Donald Trump doesn’t like the whole concept of government of, by and for the people, the idea that political power derives from the will of the people rather than gods or kings or priests or…dare we say, political strongmen, real and imagined.
Per Fox News, Trump’s sole intelligence source and enthusiastic feedback loop:
.@POTUS on getting things done in government: "It's a very rough system. It's an archaic system…It's really a bad thing for the country." pic.twitter.com/knhtzL1LGP
— Fox News (@FoxNews) April 28, 2017
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Archaic means “old-fashioned” and “obsolete” and “out of date” and, perhaps wistfully here for would-be dictator Donald Trump, “no longer used.”
You know, because we have this whole thing about three co-equal branches of government and checks and balances that prevent the president from ruling like a king – or a Putinesque banana republican dictator.
It’s inefficient, he says. In other words, he’s frustrated that he can’t do anything he damn well pleases without appeal to all those pesky and inconvenient laws. He can’t try to rule by fiat without somebody saying “un-Constitutional!”
Joe Scarborough of MSBNC’s Morning Joe isn’t having any of this, tweeting,
Your party has a monopoly on power. How clueless to be politically impotent with such an advantage. Don't blame America's Constitution. https://t.co/QQeI8E7kl6
— Joe Scarborough (@JoeNBC) April 29, 2017
Of course, Trump doesn’t want any of that, having to work with people and persuade them with intelligible arguments (foot-stomping tantrums don’t count). He wants people to just do what he says because he’s “kind of a smart guy” and he’s the only guy who can fix it. Just ask him. Why does he have to bother with all these lesser beings who just get in the way of his brilliance?
If Trump’s tears were just excuse-making it would be bad enough. Sure, he needs to explain why he hasn’t done anything in his first hundred days (cutting back on the golf game might seem an obvious solution) but the real problem here is that Donald Trump honestly thinks his word should be law.
Even though it is the word of a guy who hasn’t made the slightest attempt to learn a single thing while he’s been in office and leaves it at every opportunity to play.
His executive orders and his reaction to judicial oversight as mandated by the United States Constitution verifies his dictatorial leanings. Judges are unelected, he says. What right do they have to “set policy” – in reality, of course, to question his judgment?
Trump is used to ruling like a king in the corporate world. A government isn’t like that, outside a monarchy or a dictatorship. Trump thinks it’s inefficient. What it is is safe. It protects us from people like, well…Donald Trump.
The Constitution was set forth to protect us from dictators and kings. And as Trump’s frustrated and whiny rants have shown, it is a protection we very badly need.
Hrafnkell Haraldsson, a social liberal with leanings toward centrist politics has degrees in history and philosophy. His interests include, besides history and philosophy, human rights issues, freedom of choice, religion, and the precarious dichotomy of freedom of speech and intolerance. He brings a slightly different perspective to his writing, being that he is neither a follower of an Abrahamic faith nor an atheist but a polytheist, a modern-day Heathen who follows the customs and traditions of his Norse ancestors. He maintains his own blog, A Heathen’s Day, which deals with Heathen and Pagan matters, and Mos Maiorum Foundation www.mosmaiorum.org, dedicated to ethnic religion. He has also contributed to NewsJunkiePost, GodsOwnParty and Pagan+Politics.