Revolutionary in Chief

Fidel Castro and Donald Trump

What do Fidel Castro and Donald Trump have in common? They are both revolutionaries. Except that with Trump, he is doing it without a military coup or anything illegal. He is doing it under the constitutional protection given to the Executive branch of the government. The Supreme Court has so far allowed him to keep doing what he’s doing.

Welcome to the revolution. There is no better way to describe what is happening to the U.S. right now. We are in the middle of a revolution the likes of which I never imagined I would experience in this country. And the revolutionary responsible for it is none other than the duly elected president of the United States, Donald J. Trump. It is a revolution that the vast majority of the people who voted for him did not ask for nor want. And yet, like it or not, that is exactly what we are getting. And it isn’t pretty.

I have often said that one of the few redeeming features of the Trump presidency is his unequivocal support for Israel and the Jewish people. I am not going to repeat the many things he has done and continues to do that make this more than obvious to anyone but the most rabid haters of the man. Anyone with the slightest bit of objectivity can see that. No matter how hard those haters try to deny it or twist those actions into negatives instead of the obvious positives they are.

But with respect to the rest of his presidency, with a few but notable exceptions (to name a few: his choices for the Supreme Court, dispensing with the horrible DEI policies that were infesting the government, and greater consideration for religious rights), I am appalled at much of what he has done.

First among them is his disappointing obsession with tariffs. Instead of doing what most people voted for - fixing the economy - he has done the opposite. Imposing tariffs on imports raises the cost of those items for consumers, either directly or through manufacturers that pass those costs onto them. Inflation is what brought Trump a second term. And the first thing he does is contribute mightily to it. There is no way of knowing if or when those tariffs will be repealed. And in any case, when the price of goods goes up, they rarely go down again.

Another thing he did was make good on his promise to free all the insurrectionists of January 6th. It may have been forgivable to do so for the nonviolent ones, but he pardoned or commuted the sentences of all of them - violent ones included - considering them all ‘patriots’ because they did it for him. Then he went after the people in the Justice Department - firing people that had anything to do with prosecuting him. Including the FBI.

This is a man who takes revenge. No one has ever honored the age-old adage ‘Revenge is sweet’ more than Donald Trump, and he does not forget. Any former official who said anything negative about him during the campaign lost their security clearance and Secret Service protection, even those who share his values. That is sick!

Speaking of revenge, he has just decided to suspend all military aid to Ukraine. He got into a spat with Zelenskyy during his visit to the White House. Zelenskyy was merely trying to defend his position, which triggered a heated exchange with the president, who basically called him an ingrate for not thanking him for all the help the U.S. has given Ukraine until now. The fact that Zelenskyy has done so repeatedly in the past didn’t faze Trump. He was upset that he didn’t do it again at that moment. The result?  Well, lets just say that Putin could not have asked for a better friend in the White House than Donald J. Trump.

None of this should surprise anyone who understands the meaning of Trump’s mantra ‘America First’. That is just  a euphemism for isolationism. Which became evident in Trump 1.0 when he threatened to abandon NATO for not paying their share of NATO’s costs. Trump actually said something along the lines of, ‘If they don’t, Putin can have them.’ His isolationism even extends to isolating our ‘next-door neighbors’ Mexico and Canada. He has managed to anger almost all U.S. allies. And could not care less.

I suppose Trump believes that they all need the U.S. more than the U.S. needs them and that his executive actions will bear fruit by generating respect rather than love. There may be some truth to that, since the threat of abandoning NATO forced NATO members to finally contribute some of what they owed (for the first time, to the best of my knowledge). But there is little doubt in my mind that his foreign policy is one of isolating the U.S. from foreign nations as much as possible. He believes that the U.S. wields a big enough stick that others will need us and give us the respect we demand.

And finally, there is his way of reducing the federal budget. I don’t think there is anyone in the U.S. who doesn’t believe the government is bloated and that expenditures have gone wild. Trump has decided to address it immediately by asking Elon Musk to lead the budget-slashing effort. Which Musk has been doing with almost complete abandon. A lot of good people have been fired from their government positions, and Musk is not done yet.

Honestly, I’m not sure about this one. If the government can function well without these people, then Trump is doing a great service to this country. The government does not owe anyone a job. If there are too many employees in a particular role, people have to be fired.

My only problem with this is the speed with which he’s doing it and the reliance on one man and his staff to decide who and how many will be fired. (As an aside, the fact that Musk is the richest man in the world is irrelevant. It is a cynical and unscrupulous way to stir resentment among middle America. But I digress.) Moving at the speed Musk is moving may prove disastrous. Or not. Or maybe even beneficial. Who knows. We will eventually find out.

So what does all this mean? Is a revolution a bad thing? The Founding Fathers didn’t think so. It depends on what you want to accomplish and whether those goals will be achieved. The answer to that question in this case is yet to be determined. Nobody knows what the result of this revolution will look like. What is most important is that the Constitution is not violated in the process and that the electorate is satisfied with the results. And it is way too early to know or even predict that.

But one thing seems certain: at the end of the day, this country will never be the same. Whether that is good or bad remains to be seen.