The U.S. vs. Donald Trump: and The Winner Is …? [An urgent update]

Can the U.S. take down Donald Trump — or will Trump and a seditious GOP destroy the U.S.?

[Note: This is an urgent update — since our sociopolitical situation keeps worsening — of an article first published in June ’23.]

Despite many Americans’ — and also some Republicans’ — fondest wishes, Donald Trump remains at the forefront of American politics — and has definitively captured the GOP.

True to his narcissistic, publicity-seeking personality, which is both combative and deeply paranoid, he’s still constantly in the news — and is in our faces almost non-stop.

And despite his numerous criminal indictments, he’s very successfully mounted a third, grievance-based presidential campaign — and is still intentionally undermining our political and legal systems.

We — the U.S. — are not handling it well. Not well at all.

Trump is the ‘Supreme Meddler’ of our time

Donald Trump is the maddeningly persistent ‘Supreme Meddler’ of our time. And he instigates intense chaos everywhere he goes — and whenever he opens his mouth.

Over the past year, he’s been loudly injecting his dire legal jeopardy into the very center of his presidential campaign. In fact, his supposed ‘persecution’ (not prosecution) by the hated Feds and the ‘deep state’ is now the overriding theme of his campaign.

His platform or plan for America (if it can be called that) is simple and chilling: grab more power for the president, and exact revenge and retribution against all his ‘persecutors.’

Folks, we’re in extremely dangerous territory here. Trump’s led a weirdly ‘charmed life’ — and nothing seems to stop him. Even his current status as a multiply-indicted criminal defendant hasn’t slowed him down — at all. In fact, so far it’s benefited him, immensely!

That’s how bizarre and crazy things have gotten in our country.

Every time Trump got indicted for serious crimes he played the ‘victim card,’ attacked the judges and courts — and his poll numbers went up, and he raked in more donations. And as the de facto kingpin of the GOP, he stifled any viable primary competition — and now has a lock on the GOP nomination.

Again.

That’s right, a twice-impeached, four-times-indicted ex-president, who lies, cheats, and bullies endlessly and insists he ‘really won’ the 2020 election, is again the GOP’s presumptive pick for president — and no one has the slightest idea how to slow his momentum.

That’s just … full-on crazy. And horrifying.

We’re still (!) caught in the ‘Trump Trap’

Pro-Trump Republicans should be thoroughly ashamed (of course, they’re not). Trump is an utterly amoral, self-centered, and devious con man who doesn’t have a patriotic or altruistic bone in his body.

Being such a brash, shameless narcissist and bully, he keeps reasserting his macho dominance, and ceaselessly attacks our system of government, our voting processes … and now our entire system of justice and the courts.

In a sense, Trump has been (metaphorically) beating up and raping our nation, its people, and its essential values. And he continues to viciously rape and pillage.

Clearly, our society is still stuck in the ‘Trump trap.’ Right-leaning Americans have been gaslighted for many years by Trump, Fox ‘News,’ and far-right media — and deliberately misled into a dangerous trap. And all along the U.S. has ‘zoned out,’ minimized this reality, and drastically underestimated the dire effects Trump and MAGA have been creating.

And the madness just … continues. And continues. Currently, Trump, his followers, various Trump wannabes, and hordes of spineless GOP politicians (the vast majority) continue to attack and undermine American society and democracy — loudly and relentlessly.

Yet they call themselves ‘patriots.’ The hypocrisy and immense self-deception are staggering.

It needs to stop. America desperately needs it all to — stop.

But unfortunately … it won’t. Trump’s irrepressible narcissism and needy, bullying ego — along with a submissive GOP — will make sure of that.

For the good of our nation, it would be wonderful if some benevolent godlike entity came along and just … disappeared Donald Trump from American politics.

But there’s no savior in sight, and Trumpism look like it’s here to stay for the foreseeable future (at least through 2025, minimum).

That means we face two more years (probably more) of this horrendous, terribly dangerous B.S.

What the U.S. has suffered — and what we’re facing now

Thus, if we want to save our semi-democracy, it’s crucial to examine exactly how Trump and MAGA have impacted and deeply affected our lives, our politics, and our society.

We need to fully grasp what we’ve all been through over the past nine years … and also what we’re likely to face during and especially after the looming 2024 election.

Imagine this — straight from the ‘truth is stranger than fiction’ files: There’s nothing keeping Trump from continuing his presidential run even if he’s convicted of serious crimes.

Weirdly, there’s no guidance at all about such an eventuality in our Constitution. None!

Even worse, there’s the utterly bizarre prospect of being ruled by a convicted, not-yet-imprisoned President who is totally bent on revenge … and makes it his first order of business to pardon himself, after which he’d incite the main event: pushing a seditious, vengeful GOP to help him attack, imprison, or destroy all his many ‘enemies.’ (Thankfully Trump, if elected, couldn’t pardon himself for state convictions — only the Federal ones.)

It’s an ugly, horrifying scenario that’s emerging — undoubtedly the craziest and most dangerous in American history (except for the Civil War). And we’re stuck in its midst, and living it — so we have to face it head on if we ever want to put the tragedy of Trump and Trumpism behind us.

Seven ways Trump and MAGA are wrecking America

I’ve identified seven main areas in which Trump and MAGA have had lasting, very destructive effects on American life, society, and politics. Here they are, in no particular order:

1) The mainstreaming of constant public lying and shameless deception — and the simultaneous mainstreaming of rage-inducing, fact-free demagoguery. Lying is Trump’s fallback position, and it’s what he does naturally many times each day. His constant lying and demagoguery have created a huge trust gap in the U.S., leading to a collapse in interpersonal trust and open communication — and even to bitter, estranged families. When shameless public lying is normalized … watch out!

2) The mainstreaming of wild paranoia and fear-mongering. Goading Americans into a noxious ‘junior high school’ mentality. Trump keeps contributing — massively — to the further dumbing-down of American politics, and has catapulted our election and justice systems into disarray and chaos. Plus, his defiant narcissism has had truly terrible effects on many Americans’ public demeanor and actions — think about the rapid rise of ‘unruly’ (read: selfish and violent) passengers on airline flights, and enraged, entitled parents disrupting school board meetings, etc.

3) Successfully branding real news media as the “fake news media” — while he and partisan outlets like Fox ‘News’ endlessly spread actual fake news. Shifting the focus of politics onto divisive culture war issues. The free press has always been a bulwark of American democracy — but now, due mainly to Trump’s endless attacks on mainstream media and ‘fake news,’ that bulwark is collapsing while partisan propaganda increasingly reigns supreme.

Trump and far-right media outlets like Fox ‘News’ and Newsmax have successfully painted partisan lies/distortions as ‘patriotic’ truth-telling. This is a major political and propaganda coup — in both senses of the word. Overall, Trump’s ‘fake news’ campaign has been very bad news for American democracy — and for the very idea of ‘truth.’

4) Undermining the moral foundations and so-called ‘guardrails’ of our democracy, and constantly testing and breaching the limits of both our unwritten and written laws. Modeling utter contempt for the law and the rule of law. Trump has always acted like he’s above the law. He’s lived a weirdly ‘charmed’ life, and has always managed (until very recently) to evade consequences for his overt criminal, corrupt, or immoral actions.

Scarily, his in-your-face style and refusal to play by the rules have fascinated, and then infected, many Americans. Truth be told, he doesn’t care one bit about our nation, our laws, or our people. All he cares about is ‘winning’ and coming out on top. And now — as our justice system feebly tries to bring him to justice — he is laser-focused on ruining its reputation, totally undermining its power … and evading personal accountability yet again.

5) Modeling contempt for democracy by refusing to accept the valid results of the 2020 election. Deliberately inciting a vast group of enraged right-wingers who believe the presidency was ‘stolen’ from Trump — and are willing to use violence to get their way in ’24. Trump’s election-rejecting mindset has fractured many Americans’ trust in our election systems, and severely undermined our confidence in election results. Trump’s constant lies about ‘stolen elections’ and wild claims of persecution and fraud ensure that the 2024 presidential election and its aftermath will be … a total nightmare.

6) The mainstreaming of extreme selfishness and narcissism, and the increasing collapse of morality, empathy, consideration, and compassion. According to many psychologists, Trump is a ‘malignant narcissist’ and/or a sociopath — two of the most dangerous personality types. He is famously self-centered, vindictive, and devoid of empathy — and these personality traits have been normalized over the past nine years.

Scarily, many Americans look up to and emulate Trump — and in this case, they’re emulating a severely self-centered, rageful, lying narcissist. That’s very, very bad news for our nation. It’s truly an epic sociopolitical disaster: an ongoing, slow-motion train wreck.

7) Increasing support for racism and white supremacist groups — accompanied by increasing acceptance (or even sly promotion) of violence to attain political ends. While president, Trump had many opportunities to condemn white supremacy and other violence-prone, far-right ideologies and groups. He never did.

Instead, he made excuses for them, and famously asked them to “Stand back and stand by.” And on Jan. 6, 2021, he directly incited violent insurrection in an attempt to overturn the 2020 election (though he and far-right media have brazenly whitewashed the violence ever since).

The result of all these awful trends? According to several polls, over 40% of Americans expect our nation to split asunder and collapse into a second Civil War within a decade — while over 30% now say that it’s OK to use violence to attain political ends.

Worse, Trump still leads a right-wing, racist movement to “Make America Great Again.” MAGA appeals directly to white folks’ latent (or active!) racism — and it encourages racist politicking like restricting voting for minorities, and using intense gerrymandering to minimize Blacks’ and Hispanics’ voting power and impact.

The obvious intent of MAGA is to force America to reverse course and become more White-centric and racist again.

Trump’s continuing, pernicious influence

That’s quite a daunting, frightening list. It’s a very telling list of almost entirely negative ‘accomplishments’ … instigated by the ‘man who would be king’ — er, president — AGAIN. Shudder.

Given all the horrors, deceptions, and racist hatefulness that can be directly traced to Trump and his malign influence, what are we to make of his overwhelming influence on the Republican party and on America itself? How is this creepy bowing-and-scraping reverence even possible?

It’s obscene and … pathetic.

And it’s all going on and on — with no end in sight. Even the entire series of Trump’s active indictments and looming trials hasn’t put a dent in his popularity among Republicans — nor has it put a stop to the bizarre Trumpian tragedy infecting our society.

Scarily, Trump’s many criminal indictments are taking the exact trajectory I feared they would. His infamous ‘object/appeal/DELAY/appeal again/DELAY again’ strategy is again working perfectly for him, and one trial date after another has been delayed or indefinitely put off.

Now, the very earliest one of his criminal trials *might* start is in late April or May — just six months before the election.

Thus, the likelihood that Trump will not be convicted of any crimes or brought to justice before the November election is increasing by the day.

As a nation, we’re embroiled in a true nightmare scenario, and it’s very hard to see any positive outcomes — especially from the coming 2024 election and its aftermath, which will almost certainly end in violent civil conflict.

In the short term, we’re all screwed — again!

As noted earlier, America desperately needs Donald Trump to just vanish from our politics. We need him to just let us be, so we can recover and heal somewhat, and get on with the task of governing and running a somewhat sane society.

But NOO! Given Trump’s intensely narcissistic and combative personality — and the fact that he’s already clinched the GOP nomination — there’s exactly zero chance of that!

So nope, that’s not in the cards, folks. Unless the slow-as-molasses Feds manage to convict him, put him behind bars, and somehow also silence him — which is now highly unlikely, if not impossible — we’re stuck with him and all the ugly, mean-spirited, violence-promoting MAGA crap.

Lacking those rapid, crucial justice-system events — ALL of them — I’m afraid that over the next two years (minimum) we are all just … totally screwed. Again.

Horrifyingly, there are NO good scenarios. If Trump is actually elected — American democracy is screwed. If he loses the election, he’ll keep screaming “Fraud!”, claim he ‘really’ won, and his enraged followers will resort to violence to overturn the election — and mass chaos will erupt.

Get ready. 2024-2025 is going to be a very rough and crazy ride — with no assurance whatever of a positive, pro-democracy outcome.

The simple, terrible fact is: our society is now in free-fall — and no one knows where or how this will end.