Will We Ever Return to Normal After Trump?

[lancelyons]

There is plenty of ugly fight left in Donald Trump’s presidency, which has already warped American culture. But it’s not too soon to contemplate a post-Trump challenge: tyrant-proofing the country, in case the next one isn’t such a clown.

t is my dearly beloved hope (yours too, I trust) that it won’t take another presidential election to expel the Desecrator in Chief from the premises, to liberate us from the otiose spectacle of Donald Trump tramping over the Constitution in his golf spikes and exercising his tweeting thumbs at the expense of decency, democracy, and basic spelling (“Somtimes you need protest in order to heel, & we will heel, & be stronger than ever before!”). The frantic tempo of his cruel, petty fits of pique—the pardoning of the sadist sheriff Joe Arpaio, the transgender ban, the decision to end the DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) program simply to inflict pain and roll back any vestige of the Obama-stamped compassionate policy—and the Agatha Christie elimination of assistant warlocks such as Mike Flynn, Steve Bannon, and Seb Gorka (could Stephen Miller be next on the skewer?) signal an administration heading toward a crescendo, not one buckling down for the duration and plotting new coordinates. It’s stuck in a dead man’s float.

All Trump has to show for his first year in office is a whole lot of nada. No border wall. No tax reform. No infrastructure package. His sole bragging point—the installation of Neil Gorsuch on the Supreme Court—was a gimme, owing everything to the Republican Senate’s obstruction of Obama’s nominee, Merrick Garland, not to any exertion of his own. His spats with congressional chieftains (Mitch McConnell, John McCain, Paul Ryan) reek of sour grapes and frustrated stalemate. Meanwhile, in the background is the ominous sonar beep of Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference, a run-silent, run-deep probe drawing upon a lode of legal brainpower that ought to make any finky operator nervous. (And Mueller’s reported Batman-Robin team-up with New York attorney general Eric Schneiderman takes the magic pardon wand out of Trump’s little hand.)


In the sorriest days of the Watergate scandal, the iconoclastic journalist and 60 Minutes commentator Nicholas von Hoffman compared the Nixon presidency to “a dead mouse on the American family kitchen floor. The question is: who is going to pick it up by the tail and drop it in the trash?” It would be premature to write off the Trump presidency as a deceased rodent lying on the linoleum. In its nasty defensiveness, it is closer to a cornered rat. It still has plenty of ugly fight left. But we are at the beginning of the endgame and it is not premature to start imagining how to pick through the damage the Trump presidency will leave behind and future-proof the republic so that It Can’t Happen Here never happens again. So much headspace will be opened up once Trump is no longer occupying it that we must make the most of it.


[link:https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2017/10/will-we-ever-return-to-normal-after-trump|

[BigmanPigman]

1. Some thing could get back to normal

but a lot won't. Individuals who may become more ill, or even die, and those who went bankrupt due to ACA repeal will never be able to go back. People in Puerto Rico have the same fate. The environment will not be able to be "as clean" as it was will be permanently ruined. Immigrants and DACA victims will never be able to go back to their previously lives as they were. Gorsuch will be on the Supreme Court forever...yuk!
A lot will depend on who becomes the next president and if the Dems can become the majority in both houses of Congress. Perhaps we will be able to correct our standing with our foreign allies. Fighting Climate Change again will be only a partial success since the environment was already past time for it to be stopped, now we can only slow it down and be better prepared when it changes the planet in a thousand different ways.
Of course with possible 3 years left, who the Hell knows if we will still be here then (N Korea).

[murielm99]

2. I think things will get a lot worse

before we see any change. And some of it will have to be forced and enforced.

Did Germany get better after Hitler? We are headed there. And some of 45's more ardent supporters will not accept that. They will die thinking he is wonderful.

It can't be left up to the political parties to pick up the dead mouse. We will have to force legislative changes on how candidates are chosen. We will have to get rid of the electoral college and gerrymandering. I will not see all the pertinent changes in my lifetime. But if they don't happen, forget about democracy here and in many other parts of the world. People all over the world have looked to us for leadership. They won't be able to do that any more. Heck, they can't do it now.

[CTyankee]

7. two things have to happen.

First we take back one or both houses of Congress. No kidding, we just have to. Second, dependent on the first, we get a new president in 2020, either Dem or Ind but both sympathetic to our values of decency, democracy and dedication to our shared needs on the planet in order for us to breathe and live.

Let's hope that the better angels of our nature prevail...

[CanonRay]

3. Only if we have some kind of public reconciliation

and I don't thing the Rethugs are capable of that.

[Doreen]

4. If trump wins 2020 that will be the last election.

I really think that if he wins his family and administration will have figured a way to make this country a true dictatorship. I think 2020 is our last chance.

[weydowner]

5. No

Imagine Trump outside the tent p--sing in. I would say he would be more dysfunctional than he is now but that would be difficult.
You'd be left with the monsters (R) in Congress.
And - even worse - the voters (R) who are happy to worship on the coat-tails of this bunch of crooks and their arrogant backers.

I reckon the best thing is waiting for a giant meteor to hit.
Or maybe the Rapture which might be more discriminating.

Sorry, USA., your present is no fun but your future is going to be much worse.

[Hortensis]

6. No, of course not. 1. We only one of many nations being attacked

by the new ultrawealthy classes that grew up over the past few decades. In ours, they've largely taken over the Republican Party and infiltrated much of the MSM and are using them as weapons and tools to restructure our government and laws to serve them. Defeating Democrats in 2016 was crucial to their plans. The largest group in our nation is the Koch alliance, but that's just one among many.

2. The Republicans voters were trained by them to believe we were their big threat and turned into attack dogs to keep us in check. Divide and conquer the electorate.

3. Nevertheless, Republican voters know there's also something terribly wrong with their party leadership. Both the Tea Party and Trump were failed, clueless rebellions that their enemies successfully controlled and are currently mostly controlling and directing to gain further power.

4. They are currently using our legislatures at all levels to cut their taxes, repeal regulations on their activities, and rewrite our laws to institutionalize their power, making their corruption and exploitation of us legal.

And here we are.

This is a pretty recent article by expert Sarah Chayes in Foreign Affairs that helps illuminate why we should be talking far less about Trump and a lot more about the ongoing takeover of our government. One we have the ability to kill off the very same way our grandparents' generations did, by the way; but just like our counterparts on the right, our first step is to understand who our enemies are and what they're up to.

Kleptocracy in America: Corruption Is Reshaping Governments Everywhere

...Although many aspects of U.S. politics may be confusing, Americans are clearly more agitated about corruption than they have been in nearly a century, in ways that much of the political mainstream does not quite grasp. The topic has never been central to either major party’s platform, and top officials tend to conflate what is legal with what is uncorrupt, speaking a completely different language from that of their constituents.

Although the political establishment, including the justices of the Supreme Court, may cling to a legal notion of corruption, ordinary Americans’ more visceral understanding is in line with an anticorruption Zeitgeist that has swept the world in the past decade.

[Hortensis]

8. Here's a better link through the Carnegie Endowment

for anyone who's already used up their one free monthly article at Foreign Affairs

http://carnegieendowment.org/2017/08/15/kleptocracy-in-america-pub-72836

... corruption is not so much a problem for governments as it is an approach to government, one chosen by far too many rulers today. ... the rather pressing reality of developed countries—including the United States—beginning their own unmistakable slides toward kleptocracy. ...

The United States has become a testing ground for that question. The country’s slide into a kind of genteel kleptocracy began many years ago, arguably in the 1980s, when deregulation fever hit. The lobbying profession exploded, and industries began writing legislation affecting their sectors; public services such as incarceration and war fighting were privatized; the brakes on money in politics were released; and presidents began filling top regulatory positions with bankers. An economy of transactional exchanges took hold in Washington.

Last year was a watershed in this process. In June, the Supreme Court dramatically narrowed the legal definition of bribery when it overturned the corruption conviction of former Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell. ...

Although Trump’s supporters may think otherwise, his victory and ascent to the White House did not represent regime change; they represented very much more of the same, with a president who has invited top corporate executives not merely to provide advice or draft legislation but also to actually join his team. Such a presidency will only cement the system rigging Trump once decried.

For Americans, ... the expulsion of one individual at the top will not be enough to repair the damaged republic. Americans should not fool themselves into thinking that all they must do is see Trump impeached or get out the vote for a standard Democratic or Republican alternative in 2020. The network that Trump is anchoring in Washington is exploiting a system that Americans have all allowed to evolve and from which they have averted their eyes. That network is empowered now and will prove resilient.

We're going to need good people in all branches of government to root this out. As she said, only electing a Democrat to the presidency won't do it. Again, our grandparents' generations did it, but the coalition that made it happen included Democrats and moderate Republicans working together. (Extremists on both sides capitalized on the troubles of the times to advocate revolution but were more part of the troubles than part of the solution.)

[mahatmakanejeeves]

9. No. There's been too much damage.

We still haven't got over Vietnam.

[dalton99a]

10. The damage is institutional and long lasting

Don't forget all the RW nutcases he's appointing to the federal judicial system - they're lifetime appointments

[alarimer]

11. My fear is that no one will ever trust government again.

Given the epic levels of corruption in this administration. Even if a good person is the next president, it will be a long time before anyone will ever trust the EPA or FEMA or Interior again. Someone will have to root out every single Trump appointee or hire and that may be difficult.

I think Congress needs to pass anti-corruption legislation: require the president and all his cabinet to disclose their finances and sever ties with their businesses. At bare minimum. Turn some previous norms into actual laws.