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Donald J. Trump has done a lot of good for this country.
I appreciate him for shaking America out of its complacency. We have had representative democracy and tremendous freedoms for 250 years since the Declaration of Independence. During those years we have grown by ending slavery and giving women the right to vote.
Americans have forgotten what it is like to live under an autocracy. The American colonies spent a bloody eight-year battle fighting against the British king who tried to impose the empire’s values and rules by force.
During the first Gilded Age of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, labor unions had to fight for their rights to be treated with respect by their robber baron bosses who only cared about their own interests and wealth and who had no regard for the lives and welfare of their workers. Back then children as young as five worked long hours in unsafe factories, where falling asleep sometimes meant that they were killed by the machines they were working at.
The Triangle Shirtwaist Fire in Greenwich Village killed 146 garment workers; 123 women and girls and twenty-six men. Most of the victims were immigrant Jews and Italians aged 14 to 23. The owners had blocked the stairs and bolted the doors to keep their workers from leaving.
This age of rampant capitalism brought about reforms with laws and regulations passed to protect workers, like establishment of the 40-hour work week, ending child labor, setting higher safety standards, and setting environmental regulations.
President Trump, with his transactional mentality, open corruption, disregard for immigrants’ rights, and ignoring of our constitutional protections has reminded us of the reasons for the reforms passed over the last couple of centuries.
He has tried to destroy our rights in every way we could possibly imagine and beyond. We should be grateful to Trump for shaking us out of our complacency and rousing us out of our ignorance of tyranny. He has reminded us of the reasons behind the Declaration of Independence and our constitutional checks and balances.
Trump has helped us appreciate the need for federalism where power is divided between the federal government and the states.
The recent election showed that the overwhelming majority of Americans believed Trump’s tyrannical actions had finally come to a breaking point. Most Americans now realize that apathy and ignorance over Trump’s ten years have only made their lives worse. They realize that our legacy media failed us out of their fear of reprisals. Large corporations decided profit was more important than standing up for environmental standards. Large law firms remained silent rather than act to limit the power of a president who was smashing all the guardrails that protected freedom.
A Latina has become the governor of Texas. A Black man will become governor of Florida. A Palestinian American from Michigan will now sit in the Senate. A Muslim woman kept her Minnesota House seat. Native American women won elective office in New Mexico, Minnesota, and New York. A democratic socialist is now the mayor of New York City. Elon Musk’s hundreds of millions could not buy elections in Wisconsin or Texas. The open corruption of Ken Paxton caused him to lose the senate race in Texas to James Talarico.
Racism and cruelty to immigrants must end. The age of white male control must cease as demographics move America into a multiracial democracy.
There is a sense in which we should be grateful to Trump for his extremism and disregard for the welfare of average Americans. We should be glad that he was so incompetent. Had he been clever and more patient, his move to dictatorship might have succeeded.
Unfortunately, the damage he and his minions have caused with his “wrecking ball,” both actual and metaphorical, will likely take decades to repair. We may be entering another “forever war,” this time with Iran, which will cost billions of dollars and thousands of lives.
The road back will be long and difficult, just as it was in 1776, and again during the first Gilded Age of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Thankfully, rebellion against tyranny is part of America’s DNA. It has just taken a long time for that reality to sink in.
Richard Elfers is a columnist, a former Enumclaw City Council member and a Green River College professor.
