Most of us remember playing this childhood game, first as children ourselves, and later as parents or grandparents. It was an easy concept for youngsters to understand. You spun the arrow and advanced to whatever color it landed upon. Sometimes a yellow might advance you to the bottom of a ladder, allowing the player to climb up as far as it would go, getting closer to the end and winning the game. But other times you could land on a chute that sent you falling way down toward the beginning and having to climb your way back up – if you were lucky.
Think of this game as we vote soon. There are promises that Trump makes that could send us falling down a lot of chutes, thus unraveling a lot that has been carefully crafted by presidents of both parties over the decades. Conversely, there are other safety proposals and ideas by his opponent that could enable us to further climb up the ladder of trying to make this a more perfect union.
Consider the following:
Trump’s former defense secretary Mark Esper said his biggest concern would be Trump withdrawing troops from key places abroad and abandoning alliances. Yet sooner or later, we all need each other. If he follows through on his plans to exit NATO, it could some day create a serious vulnerability for the United States, because NATO’s Article 5 Collective Defense Clause states that an attack on one is an attack on all. This means that all NATO nations would come to the aid of the one attacked. Article 5 was only invoked once in all of NATO’s existence – on 9-11. Yes, the United States was the one attacked and within days, NATO enhanced its intelligence-sharing, put in a maritime counter-terrorism operation in the Mediterranean Sea, and 15 NATO countries sent fighter aircraft to help the U.S. patrol its skies. If Trump follows through on his plan, it would be akin to a child landing at the top of a long chute and spiraling way way down.
Josh Venable, Trump’s former chief of staff for the Department of Education also warned about Trump “fully gutting” the Department of Veterans Affairs to use its $250 billion dollar budget on other political priorities. That would be a slippery slide down another chute for all of those who served our country. But we could also make it a ladder to preserve and enhance the services for those who served us. Depending on how we vote.
Congress’s checks and balances against the presidency will be undone entirely by Trump, says former Tea Party Congressman Reid Ribble. He could do this by bypassing the Senate and installing unqualified “acting officials” to run government agencies or to simply ignore subpoenas. If you’re not familiar with our system of checks and balances, I encourage you to pick up a tiny little booklet – the Constitution. It explains in quite easy to understand language and is an astonishingly very short read. This revered part of our democracy could either be decimated or saved, depending on how we vote. Chutes. Or ladders.
Former FBI leader Andy McCabe worries that Trump will purge the FBI and use replacements for revenge. For all the bad press the FBI sometimes gets, try to imagine it run by only those out for revenge on behalf of Trump. For all its faults – and every agency and human has them – how we vote will decide if we fall down the chute of a blossoming dictator, or climb a ladder to improve upon what is a vital part of our safety, even with their sometimes serious failings.
This list could go on for pages. Trump wants to deploy the military to crush peaceful protests, further gut our reproductive freedom, create a police state where his “enemies” could be surveilled, and further empower law enforcement to use lethal force as he sees fit. All of these are slippery slides down the chute of repression on our hard fought freedoms. And all of these aspirations came directly from the republican candidate himself.
Trump supporters insist that his detractors take him too literally, that he doesn’t really mean all that he says. But what if he even means some of it? Keep in mind what Maya Angelou said:
When someone shows you who they are, believe them.
Image: ID 128701347 © Erin Cadigan | Dreamstime.com
