I was in Spain for the month of February while President Donald Trump and his merry band of corrupt oligarchs and sycophants brought a cruel chaos to the United States. While in Spain, it was easy enough to get an overview of the extent to which America seemed to be dissolving into a puddle of dysfunction and lawlessness. It took getting back to America to add more immediate context and content to the earlier images. Now, it is apparent that the daily assault on governance and the rule of law may have finally opened enough raw wounds that even the ceaseless lies cannot cover up the consequences.

America never has been what it has claimed to be

Perhaps, this time, there might even be a growing number of Americans who are astonished by the realization that there is a price to pay for willful historical ignorance and civic disinterest. There may even be a renewed interest in examining the longstanding delusion at the core of America’s ongoing national hubris.

Yet even in the current environment, there seems to be more of a sense of something lost than a realization that America never has been what it has claimed to be. There is an almost palpable turning-away from historical reality and hard truths which finds refuge in the national anthem, flying flags and patriotic parades. How could it be possible that we are not the greatest nation on Earth when we have said we are to so many for so long?

No word that is routinely bandied about sums it up better than “democracy.” America is not now, nor has it ever been, a true democracy, unless democracy is defined as little more than having the freedom to root for the home team. From its origins in white male landowner rule to present-day oligarchy, there is very little that resembles “government by the people” and/or “rule of the majority.”

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No, Trump Is Not the End of US Democracy. It Never Existed.

Although all of this has been said before by me and others, it is worth repeating as a preamble to discussing what American “democracy” has become in these first ten weeks of Trump rule. America now has a federal “government” operating lawlessly at the whim and caprice of a few deranged individuals who have finally found their path to the wet dream of fully undermining the already shaky institutional foundation on which America’s governance depends. They seek truly harmful and shameful ends that make a mockery of ends justifying the means.

Whim and caprice

It is hard to know where to start. Tens of thousands of America’s federal public servants have seen their dedication and expertise zeroed out by troops marching to the beat of extreme right-wing drummers. Trump never dedicated himself to anything beyond himself and has no identifiable expertise in anything beyond the unbridled capacity to distort the truth for his own ends. What does he know about the programs, policies and personnel at the US Agency for International Development or the Department of Education? My guess is absolutely nothing. 

And there is so much more. Leaving aside the willfully ignorant Trump sycophants, there are way too many people in America dependent on federal policies and programs to simply ignore their absence. Those receiving Social Security benefits, those dependent on Medicare and Medicaid for access to meaningful healthcare, and those kids waiting for their daily nutrition are all certain to be losers. And just to make sure that those with the resources to pay the rent, have access to healthcare and feed their kids suffer a little too, enjoying America’s national parks may well become a challenge.

There is enough shame in that brief litany to fill any nation’s hall of shame. But when that nation has fashioned itself as a shining beacon on some hill, and its citizens wallow in some notion of exceptionalism, it is enough to elicit knowing laughter abroad and a sense of self-doubt at home.

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Where Do Defenders of Democracy Really Stand?

An open and frontal assault on the best that America can be has now spread its ugly tentacles from America’s shores to those parts of a troubled world in which way too many humans live in the shadows. So, just to make sure that the troubled world got the message, the aforementioned merry band of oligarchs and sycophants moved early to dismantle the US Agency for International Development (USAID), an independent agency of the US government largely responsible for delivering foreign humanitarian aid and development assistance to the troubled world as a component of US foreign policy.

This swift executive action appears to be just fine with many Americans, apparently because the path to making America “great” again is enhanced by increasing suffering abroad to save souls at home. Thus energized, the merry band of oligarchs and sycophants took a chainsaw to this low-hanging fruit without much domestic resistance. They did so, of course, without bothering to ask any of those living in the international shadows, or those working diligently to assist them, how they were supposed to get along without the medicines, food, shelter, educational programs and the like routinely provided by USAID.

I am highlighting USAID for a reason. What is the point in shuttering that agency’s capacity to constructively utilize less than 1% of the US federal budget to relieve human suffering and to send a message to the troubled world that America is better than the Made-in-America armaments that too often create the devastation in the first place? Cruelty is the point. Because they can is the point. Not one single American not employed by USAID or working under contract to USAID will suffer. Only the weakest will; maybe a toddler in Niger will die of malnutrition, but who cares?

This is what you voted for

And if they don’t care about the toddler in Niger, they soon won’t care about the toddler in Appalachia, or the toddler in Arizona, or the toddler in any of those right-wing states that already neglect the needy so the oligarchs can have another go at another tax cut. If you don’t believe it, keep an eye on Social Security for seniors, Medicaid and food stamps for the poor and increased law enforcement to roust the homeless and to detain those who support those who cannot support themselves.

Enjoy, America. This is what you voted for. Trump and his merry band of oligarchs and sycophants told you what they were going to do, and too many of you either voted for it or stayed home.

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Will American Democracy Perish Like Rome’s?

Maybe now, and in response, resistance will take on new meaning in a country slowly trying to free itself from the opiate of delusion. Critically, to be effective, that resistance has to be focused, collective and inclusive. And it has to make the oligarchs and sycophants fear a day of reckoning that can only come when accountability for the cruelty, chaos and lawlessness is fully imposed.

Don’t be fooled again. Today’s Democratic politicians have more flaws than they can count, but they have rarely sought to undermine the very government that they seek to lead and which many have taken an oath to support. It must be our time now to force those Democratic politicians to be so much better than they have been, to leave their comfort zones and collegiality behind and to emphatically resist the dismantling of America’s federal government as every cruel, corrupt and extreme Republican agenda item is rolled out for all to see.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.