The Short List
In a Zoom chat today, friends and I briefly discussed Donald Trump’s infamously and callously dismissing El Salvador, Haiti and African nations as “sh*thole countries” two years ago.
That is not a term ordinarily employed in international development discourse.
As Trump’s presidency finally circles the drain and we consider his legacy, though, I’d suggest that “sh*thole government,” rather than “sh*thole country,” can apply to certain places. Here are some features of such a government’s leadership:
Breathtakingly lies as easily as most of us breath.
Attacks our media, legal and other democratic institutions as a matter of course.
Spews hate and division on practically a daily basis.
Regularly displays racism, sexism and nativism, and brags about it.
Installs incompetent relatives in top positions.
Purges competent officials and replaces them with sycophants.
Milks its office to generate income for its businesses.
Views crises purely through the lens of its own self-interest.
Spreads crisis disinformation, denials and outright lies that cost tens or hundreds of thousands of lives.
Coddles dictators to the point of declaring love for them.
Prefers dictators’ disinformation to information provided by its own security and intelligence officials.
Rejects the results of free and fair elections.
Mobilizes and manipulates supporters to not only reject the election results, but to march and occupy seats of power to overturn them.
In other words, commits sedition.
Even after leaving office, leaves deep scars that will only heal slowly, if at all.
Demonstrates that there is no low to which it won’t go.
And that’s just the short list.
A Bit of a Shock
But I’ll offer a brighter note.
During that Zoom, another friend correctly noted how awfully long the past four years have seemed. We all talk about “Covid Time” stretching forever. But Trump Time has been the same, with a ceaseless deluge of bad news. “He said what? He did that?
As much as we reject all that Trump dumped on us, in some ways it became normalized as we became brutalized.
But that’s almost behind us. After those four-going-on-forty years, we’ll have competent, caring, perhaps even boring leadership in place. It will be a great breath of fresh air.
Maybe, at first, it will even be a bit of a shock to wake up each day to news about what the government is doing to solve problems rather than cause them.
The Biden administration will do things that some of us might not like. It will make mistakes.
Trump revealed and released forces that won’t die with his presidency. We might even see them unleashed again on Inauguration Day.
But the difference between today’s Dark Ages and what will dawn on January 20 will still be like night and day. We’ll no longer have a sh*thole government.
Four days to go.
[Hat tip: KL, CR, PM]
Thank you for the clear list of signs to describe a banana republic and our sad slide in to almost becoming one, stopping with a jolting thud on the 20th. We have become very close to losing our precious democracy. It is ironic to me that the Constitution and flag-waving that was espoused by the Tea Party in response to our first black President is what they were so rabid about destroying last week. My belief is that the election of President Obama made the white supremacists’ heads explode and that was the birth of this vile attack on our democracy. They sure knew how to build a gallows to hang Mike Pence, didn’t they? That noose was a message that the white boys were in town, to take back their country.
As a white woman, I am embarrassed and horrified, but also very aware of being victimized by the laws of our country, giving all power to white men of means, suppressing people of color and all women.
I believe that President Biden is a man of ethics who believes in our system. He and Kamala Harris will work to uphold our democracy for our children and grandchildren.
Thanks for the comment, Kathy. One of the many horrifying videos from January 6 was of a rioter beating a police officer with a long pole that held an American flag at one end.
Yes, they have desecrated every image of our freedom as Americans. I encouraged my children to travel when they were in college, and they did. But I reminded them that their freedoms here were not extended everywhere and should they behave in a questionable way in another country, they could be at risk. Sorry to say that we are at risk for being that way too.
Keep clearing up the cloudy dark societal times with the hope for light that I believe will be, in the short or long view. Change or we face real darkness. So we change.
Thanks, Matt.
When my son was in Prague, staying with two high school friends, one of whom was serving in the military in Germany, they rented a room and carelessly left the outside door ajar. Local police came storming in, guns drawn, demanding their passports. The building owner came to their rescue, explaining to the police their ignorance, and they got their passports back, but learned a lesson. We all need to realize that preserving our democracy means preserving our freedoms.
Steve,
With the Inauguration mere hours away, I want to say a few things in response to your post.
1) Your statement about how we have been brutalized by this man and his administration is so true. As a friend of mine who is a psychiatrist said to me in late 2017, Donald Trump’s tenure has traumatized many Americans. We have been subjected to emotionally jarring and disturbing experiences for four years–pathological lying, gaslighting, horribly cruel policies towards children, countries, people of color and of non-Christian faiths. And that doesn’t even touch upon Trump’s personal, ever-growing enemies list which, when combined with his clear amoral willingness to use the police (or the military) to punish “disloyalists,” instills fear in people. When you are brutalized, traumatized, and reduced repeatedly as a human being, you become numb, and after numbness comes compliance. In the last four years, I’ve thought about the Germans and their support of Hitler as he came to power and afterward. Is this what, in part, happened to them? How are people capsized by the “banality of evil?” Can this be the reason why at least some of those 75 million Americans voted for the man in 2020 and were willing to storm the Capitol and commit murder in his name? Obviously, there are many other reasons for why so many have of our fellow citizens have sucuumbed to Trump’s Hitler-like “charms.” But I’m trying to answer the fundamental question of why… What is the psychology of people who wholly believe in an alternate reality established by Donald Trump?
2) Familiar trope thought it may be, I want to say: these people are not going away, and they are not going to give up their perverted beliefs and reality after tomorrow.
3) Re: Your sentence. “But the difference between today’s Dark Ages and what will dawn on January 20 will still be like night and day. We’ll no longer have a sh*thole government.” I agree. Still, there are 75 million Americans (or at least a vast majority of those folks) who don’t think that at all because the government will be governing, in their opinion, illegitamatelly. What will Biden’s answer be for them, and what can we, as citizens, do to help him?
I’m not as worried about the potential for violence tomorrow as I am all the days afterward.
Here’s to Jan. 20th. I cannot wait to see Biden and Kamala take their. oaths.
Kelly
Kelly,
Very well said, reminding us of what we really need to do going forward. Today, watching the National Memorial held in Washington for the victims of the pandemic was a pretty good start. 400,000 deaths touched everyone in our country, liberals and conservatives. Our new administration today honored everyone. I was moved to tears, and I didn’t lose a close loved one. Any grieving family who has just been told to suck it up, and that this was a hoax should begin to start feeling the humanity from the Biden administration. Maybe that will slowly melt the frozen hearts.
And maybe we need to follow the example of Germany, which made nazi symbols illegal. We need to make symbols of white supremacy illegal. The internet power brokers who accepted rubles in payments for ads and who closed their eyes to obvious evil as long as they were making profits need to be held to a higher standard. If they could get away with explicit child porn, they might do that for the big bucks, but they can’t get away with it.
Thanks very much for those eloquent comments, Kelly and Kathy.
As I write this, just 12 hours to go.
Yikes. I spelled illigitimately wrong above. Damn. Sorry. Kelly
No porblem. 😉