(ThyBlackMan.com) With each passing day it becomes manifestly more apparent that U.S. voters made a serious mistake in the 2016 presidential election; sending to the Oval Office not the lesser, but more evil, of the two candidates. Every scandal, controversy and peccadillo keeps the abject corruptness of the Trump administration on a near continuous display. Nixon’s Watergate pales in comparison. A look at who the president has surrounded himself with shows more than just incompetence, but a purposeful attempt at “deconstruction of the administrative state” as former White House strategist Steve Bannon put it.
A few examples:
- The head of the Environmental Protection Agency has rolled back regulations, like emission controls for automobiles, intended to control air pollution and is a climate change skeptic;
- Ben Carson, the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development derides Fair Housing laws intended to end residential segregation, once a main mission of the agency, as “social engineering” and has put on hold enforcement mechanisms;
- Attorney General Jeff Sessions is hell-bent on reversing the criminal justice reforms of the Obama-Holder era and returning to mass incarceration and maximum sentencing for even minor non-violent crimes;
- Energy Secretary Rick Perry once called for the abolition of the department he now heads, even though he couldn’t remember its name during a presidential debate, and did not know his agency was responsible for safeguarding the nation’s nuclear weapons stockpile; and
- Betsy DeVos, Secretary of Education, said during her confirmation hearing that schools needed guns to “ward off grizzly bears” and recently admitted she had made no effort to visit any low performing public schools to see what could be done to encourage improvements.
It’s important to remember when electing any Chief Elected Official of an administrative branch of government (Mayor, County Executive, Governor, President) you are not only selecting an individual, but their team as well. Cabinet Secretaries and Department Heads are who actually carry out the policies, or in the case of the current president, whims, of the CEO. And these people are often the “shadow of the leader”.
And it’s not just the policies of this administration that are having a deleterious effect on our country’s well-being, the rampant corruption and use of the public purse for private gain are pointing our republic in the direction of financial ruin. After only one year in power, the Congressional Budget Office recently announced that the country is on track to have budget deficits exceeding $1 trillion by 2020 thanks to tax cuts and the last budget deal. The news media no longer reports on the costs to the treasury for the president’s weekend jaunts to one of his golf resorts and Congress shrugs at the millions of dollars expended by cabinet secretaries for personal expenses like “security”, office furniture and travel.
Former CIA Director, John Brennen, summed up the Trump administration in one word: kakistocracy – a system of government run by the worst, least qualified or most unscrupulous citizens. It is said that in a democracy people get the government they deserve. For those who sat out the last election saying “it didn’t make any difference”, or lodged protest votes for candidates with no chance of winning like Jill Stein, we see that elections do have consequences. If we are going to save our democracy we have to start emphasizing not only our “rights” as citizens, but also our responsibilities.
It is encouraging to see the young high school students who are organizing to stop gun violence already get this. They are registering their peers to vote in the upcoming mid-term elections, with the mantra “vote them out” for politicians who do not support sensible gun safety measures. In addition, we all have to remain vigilant, speaking out against the reversal of policies that have been in place promoting our safety, justice and equality and the promulgation of new ones limiting the same.
This is not the worst condition our country has been in, by far. The Civil War, Great Depression and World War II, for example, all posed more existential threats to our national survival. We would do well to remember a quote from Albert Einstein, “The world (or America) will not be destroyed by those who do evil, but by those who watch them without doing anything.”
Staff Writer; Harry D. Sewell