Whew. Vacation week. That means I finally have an opportunity to string together a few coherent thoughts that don’t have to do with marketing, reports, or what I’m putting on somebody’s social media platforms today. It’s been a busy couple of months.
At any rate. A few thoughts.
I am deeply concerned about the integrity of the 2020 elections. I think the Trump administration and its affiliates (guys like Rudy Giuliani) are already hard at work messing with the upcoming election. I think getting an honest election result will be a miracle. But it might happen. And if it does happen?
Then I’m even more concerned about the peaceful transfer of power from the Trump administration to whomever comes next.
But let’s do one worse: I think there’s a better than average chance that Trump wins in 2020. At least that means he has to leave in 2024, right? Well what on Earth makes you think that? Because it’s illegal for him to serve more than two terms? Since when has something being illegal ever stopped him?
Trump’s already sending up trial balloons about “coup attempts” and making “jokes” about being owed two more years due to the Mueller investigation. Let me remind you: first he “jokes” about something, then he gets serious about it, then he does it. That’s how Trump works.
Let me also point out that Trump is fighting Congress’ oversight authority harder than any president ever has before. He’s refusing to let staff answer subpoenas. He’s fighting investigations tooth and nail. Trump is a man who thinks that being president makes him a dictator, and he’s furious whenever he runs into a situation that doesn’t let him behave that way. That’s part of the reason why he’s so in love with executive orders. He gets to, in theory, just say a thing and make it happen.
Trump is a man who doesn’t just want to be a dictator. He believes he deserves to be a dictator. He believes that it is right and necessary for him to be a dictator. He desperately wants to be the United States’ Putin.
I realize that sounds like hyperbole, and that people don’t want to believe it. Americans – the ones who are against this sort of thing, anyway – are very committed to their “it can’t happen here” mentality.
It can happen here. It is happening here. Right now. You’re watching it happen.
But what do you do about it? Dude I don’t know. Call your electeds. That’s all I’ve got. Call them every day. Email them every day. Hit them up on Twitter and Facebook every day. Make a little morning ritual of it. Give yourself a half hour every morning to slide into the DMs of all your electeds and remind them that the current president of the United States is an actual criminal and for pity’s sake could they please grow a pair and do something about that?
Image credit: Donald Trump, by Gage Skidmore. Source and licensing.
Notes & Thoughts 