Representative Democracy – A Comment on the 1st Year of the 2nd Term of Donald Trump as President of the United States of America

 

The first part of this post repeats a preview of our take about our Representative Democracy at the time of our 12/28/2024 post about Capitalism 2.0. We wondered then about the 2^nd Trump administration before it began its term. That post is titled “Is it Time for Capitalism 2.0? And, Whither Democracy Starting in 2025; a Glance.”  (Saturday, December 28, 2024).

 That first glance suggested that:

1. "An outward-focused long term and value-optimizing mindset is the best mindset for the leadership of a representative democracy, and 2. As in primary stakeholder group (PSG) capitalism, a finite number of primary stakeholder groups exists in a representative democracy, including people as citizens, taxpayers, workers, etc. domestically and including all nations around the world individually and as one group that we affect in a significant and even treasured way when we are acting as a true leader (relying on our better angels) of a leading global nation, which we have been at least for the post WWII rules-based world order. This concept fits representative democracy in accordance with the expectations of our founding fathers. Our Constitution contemplates it.

Right from the start of the 2^nd Trump term, the behavior of the Trump president-elect group, including Donald Trump and his top advisers at the beginning, including Elon Musk, Steve Bannon, Stephen Miller and others looked like precisely the opposite mindset; short term, inward-focused and win-lose.  Among other widely proposed policies that can bring adverse consequences to the people of the nation, the out-of-the-starting-gate ideas of tax cuts for high income individuals and large corporations and tariffs on imports from several countries are substantive examples of the oligarchical governance model – far from representative democracy and pursuit of the common good, the public interest.”

That before-the-fact look at the start of Trump’s 2^nd term now has proven prophetic!

This Post and its Message.

The 1^st year of this 2^nd term, with Trump and his team acting out what some call project 2025, screams out for the absolute need to address the change that is being practiced – in an arrogant and “only I can fix it” way through the actions of the second term of President Donald Trump.

The examples in this post are many, but they are not an exhaustive list of the Trump administration’s decisions, actions and announcements in this first year of his second term.

This post was drafted before the decision by President Trump to initiate an invasion of Iran. That decision, while not fully addressed in this post, fits the conduct and behavior of Donald Trump as President that this post addresses. More importantly, even at the very beginning of the invasion and war with loss of lives already happening, President Trump and his team (like the Secretaries of State and of Defense) are giving conflicting reasons for the purpose of the mission and the desired outcome. It is a very important matter for the Iranian people, for all nations in the Middle East and beyond - it affects the global order.

We can call the Trump and group’s model “transactional democracy,” rather than the representative democracy whose complete origins and charter documents - the Constitution - were adopted in 1776 and which has guided America in its domestic and global principles and conduct over 250 years. Calling the Trump unfolding model anything resembling “democracy” is generous and incorrect!

Relatedly and not coincidentally, the top leaders of so many companies have submitted themselves to the pressure from the Trump presidency by acquiescing to his demands (of his government as he surely thinks of it), like taking an ownership position in some companies in return for exempting them from the effects of tariffs and requiring a media company to do a documentary on his wife, for about $74 million or so. And there is so much more interference in the business world by this president.

By the way, Professor Adam Smith, the father of modern economics, would be thoroughly disgusted with the Trump administration’s behavior. One of Adam Smith’s core beliefs was that we should be conducting our economic activity in a way that moves all people, all citizens, toward increased prosperity. A divided population that has such a separation of the elites with their income and prosperity levels (about 1% or so of the population) from the rest of the population would disgust him. He would be a greatly disappointed parent!

So, the Trump model being increasingly practiced today, with all the glaringly catastrophic harm it is imposing on the world order that existed and acquitted itself well since the end of WWII, is in fact creating the basis for a doomsday cataclysm for America and the entire world – to risk just a slight overstatement!

What?

In addition to the examples above of interference in the economy by requiring certain behavior by companies (including suing some of them), consider the Trump Board of Peace proposal  that is really offered as a replacement for the United Nations, the assertion that Canada should become the 51^st state, the Greenland proposal, the reduced attention and support of Ukraine as it resists the Putin invasion and his 4 year vicious attack on the Ukrainian sovereign nation and its people, the distancing of America from its long term participation and central role in NATO , even suggesting that NATO is not a key part of our transactional agenda going forward, and more.

At its core, we are watching the attempted creation in real time – right now – of an autocratic empire (with an autocrat as its de facto leader), that was once known as the United States of America.

There is so much more unfolding evidence of this autocratic agenda, including ignoring Congress or holding sway over it at virtually all times, acting with only grudging acknowledgement of a separate but equal judicial system and treating the DOJ as having him as its sole client (a most curious, arrogant and obvious emasculation of the true long term independence and integrity of the DOJ)!

So, our precious Representative Democracy is clearly under attack through a not-so-subtle transactional model change led by Trump and the ideologues who sit at his feet!

Is that all?

Of course not. Donald Trump (President Trump) has ordered a militaristic enforcement of his administration’s ill-thought-out immigration strategy, using the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) as the de facto undisciplined and anti-democratic non-rule-of- law enforcer to seek out, capture and deport people (especially those from the southern border with brown or black skin,…) in a mean-spirited and violent way.

The courts are stepping up and ordering many of the DHS practices to be reversed, but the bad intentions (un-American intentions) of the Administration are still being used. As an example of how mean-spirited the immigration strategy is, the goal that was apparently established by Stephen Miller, one of the nastiest ideologues Trump relies on, to deport a quota of about 3,000 “illegal” immigrants (the “worst of the worst”) per day is still being used, even after the tragic and absolutely neanderthal tactics ICE and other masked enforcers applied in Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minnesota. How unenlightened and un-American can they get? And they go after other cities as we write!

Further, the use of the Military to blow boats out of the water in the Caribbean Sea and the Eastern Atlantic Ocean based on the “belief” that they were carrying drugs to the United States is also un-American and quite possibly illegal.

The list of un-American strategies, tactics and actions goes on. The language of the president, that used by plain old run-of-the-mill bullies, just rattles on every day. For example – a huge example - after the Supreme Court ruled 6-3 in February that a major part of the Trump tariff actions are unconstitutional, he immediately took to the media to call certain justices the meanest names he could think of at the moment – and in effect had a vile and ranting moment to show his displeasure with a non-submissive co-equal branch of government. How about that!

So, we have a rogue president presuming he has also been ordained to change the post WWII rules based world order – the order that so many leaders from so many nations discussed and agreed on in the late 1940s. It has worked well and stood the many tests of time since then. The idea that one person, President Trump of the United States of America can or should, all by himself based on what his own mind tells him to do, change from that working world order, as well as ignore the constitutionally based governance system the founding fathers of the United States of America established in 1776 is completely unbelievable and unacceptable.

 That is, he and his administration is overriding the collective and virtually timeless wisdom of two groups, our founding fathers in the 1770s with their deliberations and elegant conclusions creating our Constitution and the several nations after WWII that, upon deliberation, created the United Nations and its Security Council. Five nations, the U.S., UK, USSR, China and France were the original five, and 51 original founding members signed the charter in June, 1945. So, Donald Trump now comes along and asserts that he can change all the collective wisdom and experience of the 1776 group and the 1945 group because of his own mind. You must be kidding!

.To Repeat:

1.    The founding fathers and the thinkers whose ideas they used to help create this “republic,” as Benjamin Franklin called it, thinkers like John Locke and Montesquieu could not in their worst nightmares have anticipated that such a self-focused person  (some call him a narcissistic sociopath) could one day come along and, based on his own faculties, such as they are, completely change this Republic into an autocratic government that no longer has three co-equal branches – the elegantly designed model that has been until now (Trump’s 2^nd term) the envy of most nations in the world.

2.    Further, the founding nations of the post WWII world order could not in their worst nightmares have anticipated that the same self-focused person could one day come along and based on his own faculties, such as they are, completely change the post WWII world order they established in 1945.

So, What Now?

There are many more examples of the un-American dysfunctionality of President Trump and his administration. But rather than go on listing more, this post turns to how we can change the un-American path and desires of Trump and his group.

First, the upcoming mid-term congressional elections are critically important. The House of Representatives must become a Democratic majority. The elections in each state must be conducted with the same integrity that the states have provided over the decades. That integrity must include no role for the federal government in any part of the election processes of the states. The Senate should also become a Democratic majority. The Democrats clearly understand that they are in Congress as both delegates and trustees. With Trump as president, virtually all (not all but virtually all) of the Republicans vote as Trump tells them to vote. Why? In great part and somewhat depending on the make-up of their districts, they know they risk being “primaried” if they don’t follow the Trump and “MAGA” line. This short-term thinking demonstrates the acquiescence to Trump of most of the Republican members of Congress, especially of the House with its two year terms.

Not all Democrats are wonderful as members of Congress and not all Republicans are terrible as members, but the Trump and MAGA influence has made both Houses with Republican majorities virtually if not literally Trump slaves!

What Else?

The Judiciary must continue to show the independence and integrity expected of them as a co-equal part of our three co-equal branches of government. The courts below the Supreme Court (SCOTUS) level have been doing a good job in this matter – with a few notable exceptions. The SCOTUS recently issued its order rejecting the Trump administration’s actions and beliefs that they (He) could impose tariffs literally as he pleased. SCOTUS must do much more to assert its co-equal status – consistent with the Constitution, of course. Politically grounded individual justice behavior on any matter should not exist.

There is much more to address. The Trump administration, in virtually everything it touches, has been following a Trump-enabling autocratic model, whether following the project 2025 playbook by and large, or not.

The founding fathers would indeed turn over in their graves – over and over and over again if they knew what was happening with this Republic and the Representative Democracy government they created.

The year 2026, therefore, is as important for the United States as any of the 250 years that preceded it. It must be the year that begins the process of saving the Constitution and Declaration of Independence-based experiment that they created from the completely self-focused and self-aggrandizing life and behavior of President Trump and his submissive administration and staff.