Trump doesn't intend to pass healthcare legislation. He intends to NOT pass healthcare legislation so he can then blame the failure on Congress. This past Sunday Trump tweeted, "If Republicans don't Repeal and Replace the disastrous ObamaCare, the repercussions will be far greater than any of them understand!" Despite appearances, he wasn't telling Congress to fall in line behind the legislation. He was telling his base what to do when they don't.
He has put nearly zero effort into working out the details of any of the healthcare legislation he's promoted so far, instead putting impossible deadlines on their delivery. Pundits, newscasters, and even our legislators think Trump simply doesn't understand how legislation gets created and passed. They attribute it to his either being "not smart enough" or "new to government".
I think he's outsmarting us all.
It is just over eight months into his term and Trump has already held nine campaign-style rallies. His rallies always include both pie-in-the-sky promises and accusations against a variety of groups (Congress, the media, Democrats, Republicans, and so on) for blocking him from delivering on those promises. And his base believes it. His tweets follow similar patterns.
To understand why this is a threat, we have to note several things. One of these is who is included in his base. Estimates of the membership numbers of armed militias in the U.S. are in the tens of thousands, perhaps as many as one hundred thousand. The vast majority of these are right-wing, anti-government, and PRO-TRUMP. They have stated openly that they are ready to take action if the federal government oversteps its bounds. Some consider legislation supporting transgender bathroom rights to be a sufficiently egregious overstep, so it doesn't require a big issue. A lot of little issues will do, as long as they collectively create enough outrage. As we all know, Trump is drumming up the outrage.
It may seem easy to dismiss these concerns by pointing out that our police departments and armed services are far larger. But there is cause for concern there, too. According to a PBS NewsHour report, in 2006 "the FBI warned of the potential consequences — including bias — of white supremacist groups infiltrating local and state law enforcement, indicating it was a significant threat to national security." Although we don't know how widespread this problem is, we do know it exists. Unless we want to be blind-sided, we should take a much closer look.
We have repeatedly seen Trump instruct the police to go ahead and rough people up. This is obviously intended to increase the tension between police and civilians. He does this while aligning himself with law enforcement which will increase his support from officers that otherwise had nothing to do with the alt-right before. They will back him because he backs them, never-mind that he is making the tensions worse. If Trump calls on the police to, for example, restore order to a Congress that he himself has broken, some of them will certainly heed the call. Those that serve with noble intentions and who have not fallen for his divisive tactics will unlikely be prepared to stop what may ensue, even if their numbers are greater.
This is not to suggest that a paramilitary-style takeover of Congress is imminent. The point is simply that it appears he may be preparing for it. Before he might take that step, I would expect that he would ensure he has at least a handful of alt-right backers within the House and Senate. There is little doubt that the alt-right will win seats in the next election. What we don't know is how many he will get nor how many he needs.
And there's still more. We must also take into account what we already know about Russian efforts to put Trump into power. Those efforts during the election were covert and, as far as we know thus far, limited to propaganda and ineffectual hacking attempts against our electoral systems. Even if this is the case, there is no reason to believe that Russia will restrain themselves from further meddling, or limit meddling to non-violent methods. Russia is, after all, a world-class expert at overthrowing governments.
This is most definitely not about healthcare.
He has put nearly zero effort into working out the details of any of the healthcare legislation he's promoted so far, instead putting impossible deadlines on their delivery. Pundits, newscasters, and even our legislators think Trump simply doesn't understand how legislation gets created and passed. They attribute it to his either being "not smart enough" or "new to government".
I think he's outsmarting us all.
It is just over eight months into his term and Trump has already held nine campaign-style rallies. His rallies always include both pie-in-the-sky promises and accusations against a variety of groups (Congress, the media, Democrats, Republicans, and so on) for blocking him from delivering on those promises. And his base believes it. His tweets follow similar patterns.
To understand why this is a threat, we have to note several things. One of these is who is included in his base. Estimates of the membership numbers of armed militias in the U.S. are in the tens of thousands, perhaps as many as one hundred thousand. The vast majority of these are right-wing, anti-government, and PRO-TRUMP. They have stated openly that they are ready to take action if the federal government oversteps its bounds. Some consider legislation supporting transgender bathroom rights to be a sufficiently egregious overstep, so it doesn't require a big issue. A lot of little issues will do, as long as they collectively create enough outrage. As we all know, Trump is drumming up the outrage.
It may seem easy to dismiss these concerns by pointing out that our police departments and armed services are far larger. But there is cause for concern there, too. According to a PBS NewsHour report, in 2006 "the FBI warned of the potential consequences — including bias — of white supremacist groups infiltrating local and state law enforcement, indicating it was a significant threat to national security." Although we don't know how widespread this problem is, we do know it exists. Unless we want to be blind-sided, we should take a much closer look.
We have repeatedly seen Trump instruct the police to go ahead and rough people up. This is obviously intended to increase the tension between police and civilians. He does this while aligning himself with law enforcement which will increase his support from officers that otherwise had nothing to do with the alt-right before. They will back him because he backs them, never-mind that he is making the tensions worse. If Trump calls on the police to, for example, restore order to a Congress that he himself has broken, some of them will certainly heed the call. Those that serve with noble intentions and who have not fallen for his divisive tactics will unlikely be prepared to stop what may ensue, even if their numbers are greater.
This is not to suggest that a paramilitary-style takeover of Congress is imminent. The point is simply that it appears he may be preparing for it. Before he might take that step, I would expect that he would ensure he has at least a handful of alt-right backers within the House and Senate. There is little doubt that the alt-right will win seats in the next election. What we don't know is how many he will get nor how many he needs.
And there's still more. We must also take into account what we already know about Russian efforts to put Trump into power. Those efforts during the election were covert and, as far as we know thus far, limited to propaganda and ineffectual hacking attempts against our electoral systems. Even if this is the case, there is no reason to believe that Russia will restrain themselves from further meddling, or limit meddling to non-violent methods. Russia is, after all, a world-class expert at overthrowing governments.
This is most definitely not about healthcare.
Comments
Post a Comment