Trump may be an ass—but he is also making history

By SJ Otto

These are strange times and Donald Trump is a strange president. He is not only far to the right, he seems to be coming unhinged. Some of us wondered if he was able to handle the job of President. With the help of his cabinet members and other aids he has been able to do the job.  All of those aids have helped keep him in check. They prevented him from doing impulsive things that could have been dangerous.

His tirade against the elections results—which includes his assertion that the election was stolen from him, seems to make him look delusional. Can he really believe what he is saying? That is the hard question. Did he really believe he could come out ahead if he created a putsch by his followers? More and more the president seems to be lacking the needed sanity to do his job.

This also shows how US bourgeois democracy has huge limitations. How could such a man get elected? How did he manage to stay elected? Most Republicans saw him as a loose cannon when he was first elected. Most of them didn’t like him at all. But he supported the Republican agenda. He promoted that agenda far better than the Republican Party believed would happen. After his firsts year in office—the party was sold on Trump.

His supporters are mostly working class people who are deeply dissatisfied with the US political landscape. Bernie Sanders and many news pundits have compared Trump and Sanders for appealing to the poor, working people and disenfranchised. They are political opposites and yet they appeal to the same class of people. According to Axion:

 

“The bottom line: Many Sanders voters see Trump as having paved the way for a President Sanders.

• Sanders supporter Jamal Jilao said, "I hope the time of being fearful of using executive orders has been laid to rest."

That article includes other interviews with several voters including David Small:

• "He's always toed the same line," said voter David Small. "The poor and disenfranchised will feel like they have a real advocate."

 

But Trump is the opposite of what working people or poor people really need. He is a corporate lackey and not a working class hero. His followers are a strange group of people who seem almost mesmerized by this leader. He and his followers resemble a cult. And while his followers are working class, he is a $billionaire.

Trump has proven that the system has huge holes in it. Trump is unfit for the job and yet he has hard core supporters who idolize him as a hero. Those people are largely responsible for getting him elected. They wanted a leader who is willing to shake up a system they do not trust. In some ways Trump is little more than a common thug. His followers often say: “he talks the way I do.” How does he talk? He is unrefined, blunt and he pushy back hard against his critics and opponents. He lashes out at his enemies and makes no apologies for his actions. He is the fist president, in my lifetime, which refused to congratulate the winner of the election that he lost.

Many of his followers are thugs who have no problem getting in a fight. Some are thugs, pure and simple. There is a similarity to these followers and the kinds of people Adolf Hitler recruited to create a political movement. That is not to say they are straight out fascist or Nazis. The point is that Trump supporters are following a strategy that has been used in the past.

Trump is the most undemocratic US leader in the last century, or maybe even in the history of the US. The system is broken and Trump has proven that. All our politicians and news pundits will stand around scratching their heads trying to figure out where they went wrong. But US democracy has always had its limitations. 

The Electoral College was developed at the beginning of the history of the US in the 18^th century. The idea was that people are not smart enough to elect a president directly. The founders did not trust the American people so they came up with the idea that the voters would elect electors who could vote against the will of the people in case they made a mistake. The electors are supposed to be smart enough to put a check against the individual voters. It is antiquated and three times now the Electoral College allowed a president to get elected with a minority of the popular vote. That is likely to happen again.

We can expect that no real changes to the system will happen as a result of Trump’s putsch Politicians will try to put the equivalent of band aids on a gashing wound, metaphorically speaking. The system needs to be replaced and not simply reformed a little. It will take a revolution.

As history goes on we can expect more Trump like problems. The system doesn’t really work and it never will.