Trump’s Permanent Changes
Terry H Schwadron
April 21, 2019
A comment from a month ago about the Trump years has stuck with me.
It was one account from the foreign policy arena concerning President Trump’s election-eve public support for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu who was promising Israeli annexation of West Bank settlements:
“Trump’s moves are not merely temporary gestures, which a future president or Israeli leader could reverse. They are policy changes that experts say have permanently altered the contested landscape of the Middle East, making his own stated goal of a peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians more unattainable than ever.”
What made it stick with me is that it feels more than a description of that single policy change, but, but as a hallmark of the Trump presidency.
It feels to me as if the policy changes that Trump has brought about in these three years in a variety of societal areas — health, environment, climate change, deregulation, hate speech, politics — are all being changed for the long term. And, generally, apart from reflecting a point of view, they run against Common Sense.
The Wall is permanent. So is the remaking of the Middle East. So are pressing for appointment of conservative judges, qualified or not, the serious attack on legal abortion, the rise of hate speech and action, the results of xenophobia, the undercutting of allies and the assumption of trade wars.
And what we learned from the meat of the Mueller investigation is that this White House basically has bumbled its way even through the issues it most cares about, with staffers sometimes hiding papers from him to avoid carrying out strange orders or refusing to do “crazy shit” like firing the special counsel, as then White House lawyer Don McGahn told the prosecutors.
The picture that came away from the Mueller Report was a president who does not seem fit for office.
But he has functioned in the office, well or not, fit or not, every day making decisions that change our society.
In the week before Mueller alone, Trump seemed to be attacking the very existence of an independent Fed based solely on his personal piques, remaking the values of a border security system that reflect anything like humane or welcoming principles, fighting against any support for a growingly multicultural society or offering any caring for those not rich even in our generally prosperous society.
He holds onto an American Dream that is very different than that with which we grew up.
What was obvious at the beginning of the Trump presidency probably needs revisiting. He was elected essentially by an angry minority that wanted to overturn trust in our institutions, to replace internationalism and compromise with American nationalism and an insistence on being right.
When Trump talks now even about “sitting down with the Democrats for 15 minutes” to clean up our immigration laws, what he means is total submission to a Trump vision that overturns amnesty, that dismisses family ties, that substitutes what we overly summarize as cruelty for any kind of empathetic look at the driving reasons behind massive migration from Central America.
Our day to day is too much dominated with the outrage of a thoughtless remark, or the promulgation of a lawless border technique, or what seems a slap in the face of some allied leader than it is with a long-term assessment of the meaning behind what looks like madness. It does not help that Trump acts from instinct rather than fact, or that he backs off repeatedly from policies almost as soon as he announces them.
So, at any moment, it seems, we either are closing the southern border or not, re-starting family separations or not, conducting a Homeland Security purge or not, supportive of transparency with the Mueller Report or not. Worse, he will take a position — like tax cuts that are so poorly formed as to support only corporations — only to learn later that the actual effect was wide of the target that he himself had described.
So, we get sucked into the day by day without enough attention on the real long-term effects he is wreaking. Were Trump to be reelected, it is hard to imagine the amount of permanent damage to American and Western institutions that he will bring about, perhaps even without intention.
He may not believe that Climate Change is upon us, for example, but environmental policies that look past the obvious dangers to exacerbate the damaging floods, rising seas, lack of clean water and the rest that apparently are already on the march are measurable and hastened as a result of this Trump presidency. Killing off Obamacare without a serious plan to build a new, understandable, phased system of health care access is relatively insane, of course, but worse will be the actual measurable, and yes, permanent, damage to our health institutions. As Trump makes hash of international trade agreements and financial and strategic alliances, we are setting the stage for a variety of permanent new wars, whether cyber, trade or weaponry. Rekindling a nuclear missile race with Russia and China, the effort to extend warfare into space, the disdain for diplomacy all contain the seeds of destructive permanence.
At base is the disregard for truth-telling, for taking responsibilities, for seeking out opportunities to heal by tearing away at individuals, groups and institutions.
I wish the Democratic candidates would focus on the permanent dangers we face from a Trump reelection.
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www.terryschwadron.wordpress.com