In reading Donald Trump’s book “the Art of the Deal” he sounded like a man who was just as concerned about interpersonal relations as well as making money. One quote he made was:
“Maximize your options, have fun”.
This sounds like good fatherly advice as well as sound financial advice, but it certainly does not sound like the guy that just ran a scorched earth campaign to win the White House. What in fact did happen was that the Donald did what Dennis Rodman once did, which was to do some outrageous acting to get attention. This got Dennis Rodman a lot of TV spots and also made him some good money. Well, the Donald was running against 17 other guys who also wanted the presidential nomination, so he followed the Dennis Rodman technique– got outrageous, got attention, and won the White House.
What this means is that the Donald likes to win; he even said so himself. But what now, he is not in the corporate world he came from, he just can’t fire Congressmen who are doing a lousy job. And, if you add up the Democrats and the RINOs in Congress, they are the majority and they will oppose him anyway they can. So will the Donald be able to get anything done? Or will we have a lame duck in the White House for the next four years? Or does the Donald have another trick up his sleeve, since he likes to win.
Will the Donald drain the swamp, or will the swamp drown the Donald?
Look at it this way; the Donald said he wants to get manufacturing back in America to get the economy going again, and so wants tariffs on goods sent to America from American industries that moved to other countries, (to take advantage of low wage workers), to make products to sell to the high priced American market, and so make huge profit margins. This has been going on for many years and these corporations have been making big money like you won’t believe. These are rich powerful corporations that found it easy to buy congressmen to pass NAFTA, the WTO and pass legislation to give China special trade status to make this big money scheme work. They are not going to say good-by to this deal on the say-so of the Donald. To stop the Donald from getting the tariffs he wants, congress just has to DO NOTHING. Don’t pass the legislation to establish the tariffs. Then probably use BS like they don’t want a trade war, when we have been in a continuous trade war that we lost 30 years ago.
So, what will the Donald do? He can try exposing the bought-out congressmen, that is after all one method he used to win the election. But if that doesn’t work, what then? Well, he can use his Twitter account to convince the people that Congress must be minimized or ignored ( just like Obama did, without the Twitter account) to get anything done. The problem here is how much can you minimize or ignore Congress before it becomes useless, and without a Congress what else can there be but a dictator.
So, the process that Barack Obama started to minimize Congress, or go around Congress is continuing with the Donald, he has already started action by “executive order”. But how far this will go is anybodys guess, will Congress get a set and fight back? Or is this the beginnig of an American Caesar; a historically proven failure as far as government structure goes.
A good case can be made to let the Donald have these special powers (executive orders) to repair the damage that anti-American elements have done to America. But what happens when a future president takes power who wants to do damage to America and he has these expanded powers that executive orders will give him? Again, great damage to America can be done.
But then again, just to keep the show going, the owners of Congress may let the Donald do some small stuff like pick some Supreme Court Justices, or let men use the mens bathroom again. But as far as changing the current trade deals, not likely; there is just too much money involved for too many very rich people.
Then the Donald said this at his inauguration:
“For too long, a small group in our nation’s Capital has reaped the rewards of government while the people have born the cost. Washington flourished – but the people did not share in its wealth.”
The Donald has been critical during his campaign of the government, but now as President he has fired the first shot at Congress. Clearly the Donald and the corporations that own Congress are going to go to war. If the Donald wins– then America gets a better economy, if the corporations that own Congress win– then America is finished. This is a prime factor to start a dictatorship, especially if the Donald is successful in bringing back the jobs that the Democrats sent to other countries with really bad trade deals they made.
Will the price of letting the Donald fix the economy be the loss of the American Democratic-Republic? Will executive orders vs. the owners of a fading away congress be our new form of government; or will executive orders vs. street protests and riots be our new form of government? The next four years will be interesting.
Jose Lugo, editor DDTV.ORG
lugo@ddtv.org
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