Of all the things that the Founding Fathers firmly believed in avoiding, foremost was that this country would never have a “ruler.” We would have presidents. Not the same thing.
Yet, Trump is running with that intent: to be our ruler.
Power creates its own hunger and, if unchallenged, political hunger is the ultimate agar for the end justifying the means. Look at today’s world “rulers,” Vladimir Putin, Kim Jung Un, Trump’s latest favorite, Hungary’s Viktor Orbán. All Trump’s friends, all dictators, all craving power.
We know what their “ends” are; check out their means. And these are men whom Trump admires, touts their methods as reasonable and acceptable, and will emulate.
Trump had four years to gorge at the presidential power trough. Those four years were just a taste and he craves more. By his own words, he will be dictator. He tempers that by saying only on “Day One.” That one day will taste too good to let it go, guaranteed. Extrapolate: Stop at four more years? Not hardly.
The only impulse he understands is “more for me.”
Nowhere in the Constitution – nor in our history – have we ever endorsed the idea of a ruler, nor should that power rest on one person. We are a democratic republic, not a kingdom.
As reasonable and acceptable as Trump tries to make it sound, autocracy was abhorrent in 1776 and still is today. Yet, through its candidate, today’s GOP embraces that.
Josh Joswick
Bayfield
