There have been a number of apocalyptic takes on where things are headed in this country both before and after Donald Trump won the election and, later, took the Oath of Office. Trump is, in some ways, the ultimate outsider, at least so far as he has no prior political experience. He quickly moved to nominate a series of candidates to various posts who would have been scorned as "unqualified" in any other era. And then, after coming into office, he pushed the most incoherently aggressive agenda in memory, taking on things like a de facto religious test for entering this country, pursuing an expensive agenda on our southern border, and pushing to weaken health care for millions of Americans. None of these things were surprising, at least not if you paid attention to how he campaigned.
This article, in particular, lays out the very real dangers facing this country as it moves forward. The goal of this blog being to represent a moderate viewpoint, I will point out that many of these fears could have been said of any President in modern times, certainly since FDR. But the convergence of all of these risk factors is something somewhat unique to President Trump, particularly coupled with the reality of the world of media coverage and 24/7 news and opinion saturation courtesy of the internet. Simply put, I am not saying that what is forecast in this article will happen, but I am saying that you are pretty ignorant if you can't see that it is plausible that it could happen.
As is often the case, I don't have the time to write out all my thoughts, nor do you have the time to want to read them all. I could go 10,000 words on this very topic without hitting the bottom, but that wouldn't serve much of a point. I'd encourage you to click on the above article and read it in as many sittings as necessary; it is quite long, but quite good. It is written by David Frum, who served in the Bush 43 Administration as a speech writer from 2001-2002. So he is not exactly a "bleeding liberal"; quite the opposite, he would have been considered a relatively mainstream conservative merely a few years ago. Now, in writing this article, he should lend at least some credence to the validity of the fears contained within, although I will leave it up to you, the individual reader, to determine how much you agree or disagree with the premise.
What we all have to do is think critically about each and every thing we see the Trump Administration do, and take articles like this into our mind to allow them to add to the consideration we give to what we see. People in Germany in the 1920s didn't foresee the rise of Hitler, but that happened. A modern decimation of democracy, however, is unlikely to occur in a similar way to the 1920s and 1930s, a point that Frum makes strongly in his article. It is far more likely that the rise will come, as Natalie Portman's character in Star Wars Episode III says, "with thunderous applause." Frum's article will give you a vision as to how that could occur.
On my end, I will pull out one thought from the article and my other observations from the last few weeks, and I will share it with you. The press is, undoubtedly, in a tough place right now with the Trump Administration. I grew up on the Gingrich-Clinton-Limbaugh dynamic, I have been an observer to the rise of Fox "News," and the emphatic radicalizing of that outlet, and I have watched as the internet gave great power to anyone who could access it to have all information at their finger tips, if only they were smart enough to decipher the difference between real and fake information. And in all that time, the last twenty (plus) years of increasingly polarized discourse, I've never seen anything like what we've just witnessed over the last few weeks between the Trump Administration and the very journalists who are crucial to our country's ability to determine if this Administration is actually doing the people's work, or simply seeking to further their own agendas.
There are a number of news outlets that I turn to regularly: The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal (when I can get behind their pay wall), The Economist, CNN, Politico, and The Atlantic, to name a few. I read from a number of different sources, liberal and conservative editorial boards, domestic and international viewpoints, to try to pull together a coherent middle ground. There are a few journalists in the TV world that I have a decent amount of respect for. Chuck Todd, at Meet The Press, is one. While he is not that close to Tim Russert (no one is), he is generally well researched and able to present a balanced, yet firm, view.
He has struggled with this trait (presenting a balanced view) in the first two weeks since Trump took the Oath of Office. He has been much more combative with Trump Representatives (Kellyanne Conway and Reince Priebus) than he has been with the Democrat guests on his show (Chuck Schumer and Tim Kaine). Now, there may be very good reason for this; Conway dropped the "alternative facts" bomb on MTP, while Priebus blatantly and arrogantly refused to answer Todd's questions. But, regardless of the potential validity of Todd's approach, the optics are far from good. Just the feel of his questioning, interrupting the Trump representatives more, being more firm in tone with them, opens him up to being blasted by the Trump Administration as being "fake news" and a part of the "liberal media."
President Trump and his underlings have proven to be the masters of misdirection to avoid coverage or substantive discussion regarding actual news which would really draw him in to trouble. He quickly pivots from real stories (like his laundry list of conflicts of interest or the blatant nepotism in employing his son-in-law in the West Wing), creating drama somewhere else to take people's eyes off the ball. Todd plays into this "skill" of the Trump team when he attacks, as it allows them to cry foul and state that he was attacking them. But perhaps this is a lose/lose situation. Either Todd looks like a "bleeding liberal" by insisting on following the unanswered question (thereby allowing Trump's lackeys to position him as "fake news" and a part of the "liberal mainstream media), or he follows the misdirection and allows them to control the dialogue (thereby allowing them to skirt the question anyways, but vibrantly failing to really attempt to hold them accountable or to get the public real information.). Perhaps, in fact, the position that Todd and his media family are in is the epitome of a lose/lose situation.
Ultimately, the journalistic establishment is the best check we have at the present time against unimpeded deterioration of our democracy at the hands of this Administration. If we know what is going on we are all more likely to call our Representatives and Senators, to go out and vote at local elections, then in the mid-terms, and to be prepared in 2020 to take the country in a different direction, if that is what is necessary at that time. This is such a small slice of the pie that Frum presents in his article, so I again implore you to read it. Print it out if you must and read it like a magazine article, bit by bit. But take the time to read it, share it, and allow it to enter your thought processes and schema as you work through the next four years. The future of our country very easily could depend on it.
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