Donald Trump, Your Staff Is Broken

The American people are speaking: Brutal policing is not to be tolerated. COVID-19 must be addressed. A new President is needed.

In the Lord of the Rings trilogy, an evil wizard named Saruman builds an army to serve the dark lord Sauron. It is destroyed by a force of nature, and Gandalf stands before the Orthanc (Saruman’s home) and announces “Saruman, your staff is broken.”

Instantly, Saruman’s staff explodes.

The Trump campaign’s resounding defeat in Tulsa on June 20, 2020 signals the beginning of the end for this disastrous US President. After months of denying the danger posed by the COVID-19 pandemic which has already slain over one hundred thousand Americans, after calling for police brutality in the face of protests against police brutality and a corrupt American government, and after years of mismanaging the United States Government, Donald Trump’s decline is palpable. At last.

Funding cuts in the midst of a pandemic

The government cannot function under Trump, and its citizens are dying as a direct result of his inaction. After failing to take action to stop the government, then forcing the states to handle it on their own without the assistance of federal agencies American taxpayers have paid billions of dollars into, Trump’s approach has shown itself to be an utter failure. Even rural conservative strongholds are seeing the virus case count explode in the most recent uptick in case counts.

The unmasked thousands of people who crowded together to hear the President speak last Saturday will probably see a large number of COVID-19 cases among them, and many of the President’s supporters may die. This will make present the dangers of the disease to other Trumpers, which in turn will decrease their numbers and drive even more support for Vice President Biden on the home stretch of the campaign.

After repeatedly campaigning the notion that testing for COVID causes the US to look bad, which is a malicious claim false to the point of nihilism and utterly misguided, Trump cut American funding for the WHO. As if this, in addition to the egregious mishandling of the rest of the outbreak, the President has now cut funding for COVID testing, too.

As Trump’s presidency has continued, his egregious and narcissistic misinterpretation of reality has only gotten worse. And now this malignant narcissism is ending the lives of American citizens at a shocking rate. Why? To cover up for incompetence. Trump is a President so unqualified to make staffing decisions that he would rather let important government offices such as the CDC sit on their thumbs than provide funds and manpower to allow them to function as they should — indeed, as they would have, under any other recent American administration.

The out-of-touch US Government under Trump

In addition to utter, undeniable incompetence, Trump has made the case that he is out of touch with his citizenship with respect to race relations and civil rights. Regressive stances, racism, and nationalism all signal Trump’s inability to lead even the most gullible faction of the American electorate — much less the cosmopolitan variety of American citizen found in the cities.

Technology companies and the media find themselves, perhaps unsurprisingly, at odds with this administration. To some extent, a healthy antagonism between the media and the government allows citizens to find out things that leaders would prefer for them not to know. As with many American traditions, however, this friendly rivalry has turned toxic under Trump, who refers to the press as the enemy of the people and loves to quip that, if the media were to be closed down for a month or two, all our problems would vanish.

Perhaps they would — but vanishing and going away are two different things. The President makes this quip because he is annoyed that the media does its best to scrutinize him on behalf of the American voter, as it should. This is a testament to the ability of the free press to check a tyrannical regime.

As January nears, Trump will become more narcissistic and more dangerous. We need the media more than ever, as it is becoming readily apparent that he has no intention of giving up the fight to dominate the American people.

The impending fall of the regime

Incompetence and a lack of leadership are problematic, but perhaps some Americans still just love the idea of Trump enough to keep him in office. Too bad his political movement lacks any sort of vision of the future to unite them behind. To be frank, this is always the problem with totalitarianism. The idea that citizens of a nation can be its enemies is galvanizing to disenfranchised ignoramuses, but despite any reduction in their numbers via execution or deportation, more enemies are only made by such hostile measures.

Thus, fascist ideologues can only ever decline — they, along with their movements, are enemy factories. Eventually they’re all crushed by the weight of opposition they themselves have facilitated, and this is what we’re seeing with the mass protests sweeping the United States. The police are neither powerful nor malicious enough to cause real problems for so many protesters and, in recognition of their losing battle of numbers, many of the worst forces are being either defunded or otherwise neutered by their constituencies.

It is high time to elect a leader willing to see the real problems we face and hold this person to account to take action to deal with these issues on our behalf. Honesty, integrity, and the ability to listen to American citizens in urban — as well as rural — areas are all key requirements for the job. The opposition party has selected Joe Biden as its candidate, and though many on the left resent this decision, Biden looks primed to unseat Trump and rebuild the US Government.

It is time for the government we elected to begin to play ball, even simply for the short few months it has left. A hard rain’s gonna fall, and it will drive all of these creeps back under ground to become the prey of our state-funded vigilantes. Trump and his charlatans will soon be reminded that they serve at the pleasure of the American people. Seeing Biden with a double-digit lead in incumbent-driven American presidential politics is certainly a welcome moment for us all, but we must not let up. We must not relent.

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Thomas Dylan Daniel is an existential philosopher, professional ethicist, author, and biophysicist. Connect via his website or Facebook, or have a look at his books.