
As Mr. Nixon found out, the Constitution, and other laws of our country, really do apply to the President of the United States, despite what, in his hubris and self-proclaimed exceptionalism, he may want himself and all of us to think. While not given to calling up the Bible, I feel compelled to quote now from Matthew 5:45, which says that god (or rather, God) “maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust.” As it is with the sun and the rain, Herr Trump, so it is with the law.
We have before us an on-going, four-year challenge (and please, god, don’t let it be eight). It’s a multi-faceted challenge, one of which it would be easy to tire, to give up, to surrender to the rightward-lurching onslaught of revisionism that is headed our way. I won’t be doing that. I simply cannot sit quietly and let Herr Trump and his wrecking crew destroy what has been built up here, at the cost of so much effort, so many lives, so much time.
If you find yourself filled with a desire to stop listening to the news, if you feel overwhelmed by the tweets and the casual dismissals of law and precedence, I will understand, because I too will be feeling that. So, in those times, know that you are not alone in your feelings; know that it is not just you, not just me, but rather, millions who care deeply about this country, and who are resisting, in ways both large and small, the turning back of progress represented by the man in the chair, in the Oval Office.
One last thing: As the early twentieth-century labor activist and song writer Joe Hill wrote in a telegram to Bill Haywood, just before Hill’s execution, “Goodbye, Bill, I die like a true blue rebel. Don’t waste any time mourning. Organize!”
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The Daily Outrage 