Letter: Trump is the enemy of the people

Editor,

In an apologetic attempt to rationalize the dire state of the nation, political commentators blame the institution of democracy, and by extension, the American people, for the “election” of vulgar impotence and erratic incompetence. While the psychological assessment is correct, the political assumption is false and needs qualification.

Despite widespread political immaturity, the people are in fact not at fault here. Donald Trump is an absolute minority president with the support of perhaps roughly 20 percent. He was rejected by the popular vote, which he lost by three million. This defeat still consumes him. It led him to install the so-called “Commission on Election Integrity” which aims at suppressing enough votes to secure future elections. Trump knows he can win elections only through manipulation.

To maintain the corruptibility of the system as a safeguard, politicians hold on to the antiquated undemocratic institution of the Electoral College. It is here where elections are fixed against the will of the people. This happened in 2000 in Florida with the help of the Supreme Court, in 2004 in Ohio with the manipulation of voting machines and now again in 2016 with purged voter rolls, targeted voter suppression laws, discounted legitimate votes in Democratic districts, manipulated voting machines in the hands of Republican governors in swing states and the decadent support for a decadent candidate by a sensationalistic media that could not get enough of Trump’s dangerously divisive rhetoric. The Russians played only a minor role in this electoral coup.

Given these dire circumstances the rapid decline of the American presidency was predictable. The question now is how to get rid of an illegitimate president who thrives on the manufactured support of a gerrymandered majority in Congress. Even if, or once, proven that this presidency is illegitimate, there is no constitutional recourse to undo the harm done to the electorate, to the Democratic candidate and the people of the country at large. The impotent system is incompetent, and this is why it suffers from the irresponsible impotent incompetence of the current White House occupant that has already cost numerous lives in this country and countless more abroad. New elections must be a constitutional option. One cannot wait out a disaster. One must undo it.

The longer this presidency continues, the emptier the “basket of deplorables” becomes. People are embarrassed and wish no longer to be associated with this danger to the world and menace to the planet. They finally realize, Trump’s mythic promises are existential threats not only to them, the American people, but humanity at large. They are ashamed at the daily manifestation of the sick national psyche. It is more than evident to everyone: Trump is the enemy of the people. As the spectacle unfolds with the prospect of civil and nuclear war, spineless spectatorship couched in docile “democratic” obedience becomes complicit in the looming catastrophe.

There is a point when patient “democratic” cowardice on all levels of society bears the guilt of the crimes the government commits abroad and at home. The targeting and murder of Muslims, transgender people, black and other so-called non-white minorities, all the “beautiful babies” buried in the rubble after U.S. airstrikes, the plight and death of the sick and homeless.

All this happens with the silent consent of the people. Only concerted organized resistance will put an end to this nightmare.

What is left is the basket of “despicables” who fuel the flames of hatred to divide and conquer any unified resistance. Past legacies such as racism, sexism, militarism, materialism and xenophobia are welcome tools. When Malcolm X spoke of the “blond, blue-eyed devil” he was invoking the words of Jesus Christ who bluntly accused his enemies and assassins of being “disciples of the devil.” In a similar tone, Friedrich Nietzsche warned of “the time of the most despicable man,” the “last man...who is no longer able to despise himself.”

As always in American history, the time has come and is now. There is no excuse. The U.S. must wake up from the nightmare of the American Dream! The hypocrisy of American Christianity, which calls the devil a “god-send,” is exposed. The mendacity of this dollar-democracy has reached its breaking point.

If there is still courage left in this pseudo-democracy — and there is — people will rise up and put an end to this nonsense, to finally establish true democracy once and for all.

Joachim L. Oberst

UNM Instructor