Is Donald J Trump a Divine Gift?

Don’t get upset with me yet! Let me explain, because most Americans would, at first thought, really struggle with such an idea.

Many believe, and I am one of them, that America has been losing its way socially, politically, financially, and certainly spiritually for many decades. I am framing this statement in the context of my personal lifetime of over seven decades. Some may argue this goes much further back than that, but I wasn’t there then.

I have written before that since WWII we have progressively become a nation of narcissists. Thinking of narcissism as a spectrum, there are varying degrees of how we individually fit that statement. Some are malignant, some are very mildly afflicted. But selfish social and economic influences have affected most of us. We are, to a varying degree, out to get everything we can for ourselves without being very conscious of how it may affect those around us, and more broadly how we are affecting health, nature, climate, and natural resource depletion. We have been socially conditioned to not care.

What is being experienced worldwide at this time with the coronavirus pandemic is an extraordinary study of human nature that has more complexity than we may be attuned to understanding while we are living in the midst of it. There is much symbolism embedded in this experience that should nor go unnoticed. Consider the growing ubiquity of wearing masks out in public. While this is an important protective practice, it also symbolizes how we are all the same at the most core aspect of humanity. We all look the same from a distance while wearing them. We are seeing some examples of individualism expressed by people wearing “designer” masks. That may be a matter of people making their masks at home with materials they have available. Even though those examples may stand out in the crowd, it is still a fact that the mask also symbolizes unification and egalitarianism.

Now then, consider Donald J Trump as a symbol of what ails us as a nation. What will historians profess to be the catalyst and reason for someone like DJT to land seemingly unpredictably in the role of President of the United States? You can be certain this will be the subject of much academic study for a long time. Most Americans choose to believe he is an anomaly. But can we also acknowledge that he is a painfully true reflection? Is he the manifestation of our collective greed, our lack of caring for our brothers and sisters, our own narcissism, our disregard for all things sacred such as nature and life in general? Is DJT what we get as the national leader when we lose faith in our institutions and the people who lead and serve them? Were we blindly headed to where we are now because we saw no reason to pay attention to how political leaders are selected and handed the reins of power? Arguments to the contrary are difficult to take.

I mark our national slide toward the gulley to the ascent of Ronald Reagan. It is important to recognize here that we tend to put blame on the leaders we select and install in office when they are actually reflections of our national collective intentions. During the Reagan years, many national institutions were dismantled, and many vital services were deregulated or privatized to sink or swim in the capitalism ocean. It is not as though these vital services were failing to deliver on their purpose, because they were. And once they were delivered from their institutional status and protections, they have not served the general public that well, except for the most affluent members of the population. The airline industry has devolved into a despised business model. The medical industry and all its subsidiary elements have become dangerous to society in many respects. One glaring example of that danger is the state of the mental health arm of the industry. Efforts to move public education into private the sector have mostly failed while ironically enriching a select few in their efforts to transition it into a for profit model. The banking industry was deregulated to permit multi-bank holding companies, leading to the nearly total demise of community banking. There are many more examples of decline of public services that no longer protect and elevate the majority of Americans. We see other affluent nations around the world practicing a very different and successful approach to serving their citizens. We like to whine about how high their taxes are as if that is a bad thing. Haven’t we noticed that the people who live there do not agree with our concerns about that? So that is where we allowed Reaganism to take us. It doesn’t stop there.

George HW Bush became the next President and he attempted to continue Reaganism but ran out of money because of those policies and tax cuts. He had to raise taxes repeatedly. Meanwhile, he tried to reengineer global politics and managed to damage our international credibility with a few criminal capers. He also got us into a war for oil, while claiming it was our duty to oust a leader of an oil rich nation for “gassing his own people”. Our own sordid history regarding such matters reveals that we do not actually have that much of an issue with such acts. We just wanted to make sure the oil supply did not end up being controlled by Russia. GHWB did not do much for the economy, either.

Bill Clinton comes on the scene as the savior from the other party. The dotcom era was actually launched during GHWB years, but began to scale up rapidly during Clinton’s terms, thus filling the government coffers with windfall revenue no one saw coming. That new revenue came so fast and vast that it created a government surplus before politicians could find ways to spend it. For that, we gave Clinton credit for “balancing the budget”. That didn’t last, but we will touch on that later. Clinton is also credited (or blamed?) with revoking the Glass-Steagall act, which was put in place after the huge savings and loan industry collapse resulting from Reagan’s deregulation binge. Clinton was convinced by his Wall Street buddies that it was no longer necessary, thus setting the stage for the 2008 financial collapse. Clinton also pushed through NAFTA, resulting in the near total demise of American based manufacturing of a long list of vital products. The sugar high of dirt-cheap goods flowing in from China has been wearing off ever since. And Clinton, in league with Newt Gingrich, was nearly successful at privatizing the Social Security System. We have Monica Lewinsky to thank for saving the nation from that future debacle because the day before the Clinton-Gingrich dandy duo was to present their planned coup to congress, the news came out about his dalliance with her. And that sets the stage for another Bush-whack.

Bush II enters the scene. The dotcom bubble collapses and the stock market went into a tailspin that looks like hello 1929. Fortunes circle the bowl. But, hey, it was easy money anyway, right? It was actually not even real. His national popularity was sinking by the day according to reputable polls. He was becoming a laughing stock globally as well as domestically. The nine eleven disaster arrived just in the nick of time to save W’s presidency from a certain single term, just like his father. Unlike his father, W’s election victory legitimacy was, and still is, much in doubt, and required a partisan Supreme Court intervention to resolve it. To further bolster his presidential fortunes, historic powers were granted to the executive branch to make the nation safe from terrorists. No doubt, Dick Cheney should be credited for the skillful power grab at a time when Americans were still feeling the shock and fear of that infamous day in history. Thanks to W winning a second election again under questionable circumstances, taxes were lowered, and there was more deregulation in the financial sector that led to a feeding frenzy of questionable financial instruments being sold globally while lining the pockets of criminal bankers. Life was really great, if you were them, until it wasn’t. Enter the financial crash of 2008. Almost every American saw this one coming, while remarkably the chairman of the Federal Reserve and all of the major New York bank geniuses, did not. This being an election year, Obama thought that if he was successful in winning the presidency, he knew what the opportunities in front of him would be. Was he ever in for a surprise! Hello, world recession!

Obama and his Wall Street cabinet made some historically important decisions that were a link in the chain bringing us to where we are today. They decided to let bygones be bygones. No criminal bankers went to jail. W and Cheney, war criminals by any honorable measure, were not tried or prosecuted. “Let’s just look forward and let the past be the past,” our newly minted black president declared. And the social and political bar was lowered yet again. Obama lost both the house and senate at the first midterm election. Political experts like to remind us that midterms are rarely beneficial to incumbent presidents, but it also means the electorate is not impressed with what is happening and are willing to stir the pot at the polls at their next opportunity. Obama had just shepherded in a new medical coverage plan that was nearly DOA by the time the republicans finished chopping it up. And it remains a point of partisan controversy to this day. By the time Obama finished his second term, American voters had decided they were open for change. Something new. Hillary was Obama 2.0, they said. Let’s try a business man who has no political knowledge, skill, or intelligence. What could go wrong?

And now, here we are, with a solipsistic, malignant narcissist who shows signs of early stage dementia at the helm of the ship of state. Again, what could go wrong? We still do not know how much more can go wrong because it just keeps rolling at us every day. It is said, and history quite clearly reveals, that every president will be tested with some kind of major event that was unforeseen. The president is not generally measured by the incident itself, but rather how he leads the people through the event to a livable outcome. DJT does not have the capacity to lead or make people feel safe and secure. He is the antithesis of that. He is a reflection of the national consciousness and he is what we deserve at this time. We can deny this reality if we want, but it won’t make any difference.

So, what could possibly be divine about this, you ask? Plenty. The global and national impact of the coronavirus pandemic will usher in changes to every aspect of our lives in ways we are yet to see and understand. The big reset button is being pushed. Fragile components of our political, financial and social systems will not be able to survive the unemployment meltdown. And in our virtually pure capitalism system, people have to work and have incomes to drive the economic machine. We are on the verge of being like a car sitting on the side of the road with no gas in the tank and no money in the pocket to refill it. Nature teaches us that before something new and healthy can grow and thrive, something has to die.

Our old ways are dying right before our eyes. DJT is the “gift” that ends the slow decay and accelerates the restart that society has to have in order to survive. That is divine order, even though it can be very painful when we attempt to resist the inevitable. Let’s stop resisting and restart anew together. How can I help?