Trump was vaulted into the White House with the zealous backing of 63 million Americans who either explicitly share, or have veiled sympathy for, his overt racism, xenophobia and jingoism; and, I suspect, they don’t give a damn if the ‘elite’ media gives their political messiah a failing grade or not.
Like Trump, the president’s legions of disciples not only take comfort in their manifest ignorance and retrograde nationalism, but also reject outright the notion that government can be a salutary force in any way, for any cause, anywhere - unless it involves dropping bombs in the same places and on the same people a succession of other US presidents has dropped bombs on.
And, like Trump, their understanding of how and why governments work is distilled into bumper-sticker slogans they find, not surprisingly, persuasive and easy to comprehend. I doubt Trump’s supporters seriously expected that he would make America great again or build his fantasy wall during his first 100 days.
So, beyond affirming what we already know, the proverbial catalogue of Trump’s litany of humiliating policy failures, brazen lies, nepotism, incompetence and volte-faces has had, to date, little, if any, tangible political consequence.
Indeed, a recent opinion poll revealed that a stupefying 98 percent of those 63 million Americans stand squarely behind their transparently inept man at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue who once confidently boasted that he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and ‘not lose any voters’.
Why?
Trump’s rabidly loyal voters are, like their leader, giddy nihilists. Trump is a mirror reflection of most of them - seething, white, grievance-addicted and determined to destroy any political, societal or diplomatic progress and norm while they seize the stunning opportunity to restore their ugly, insular idea of America.
Trump’s victory remains, as well, an indictment of Barrack Obama’s jarring naivety. Not too long ago, No Drama Obama publicly assured the rest of us nervous nellies that he had faith in the wisdom of Americans to ultimately reject Trump. They didn’t.
Since January 20th, the defining nature of Trump’s administration has been on routine and often gob-smacking display. Obama’s pollyanish assurances about America’s inherent ‘wisdom’ are as cockeyed today as they were on the eve of the election.
‘Progressives’ or ‘liberals’ - take your pick - are loath to acknowledge this. The so-called resistance prefers, instead, to bury these uncomfortable truths in an endless blur of cobweb-like conspiracy theories and to direct their anger and recriminations at more palatable villains in far away lands. Paging Vladimir Putin and Julian Assange.
Then, there is the delusional band of liberals who, while fatally allergic to Trump’s brand of populism, looked forward eagerly to his presidency’s possible ‘good bits’- including nixing NATO, one-sided multi-lateral trade agreements and renunciating US interventionism.
The past 100 days should have taught them a swift and blunt lesson: never trust a weathervane-like demagogue to keep his word.
From North Korea, to Syria and Iran, Trump has clutched his generals and the the military-industrial-security complex even closer to his tough-guy bosom. NATO is, for now, safely intact.
Finally, and perhaps most grating of all, are the pundits who cling like starved leeches to the moronic theory that somehow, at sometime, Trump will ‘grow’ into the job.
The hope is that a 70-year-old with the attention span of a squirrel will, after a moment of introspection, recognise that he’s been doing it all wrong and abandon his pernicious ways.
Note to the fantasists: Trump has already shown that he is genetically, as well as temperamentally, incapable of managing such a miraculous metamorphosis.
There is nothing to be redeemed because there is nothing remotely redeeming about a Trump presidency.
Donald Trump’s first 100 days are a template for the remaining 1,362. The question is: will we be able to see the horror through?
This article has been excerpted from: ‘One hundred days of Trump’. Courtesy: Aljazeera.com