Great national leaders dedicate their time in office to strengthening the countries they serve. The worst do the opposite. They suck that strength out of the institutions, economies and resources they have been entrusted with protecting and cultivating— and take the wealth, status and influence for themselves.
They are parasites. And Donald Trump is our parasite-in-chief.
He is a vampire.
I wish this was overstatement. It is not.
He is sucking the blood out of our country. If he continues as he has been, when he is done there will be nothing left but the pale, lifeless husk of the America that was.
He is using the office of the presidency to openly enrich himself as has no other president or public official in U.S. history. He is demanding gifts from other nations. He has created elaborate schemes by which they and others who seek his favor can purchase crypto currency in ways that have already made him billions of dollars richer this year alone.
Tax cuts and sweetheart deals in the one big piece of legislation passed this year helped Trump and his rich supporters while burdening the economy with more debt. Regulatory changes likewise enrich Trump, his family and his donors at the expense of Americans and the country at large who will watch their environment despoiled and their health and safety deteriorate.
And the power of the U.S. government or the courts is being used to squeeze major corporations and institutions, forcing them to settle not in ways that benefit the country as they might have in the past, but with multi-million dollar contributions to the Trump library.
Trump is taking resources from departments and agencies that benefit the people—from those that provide health care or vital health research or protect us from extreme weather or disasters—and shifting it to enterprises that enhance his raw power or that of a burgeoning police state that he alone controls.
When resources or people flow from FEMA to ICE, who benefits? Not you or I. The so-called “invasion” of “illegals” into the U.S. is a sham, a pretext to achieve two of the current administration’s primary goals. The first is create a large, masked, militarized force that answers solely to the president and can be used to target his enemies. The second is to support the white supremacist agenda of his most blindly-loyal supporters which, in turn, increases his hold on power.
The Department of Justice is being used not to keep Americans safer but to target Trump opponents, to protect Trump personally, to enable his corruption and to aid his benefactors. The resources of the U.S. intelligence community are being used in the same way. This further weakens the U.S. as Trump’s decisions to play fast and loose with U.S. intel assets has made it less likely that our allies will share intelligence with us or work with us when we need their assistance.
Trump’s foreign policy decisions have gutted vital sources of U.S. influence and power—from foreign aid programs to our standing within international institutions and alliances—while simultaneously sending the message that everything pertaining to the U.S. now is about the views, interests, whims and decisions of one man, Trump.
The same is true within the U.S. government, too, of course. All government agencies, which after all are created to serve the people and the interests of the country, now must loyally serve and never contradict or embarrass the Supreme Leader. If an official dares share an economic or scientific truth that makes Trump (or those policing his interests like Trump’s work wife in the MAGA influencer community, Laura Loomer) uncomfortable and firing or defunding the agency will swiftly follow. Heck, apparently we will even destroy satellites that might contradict Trump’s views on climate change.
It’s not supposed to work that way.
But it is where we are.
Every day our government’s purpose shrinks and the power within it is more concentrated in the hands of one man.
Every day we are diminished.
Every day the resistance of those with strength within our system and around the world appears to grow weaker.
The only comfort we can take is from the knowledge that in the end, sunlight kills vampires. You know that’s true because Trump fights so hard to bury the truth and keep the country in the dark. But just because mainstream media organizations are finding themselves muzzled (if not complicit) does not mean that new efforts to shed light on what is happening are not created every day. We live in an era in which new social media and mass communication platforms are enabling and empowering all of us to contribute to that process. And that in turn is the only way to truly put a stake through the heart of this blood-sucking regime—that the we, the people, rise up and reject him and those close to him in every election that takes place from now until they are gone.
The post Opinion: Donald Trump Is Sucking the Life-Blood Out of America appeared first on The Daily Beast.
