Trump Trial Cliffhanger and the Consequences

Everyone makes a mistake now and then, but usually these mistakes don’t include six-figure payouts to porn stars while campaigning for president. Americans that care and understand the consequences sit in anticipation of the hush money trial verdict, a decision that could impact American democracy and cast a cloud of immorality and unethical compromise on our standards for leadership and politics. In other words this decision can dramatically hurt or dramatically improve the future of our country. Americans will begin to view leaders through this lens of compromise because the barriers and norms, the moral and ethical expectations for political leadership collapsed with Trump’s cruel, under-educated rhetoric and illegal, authoritarian mandates.

If the jury decides not to convict, autocrats like Trump will rejoice. The standards for leadership, fractured and in steady decline, will ultimately collapse. Our future governance will offer opportunities for profit and power to the exact wrong personality type: more Marjorie Taylor Greenes, more Lauren Bobarts, more strong men icons; a future of chaos and cruelty will become the new norm during a now unavoidable climate crisis. Some argue that this condition of cruelty and chaos, this collapse into civil unrest is a consequence of 9/11 and the political mistakes that followed the misguided war in Iraq. Others argue that this turn in society is non existent because the United States never provided a beacon of hope, that it has always, since slavery, been nothing but a cruel sham.

When I first started to analyze Trump’s speaking style, I considered him a buffoon, a simple minded, blathering idiot, that spewed nonsense and superficial vulgarities. But now I see him differently; I see him as a tool, most likely a Russian tool. The autocratic oppressive mind believes in Trump, whether it be a MAGA follower, an insurrectionist fool, or a power seeking greedy governor. Trump is a destructive, yet perfect, fun way to indulge in your lowest hateful tendencies. Fictionalizing threats, pretending pizza places are porn hubs, denying the death and murder of dozens of school children, and demonizing public sector workers, makes the meaningless mindless every day cycle of work and taxes more palatable for the ordinary, low income adult. Low income adults, people making less than a hundred k in our inflationary, capitalistic society, under a Trump tax plan will carry the debt burden.

Just as it was in the floundering decades of the Roman empire when dictatorships suppressed forensic and deliberative rhetoric, when discourse slipped into frivolities, and democratic ideals became misty memories, the era of Trump performs the same autocratic function, to stifle civil harmony and promote chaos and unrest. Violence is escalating and our civic values of honesty and fairness, compassion and empathy, flounder amidst the negativity. Each citizen must take a new oath, the oath of truth and freedom for all. No matter the outcome of the hush money porn trial, whether Trump steps forward as a presidential candidate, we all must maintain our humanity and continue to fight for equality. Only truth and equality will support civil stability in the new apocalyptic future.