(this article was published in Medium.com)
Donald Trump tapped into a dangerous American sentiment in 2016.
But remember this date: November 2nd, 2004. A major turning point in American history occurred that day. On that day, George W. Bush got re-elected legitimately, and it became clear what America wanted: God, guns, and greed. A majority of Americans, including those who stood to benefit most from affordable healthcare, gun control, fewer tax loopholes for the rich and more regulations on Wall Street, seemed instead to favour ignorance (i.e. Creationism and God), the NRA, market-driven healthcare, oppression of women’s reproductive rights, military bravado without follow-through, and unrestrained abuses by Wall Street.
Combine the historical impact of W’s win in 2004 with Trump’s election in 2016 and what you get is this: America will never be interested in making wholesale changes to provide inclusive societal approaches to the well-being of its populace. Instead, the every-man-for-himself approach, ostensibly answering only to a higher power, will likely continue. This will lead to a gradual decline in the financial and international stature of the United States. It’s already happening. The same happened to the Holy Roman Empire.
Eight years of Obama slowed the deterioration, but Trump’s four years accelerated it beyond Republican’s wildest dreams. Evidence abounds:
Trump’s tax code that increased the wealth of the 0.1% and widened wealth inequality said it all. His support in the financial sector was to be expected but his uneducated supporters went along whole hog as well. And Trump’s tax returns? Meh, they all said.
Despite numerous mass shootings in the past two decades, Americans were not interested in putting the lid on private ownership of military-grade weaponry. Congressional candidates chose to please the NRA over their constituents. The Obama administration failed to pass any significant gun control legislation, and under Trump, any lingering interest in reducing gun violence in the U.S. withered.
State laws, pushed through by bible-thumping Republicans (including women!) eroded women’s reproductive freedoms. Dressed up as pro-life, defended in the name of God, it translated to misogyny and oppression of women, and both W and Trump have been the heroes of the effort. Women voting for this legislation is an astounding example of misguided belief, selfishness and ignorance. But now, with Barrett in place, Roe v. Wade is in jeopardy.
The economy. So-called ‘job-creators’ have never cared about creating real jobs for Americans. It has always been just a slogan for Republicans. They care about creating profits for themselves, and do so only when they are allowed to out-source to cheap, run-down labor forces in the developing world. They continue to fight all attempts to change tax codes that might reduce their profits by one nickel. And concerning federally funded infrastructure projects? Meh, ‘it’s not American’, or ‘it’s socialist’.
Back in ’08, every person who worked in finance blamed the recession on Bill Clinton’s freeing up of mortgage money to the middle class in the 1990s. They accepted no culpability for investment bankers figuring out how to game the system, making oodles of money, and dumping all risk downstream to unsuspecting homebuyers who shouldn’t have been given mortgages in the first place. “Clinton made me do it,” the finance sector used to say as they stuffed their portfolios. And now the smartest and richest have learned to game the new system and we’re back to where we were. Those same gamers still talk of deregulation, fewer taxes and ‘job-creators’ as solutions to all our problems. In a word, greed.
Democrats are partly to blame for all of this. They rejected real change back in 2016 and again in November, 2020. If the Senate flips to the Dems, modest inroads could still be made toward a society that values the well-being of its people. But if Democrats lose in the battle for the senate, Republicans will rightly celebrate, having effectively neutered Biden’s legislative agenda. At that point, God, guns and greed will become etched in America’s headstone, thus hastening the decline of American society and any international influence she once had.
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