I saw a Trump supporter comment that it would be great if people would just stop fighting the President. The following is my response to this suggestion.
No, things would not be great if people stopped fighting the President. Just look what he is doing in the international arena. He is turning the U.S. into a pariah state with his Islamophobic fear mongering, his blatant racism, and his demand that Mexico pay for the wall. International tourism to the U.S. is down significantly, and we are on pace to losing $10 billion in tourism dollars this year.
But that is the least of our worries under Trump. Of greater concern is Trump’s climate change denial, his war on science, and his withdrawal from the Paris Climate Agreement. I invite you to read—really read—this article about Trump’s war on science and THINK about how his attempt to prevent scientific results that go against his agenda from reaching the American people endangers our nation.
Next, I invite you to read this chilling article on climate change. It seems we have grossly underestimated its potentially civilization-threatening impact. This is, I admit a very long article, but it is so very important. The hurricanes that we are seeing this fall are just an appetizer of what is to come if we don’t radically change course.
Even if climate change does not produce the horrible-to-civilization-ending scenarios discussed in this article, withdrawing from the Paris Agreement will adversely affect our country in another way. The rest of the world believes man-made climate change exists. The rest of the world will wean itself off fossil fuels as soon as possible. And SOME nation(s) are going to leap to the head of the pact in improving and marketing alternate fuel technologies. All indications are that China will become even more competitive in this arena. There is every reason to believe that they will eat our lunch in competing for the quickly growing solar market. I discuss this in more detail here.
But this is not the only way Trump is endangering our national security. It will take years for these disasters to unfold. Trump has strongly hinted that he will withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal. The nuclear deal is not just between Iran and the U.S. This is a deal that also involves Russia, China, the United Kingdom, France, and Germany as well. Under a best case scenario—one in which Iran does not use our abandonment of the deal as an excuse to quickly develop nuclear weapons—we will just isolate ourselves in the international community and piss off countries that were once considered our allies. Trump has a fantasy that we can renegotiate the deal, but NONE of the other countries involved in the deal are open to new negotiations. Under a worst case scenario Iran will abandon the deal and either develop nuclear weapons or else stop just short of building nuclear weapons. We will then be faced with a choice of either living with a more dangerous status quo or invading Iran to break up their nuclear facilities. A war with Iran will be more difficult than our war in Iraq. Their population is bigger, their country is bigger, and the Iranian population will be much more unified against the U.S. than the Iraqi people were.
And that’s not the only problem with reneging on the Iran nuclear deal. By abandoning the deal we will be sending a signal to the world that the U.S. can’t be trusted to keep its agreements. This is a bad signal to send to our allies. It is a horrendous signal to send to North Korea. They have little reason to trust the U.S. should we try to engage them in negotiations to end the nuclear crisis. But we aren’t even trying to end the crisis peacefully through negotiations. Trump has flat out said that talking is not the answer.
Of course, even if we wanted to resolve problems around the world diplomatically, the Trump Administration has made doing this difficult by trying to gut the State Department. If Rex Tillerson had his way he would cut the State Department budget by 30%.
And more than two dozen undersecretary and assistant secretary positions in the State Department lack even a NOMINEE.
But at least the Trump Administration has demonstrated one area of competence. At least they have appointed a brilliant Ambassador to South Korea---Oops! Who am I kidding? The Trump Administration hasn’t even NOMINATED an Ambassador to South Korea yet.
There is a very good chance that we will stumble into a nuclear war with North Korea that will kill millions of people. It won’t be entirely Trump’s fault. Much of the blame should go to Kim Jong Un. But Trump is the LAST person who should be steering our country through these treacherous times.
And this is just talking about Trump’s incompetence in foreign affairs. I could easily write a long article about the corrosive effect he has had domestically or his record-breaking corruption, but this post is way too long already. I could write an even longer article arguing that he stole the presidency with the help of the Russians and that he is not the legitimate President. Again, this article is way too long already. But I can’t resist mentioning that Vyacheslav Nikonov, a member of Russia’s Duma, bragged that U.S. intelligence (services) “slept through while Russia elected a new U.S. president."
So no, those of us who oppose Trump are not going away. All we can do is hope that our opposition will minimize the damage his venality or incompetency will accomplish.
Update 10/1/17: Lucian Randolph just posted an EXTREMELY important thread on Twitter explaining why he is fighting Trump. It is one of the most poingnant series of tweets that I have read. Please read it--and make sure you click on "more replies" to see the entire thread.
