The Great American Fearleader

President Donald Trump has emerged as the Great American Fearleader.  He exploited American fears in 2016 to win votes and he continues to manipulate them for his growing political power and his own personal glorification.  He consistently makes inflammatory statements and does things that further flame the fears that in turn solidify his political base.  He then presents fake solutions to those fears that make him look like a great American savior.  Whatever he does, he will claim that he has indeed made America great again.

Let's look at just three example.

In 2017, Trump denounced the North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un as the "Rocket Man" who threatened the U.S. with nuclear missiles.  He flamed global fears of North Korea setting off a nuclear holocaust with massive American retaliation that might draw in China and Russia, too.  Then Trump met with Kim in June 2018 in a highly staged diplomatic adaptation of reality TV and announced that North Korea no longer posed a nuclear threat to the U.S.  He incorrectly claimed that Kim had in good faith assured him of North Korean denuclearization, but subsequent negotiations have shown that the North Koreans have no intension of abandoning their form of nuclear deterrence.  Will the North Koreans eventually come to verifiable nuclear disarmament?  We shall see.

Trump has said that unfair trade agreements have allowed foreign countries to exploit American consumers and workers.  He claimed that trade with China, the EU, Canada, and Mexico was to blame for offshore manufacturing and the loss of millions of American jobs.  To restore fair trade, if not tree trade, Trump has imposed tariffs on goods from these countries, which in turn have imposed tariffs on American goods that are likely to hurt further millions of American farmers, workers, and consumers.  We have now a trade war.  No doubt Trump will come up with some kind of solution that appears like a great American victory.  We shall see.

In 2016 he condemned the flow of Mexicans into the U.S.:  "They're bringing drugs, they're bringing crime.  They're rapists.  And some, I assume, are good people."  He characterized illegal immigrants and furthermore all Hispanic immigrants as poor people and criminals who would victimize Americans because the U.S. had become the "dumping ground" for all the world's problems.  He further warned of Muslim immigration that would allow terrorists into the U.S. to kill Americans.  So Trump instituted by executive orders a ban on immigrants from selected countries.  In 2018 he encouraged the give-no-quarter crack down on illegal immigrants crossing the Rio Grande River by separating children from parents.  Now he promises to reunite immigrant families and still maintain border security.  He asserts that nothing less than a wall will secure Americans from the exploitation of foreign people.  We shall see.  But how long will it take?    

(c) 2018  Stephen M. Millett.  All rights reserved.