We Must Not Be Distracted
We are in for four years of a Republican administration led by Donald Trump, and we have to think about how to resist effectively. We can do so if we remember what the key issues really are, and if we refuse to be distracted by Mr. Trump’s craziness. He is very good at floating crazy ideas that Democrats and the media then respond to. He has renamed the Gulf of Mexico, and he says that he wants to take back the Panama Canal and take over Greenland. These nutty actions and proposals and the responses to them then fill the media and thereby provide a screen behind which Republicans in Congress can enact policies that will be windfalls for his billionaire supporters and harm the American people. We must avoid getting caught up in the discussions that provide the screen. We must focus on the policies that really threaten our democracy.
Policies That Threaten Our Democracy
The Republicans have shown
already that they are willing to allow the whole country to suffer from the
effects of climate change in order to make more money for the oil and gas
industry. They can also enact tariffs that will provoke a trade war. They can gut
Medicare and Social Security under the guise of saving them. They can destabilize our economy by reducing
the regulation of banks. They can cause irreparable harm to our planet by
eliminating the incentives to move from fossil fuels to non-polluting energy
sources. They can cause a recession by deporting a large share of our work
force.
Mr. Trump will undoubtedly try to do such things if only
because he has committed himself to doing them. Some of them will create
resistance within his own party. Big American agricultural interests who will
be hurt by a trade war will resist tariffs. The same interests will resist any
attempt to deport a large share of their work force. Other actions will be
supported by his party. Deregulation of banks and promotion of fossil fuels
will be enthusiastically supported. So, will the gutting of Social Security and
Medicare.
This Is What We Need To Resist
These are the things that we need to resist. We should work
with Republicans to resist tariffs and the mass deportation of workers, and we
should oppose Republicans on the deregulation of banks, the promotion of
fossil fuels and the gutting of Social Security and Medicare. We should do these things not only to keep our economy from
tanking but also because that will be the most effective way of preserving our
democracy.
The Real Danger To Our Democracy
Many people believe that Mr. Trump is a serious danger to
American democracy, and they are right. He is a danger to democracy but not merely
because of his well-known authoritarian tendencies. His economic policies
present a far greater danger to democracy because, as Martin Wolf argues, democracy
and capitalism can coexist only if the capitalism provides a decent standard of
living for the bulk of the people. If capitalism fails to do so, the people
are bound to become disillusioned with a democracy which appears to be rigged against them, and they will support authoritarian politicians like Trump who
promise to make their lives better.
Our democracy is already precarious because so much of our national income goes to the top 1% of our population. Our country today is much richer than it was in the 1960s, but millions of our people are poorer than they were then. If the Republicans are able to enact the economic policies that Trump has said that he intends to enact, our national income will be even more concentrated in the top 1%, and the plight of our people will become even worse.
Thus, the real danger to our democracy is not merely that
Trump will find ways to increase his power at the expense of the other branches
of government. The real danger is that he and his party will destroy the
conditions that make democracy possible. We need to do all that we can to
prevent that from happening.
