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GELFAND’S WORLD - When Donald Trump was elected back in 2016, there were angry mass demonstrations all over the country. I can remember one man who was interviewed by a television reporter and who was calling for a redo on the elections. Sorry, guy, that's not how we do things in this country. Elections and jury verdicts are supposed to signify decisions. Think of the word Closure.
But that doesn't mean that we can't continue with politics as we always have. That's the idea behind checks and balances. But in a federal government ruled by the Republican Party at the level of the presidency and both houses of congress, the ability to check and balance becomes limited at best.
So one available option is to check ourselves out -- to recognize that the other side has control, and to sit back for the next couple of years and try not to go crazy as the damage is done. It's the Eyes Wide Shut approach to craziness in government. And craziness it is going to be, both in the sense of turning the criminal law over to the criminals and in the sense of turning regulation of science and technology over to the anti-science nutcases.
As one pundit put it, Trump is doing his best to tear down every aspect of American government.
And what about putting a doctrinaire anti-vaccine person in charge of the public health apparatus? How long before whooping cough gets out of control (it's already on its way in Texas) or polio or measles or even diphtheria? One way to weaken America is to make it susceptible to mass illnesses.
And we now have a global warming denier in charge of the government, one who is busy appointing other global warming deniers to positions of power. The Gulf Coast and the southern Atlantic coast will be repeatedly damaged by hurricanes and tropical storms over the next 10 years to the point that much of it becomes uninsurable if not in outright ruins, and we will have lost another 4 years where we could have been doing something. And that doesn't count the damage to midwestern agriculture and the increasing fire prevalence in the far west.
If this were the 1950s and the television show I Led Three Lives was still on, the obvious conclusion would be that we have a communist in charge, and that Trump is doing the direct bidding of Vladimir Putin. Well, it's not exactly communism anymore -- it's just a resurgent Russian empire trying to expand in and around Crimea and the rest of Ukraine. But Russia is doing its worst. The United States could continue to supply money and arms to Ukraine and ultimately make the point to Russia that its expansionism is over. But instead, we have a new president-elect who makes clear that he will not support freedom and independence if it is adjacent to the Russian land mass.
So what do the rest of us Americans do who are watching this happen? I imagine that each of us is going to make some decision as to how far to take resistance. A few will devote themselves to all-out resistance at every possible level. I imagine that most of us will pick some particular element and concentrate on protesting that one.
Everyone gets to pick and choose.
I'm particularly concerned about the damage to freedom of speech and the press that Trump himself represents.
I'm also concerned about the threat to science that a Trump administration represented by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. would do. Who knows -- perhaps Kennedy will take his first day in power to announce that our present system is moronic and that we need a national health plan such as Medicare for All. I can always do a little wishful thinking over the next couple of months. But the more likely bet is that Kennedy will do what he can to interfere with public understanding of vaccines and to interfere with public health rules about vaccine requirements. The most likely event is that Kennedy will interfere directly with CDC recommendations regarding vaccination requirements for children in public schools.
If you want to read more about RFK Jr and his demented approach to public health, you can look here for the PBS commentary or here for comments by David Gorski, a medical scientist who has been exposing the RFK Jr nonsense for more than a decade.
It's not all that surprising that Trump would want to put a crook in charge of the justice department. After all, that's why Trump ran for his second term. But his highly irrational approach to the rest of government, including the department that protects our health and safety has to be of concern even to ordinary conservatives. Public health is a conservative value (as it is also a liberal value) and the same holds true for the national defense.
As I say, each of us will choose some Trumpian outrage to protest. The question for the rest of the world is whether enough members of the U.S. Senate will care about Ukrainian freedom and independence to defend it. Are we reliving 1938 again, with a newly elected Neville Chamberlain now running the U.S. government?
(Bob Gelfand writes on science, culture, and politics for CityWatch. He can be reached at [email protected])
