Remember when Donald Trump declared in the 2016 presidential campaign that “we’re going to win so much that you’re going to get tired of” winning? Sadly, his prediction came true, but at the expense of American democracy.
In his paranoid desire to win his mind and his own interests, he has indeed disgusted our country by attacking our institutions, corrupting our government and undermining our values.
Nothing says Trump’s obsession with winning more than his refusal to accept his 2020 presidential defeat. Despite losing the popular and electoral votes, he declared that “we did win this election” and called legal voting a “fraud of the American public.” He then conspired with his inner circle to send fake voter lists to Washington and personally pressured Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffinsburg to “find” votes for him.
His obsession with victory materialized on January 6, when he stirred up a group of manipulated, misguided, and misled citizens who thought they were patriots and not seditions, attacked the Capitol, not in support of our constitutional government The government, instead, provides cover for a group of white supremacists. , political gangsters and traitors trying to stage a political coup.
If nothing else, his role in the uprising made clear Trump’s disdain for our democracy. It is clear to him that the United States represents an individually controlled enterprise designed to attract investors and consumers with the sole purpose of maximizing profits for its most privileged shareholders (his family, business associates and political cronies) and power. He’s nothing more than a gangster in political clothing who only cares about protecting his fragile ego and relies on the ostentation of wealth, status and power.
Remarkably, his desire for “victory” — indifference to American ideals, values, and institutions — echoes a passage in perhaps the most quintessential novel about the demise of the American dream, “The Great Gatsby.” Learning that the 1919 World Series was a gang messed up, the narrator says, “I never thought a man could play with the faith of 50 million people as single-mindedly as a thief.” After Trump falsely claimed to “win” the election All he did was guiltlessly toyed with the beliefs of millions of American voters.
Cynically, Trump’s philosophy of “winning” means plundering the dreams, aspirations, and aspirations of America’s middle and lower classes while pocketing their own pockets and collecting their votes. While he credits him with Wall Street’s booming stock market, his Main Street supporters have little to invest in. When he stimulates the economy by cutting regulations designed to protect American consumers, their needs are ignored in favor of corporate profits. When he unilaterally pulled the United States out of the Paris climate accord, he made it cheaper and more profitable for American industry to burn climate-altering and life-threatening fossil fuels.
But perhaps most damaging of all, his “America First” creed has permeated the masses, meaning “Me First.” In other words, Trump’s “win” philosophy has been embraced by many of his supporters, who see America as little more than a business dedicated to providing wealth to its more qualified citizens.
As long as the economy is strong, many Americans no longer care whether government pursues equality and justice for all of its citizens; or whether industry pollutes the air, water, and planet; or whether the country welcomes “your tired, poor, crowded, hungry to breathe free” the masses”; or, for that matter, whether the former president of the United States tried to illegally seize power and undermine democracy. In other words, by appealing to our more selfish instincts, Trump is trying to overturn the idea of the lofty principles on which the nation is built.
For example, a recent New York Times/Siena College survey showed that many citizens have embraced Trump’s toxic “big lies” and superficial values like sweets. One interviewee, Marie Boyce, a New York Republican, said: “Trump has done a fantastic job on the economy. I don’t have much to say about him.”
Paula Hudnall, a 51-year-old nurse in Charleston, West Virginia, said she did not blame Trump, who has voted again for 2024, for the violence at the Capitol.
David Beard, a 69-year-old Missouri Liberal retiree who plans to vote in 2024, said Democrats’ efforts to hold Trump accountable for the Jan. 6 attacks were a “pointless distraction” To Trump, bet that’s the best chance to improve the economy.
In fact, many Republican politicians are running in Trump’s corrupt tuxedo, and by pandering to voters’ more selfish instincts.
If enough politicians and voters willfully turn a blind eye to blatant corruption; if they become indifferent to evidence, facts, and reason; if citizens vote with their wallets regardless of democratic consequences; then we are truly a nation that “wins.”
In that case, we become a nation without a conscience, a nation without a soul, an America without a dream. Then Trump won. But America lost.
Thomas Cangelosi is a retired teacher living in Avon.