by Pat Ledbetter

It’s hard to determine which is the more serious threat to our democracy: Trump’s cruelty or his corruption. What is clear is his determination to destroy our 250-year-old experiment in government “of the people, by the people, for the people.” As constitutional safeguards against tyranny crumble, Congress becomes his cheering section, the Supreme Court his rubber stamp, and the Texas governor his accomplice. When power derives its strength from fear, anger, and hate (his favored tools) democracy doesn’t stand a chance; cruelty, is normalized, and corruption becomes business as usual.

Trump began normalizing corruption before taking office when he announced his new family “business,” World Liberty Financial, and issued his meme coins, $Trump and $Melania, a sophisticated way to take bribes. (He has already made over $300 million in fees alone.) Once in office, he dismantled government agencies charged with regulating such schemes, thus maximizing further corrupt profits for himself and his new crypto friends.  Meanwhile, Don, Jr. is blatantly selling access to the president. For a mere $500,000 you can join his private club in Washington.  In case there is any doubt about what you are buying, the club’s name should reassure you—the Executive Branch. But if you don’t have that kind of cash on hand, you can still access his Trump-branded merch, everything from imaginary digital “collectibles” to Bibles and shoes.

If you are a poor nation like Vietnam, you can purchase a lower tariff rate by greenlighting a Trump golf course. If you are a rich nation like Saudi Arabia, you can curry favor by committing $2 billion of the nation’s sovereign wealth fund to his son-in-law’s real estate investment firm.  And the list could go on and on.

The corruption is bad, but I think the cruelty is worse. His campaign rhetoric began preparing the public to view cruelty as normal, even necessary.  When he told us immigrants are murdering and raping Americans, corrupting our children, and eating our pets, he made building concentration camps and joking about feeding them to alligators acceptable.  When he demonizes government workers as lazy, corrupt, and wasteful, our hearts are hardened against their tears over wrecked careers.  When he identifies reporters, government workers, college professors, scientists, lawyers, and, of course, all Democrats as “enemies of the people,” he appeals to the worst of our human instincts: fear, anger and ultimately hate. It’s easy to be cruel to those you consider dangerous. 

His tactics have given us policies that are both corrupt and cruel.  His “big, beautiful bill” takes from the poor to give the rich tax breaks. His destruction of USAID has already resulted in over 300,000 deaths, including many children.  His gutting of the IRS makes paying taxes optional for the wealthy, and his layoffs of Veterans Bureau and Social Security staff make their programs almost inaccessible. Even though 70% of the people oppose gerrymandering voting districts, he can simply order Gov. Abbott to redraw the Texas map to deliver five more lackeys to his Congress, and opponents are dismissed as a “radical left lunatics.”

The good news is that American democracy has been under assault in the past, but it has always been rescued by those who believe in its promise of “liberty and justice for all.” Our government was founded by “We the People” and, despite all efforts to the contrary, still belongs to “We the People.” The Civil War was a far graver threat than any we have experienced so far, and on the brink of that catastrophe, Lincoln reminded Americans, “We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.” Still a powerful appeal and much better said than Trump’s garbled “weave.”