Remember when Donald Trump declared in his 2016 Presidential campaign “We’re going to win so much you’ll be sick and tired” of winning? Unfortunately, his prediction came true, but at the expense of American democracy.
In his monomaniacal desire to win in his own mind and for his own benefit, he has truly harmed our nation by attacking our industries, destroying our government, and bankrupting our nation. our values.
Nothing shows that Trump is focused on winning before he refuses to accept his 2020 presidential bid. Although he lost the popular vote and the polls, he declared ” we won this election,” and called the fair vote “a betrayal of the American public.” He then teamed up with his inner circle to send fraudulent voter IDs to Washington, and he effectively forced Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to “find” votes for him.
His main focus on victory on January 6 was when he incited a crowd of deceived, misled and misinformed citizens to believe that they were patriots rather than rebels against the Capitol, not to uphold our constitutional government but to provide cover for an army of white supremacists. , political forces, and rebels attempting a coup.
If nothing else, his role in the revolution clearly demonstrates Trump’s contempt for our democracy. America clearly sees it as a privately controlled business designed to attract investors and consumers for the sole purpose of increasing profits and power for its biggest shareholders: its families. , business partners, and political cronies. He’s nothing more than a gangster dressed in political garb who ends up protecting a soft currency that relies on the display of wealth, status, and power.
Tellingly, his desire to “win” – regardless of American ideas, values, and institutions – echoes a passage from the most important story about the death of the American Dream. , The Great Gatsby. Upon learning that the gangster had clinched the 1919 World Series, the reporter said, “I couldn’t play a single man with the faith of 50 million people with the single mind of a thief blowing up a a safe place.” In Trump’s false claim of “winning” the election, he did nothing more than play with the faith of millions of American voters without paying for it. zero.
Trump’s idea of ”winning” means taking away the dreams, aspirations, and desires of middle and lower class Americans as he picks their pockets and collects theirs. votes for his own benefit. When he took credit for Wall Street’s stock market, none of his Main Street supporters would invest. As he strengthened the economy by cutting regulations designed to protect American consumers, their need for income was neglected. When he withdrew the US from the Paris Climate Accord, he made it easier and more profitable for American companies to burn fossil fuels that change the climate and threaten lives.
But worst of all, his “America First” credo has led the public to believe that “Me First.” In other words, Trump’s idea of ”victory” is accepted by the majority of his supporters who believe that America is nothing more than an institution dedicated to providing the value its citizens more responsible, period.
As the economy stagnates, many Americans no longer care if the government seeks equity and justice for all its citizens; or businesses may pollute the air, water and land; or the nation welcomes “your tiredness, your poverty, your society that longs to breathe freely”; or, whether the former President of the United States tried to seize power and destroy democracy. In other words, Trump’s plan is to defeat attempts to subvert the noble values on which the nation was founded by appealing to our own beliefs.
A recent New York Times / Siena College survey, for example, shows that many citizens have eaten Trump’s bitter “Big Lie” and shallow values as sweet. One interviewer, Marie Boyce, a New York Republican, said, “Trump has done a terrible job in business. I have nothing bad to say about him.
Paula Hudnall, a 51-year-old nurse in Charleston, W.Va., said she didn’t blame Trump for the violence at the Capitol and that Trump won his re-election in 2024.
David Beard, a 69-year-old retiree from Liberal, Mo., said the effort by Democrats to hold Trump responsible for the Jan. 6 attacks was “absurd,” and He thinks he will vote for Trump in 2024. Engagement is the perfect opportunity to improve business.
Of course, many Republican politicians are running for the election in Trump’s dirty clothes and mocking the voters’ personal feelings.
And if enough politicians and voters are willing to turn a blind eye to obvious corruption; if they have become indifferent to evidence, truth, and reason; and if citizens only vote with their pocketbooks with democratic results; then we became a “victorious” nation.
In that case, we have become a country without a conscience, a nation without a soul, America without its Dream. Then Trump won. But America lost.
Thomas Cangelosi is a retired teacher who lives in Avon.