The End of the American Presidency
Anyone who looks at the list of the top-ten largest cities in the United States would see that they were all out yesterday protesting yet another black man being killed by police. If one looked at a list of the top-30 largest metro areas in the country, they would see protests and riots in every city. Our nation eclipsed 104,000 deaths from a deadly virus today as well, with more outbreaks expected after the national unrest because our government has not addressed the inequality and injustice that black Americans face at the hands of police and the American justice system. Two plagues, exploding a country that has been sitting upon a powder keg of racial, economic, and political tensions for decades that have been made worse over the last four years.
In a normal time, in a crisis of days gone by, American leadership would have at least tried to calm the storm. It may not have been an ideal response, but there would have been a response, an attempt to bind the nation together and to move forward. Ideally, the President would have stood with other national leaders of both parties and at least attempted to have a real dialogue about what has happened over the last week in America after the brutal murder of George Floyd. In a perfect world, he would have been in Minneapolis on Tuesday, speaking with the Governor and Mayor and drawing attention to this cause in a way that demanded justice but also asked for peace and unity in finding solutions.
To put it in the most understated terms that I could possibly phrase without saying nothing at all, this is not an ideal situation or a perfect world.
What we’ve seen over the last week, and really over the last 6 months, has instead been the abandonment of the American people by the President of the United States. Trump hasn’t ended the imperial Presidency, he’s ended the Presidency all together. States are on their own. There has been no central leadership from the American government as crisis after crisis piles up nationally, neglected by a President who’s just happy that everyone hears every word he says and is content simply to have the prestige of the office without having actually done any of the responsibilities that come with the office. In addition to an immature, crisis-blind, abhorrent, and irresponsible President, he is backed up by a spineless group of power-hungry worms in the Republican Party and the United States Senate that seek to wrestle with each other in the power vacuum that is the Trump administration simply to hear the man say their name. If that’s not enough, all of them are backed by an army of idiots content to point and laugh at the American way of life they claim to love. Pitiful excuses for patriots whose idea of service is kicking peaceful protestors in the face, shooting and arresting reporters, and “triggering” liberals. This venture into government was never serious, and it was never anything more than a publicity stunt designed to derail real government for the rich and powerful to fill the vacuum of power left behind and held open by their slimy and traitorous friends who held positions of power around it.
All of this comes at a time when 104,000 Americans lay in a solitary state of death, unvisitable by family and friends from a disease the President refused to handle. Millions of Americans pour into their cities and streets and risk infection to protest white supremacy, embodied and encouraged by the President. The President who does not use his power to help, or de-escalate, or calm, but instead uses his power to threaten further damage and impunity for law enforcement. White supremacist groups infiltrate peaceful protests to incite violence and rioting in hopes of civil war, egged on by their commander-in-chief. Others show up with guns, hoping to intimidate protestors to back off. Others wear police uniforms as a part of state and local police forces and use their badge as a shield to brutally beat, maim, and kill American citizens. Even still, the President sits in the White House tweeting away and encouraging state and vigilante violence against Americans begging for his administration simply to fill the purpose of government.
This leaves the nation in tatters. Bound by a Constitution that goes ignored, a justice system that’s so broken it could be a modern art masterpiece, a policing system that dates back 150 years and is rooted deeply in racism, and a central Federal government that exists in name only. What’s left are states that have been starved of resources for decades as the Federal government soaks up responsibility after responsibility and takes the resources for completing that job with them, and cities which have been rendered moot by weak mayors and city councils with little to no power over their own government or police forces. Exhausted governors and mayors, put into situations that require more and more support, are met with a deafening silence that can only be matched by the silence Minneapolis residents heard when calling 911 on Wednesday night. The American states, the American cities, the American People have been abandoned by their government.
What’s worse is the glee that the President seems to take in being absent. Even as America burned yesterday, the President of the United States watched NASA launch a rocket with all the joy of a seven-year-old watching Neil Armstrong step onto the moon in 1969. The President took more joy in watching Americans break barriers that we had already surpassed than he did in doing the job he was elected to do. As he did, his toadies in the United States Senate and state legislatures across the country, railed against peaceful protests that one by one turned violent amid police escalations. But again, the President was nowhere to be found. As reports came out that he was considering speaking to the nation on Saturday night, an outcry formed online against the idea for the fear that he would only make it worse. On Sunday morning, after being absent for nearly 15 hours, the President again appeared on Twitter to take credit for the actions of police and National Guard the night before despite the numerous Constitutional violations of American police overnight.
The question isn’t “where’s President Trump,” the question is “where can we find a President?” We don’t have national leadership at this point. We don’t have a central government. We have 50 states that are on their own. Forced to work together in coalitions and collaborations instead of through the Federal government like it was designed. Governors acting as Presidents should, being the calming voices and trying to get control of a situation that has so quickly spiraled.
The solution to this problem seems simple. The solution to most would be voting Donald Trump out in November, but at the rate we’re currently hurtling from national crisis to national crisis, we may not have until November. A vote is imperative, but it may be too late to correct the problems posed by a federal government that has gone missing and a President that has abdicated his responsibilities. No, the solution to this problem is complex and requires a number of things to happen. The first thing that needs to happen is that Donald Trump needs to resign. He has already stopped doing his job as President and serves as a figurehead anyway, the only logical next step is for him to resign or to be removed from office by any legal means necessary. Next, Congress must act to significantly reduce the scope of the Presidency of the United States. It’s clear that the office of the President has become a single point of failure in the American system of government that is designed to have multiple points of failure to prevent situations like these. State legislatures must act to reign in rogue police forces from powerless mayors and city councils. We must break either the police union or break the police force. There is no alternative to radical, structural reform in our police forces from this point forward other than abolishment, and so we must first attempt a radical reform. Next, the United States Congress must pass legislation to fund repairs to the damages in areas affected by the riots and serve tax breaks to new black-owned small businesses and startups. The recovery must be swift, and it must be aided by a nation that has learned that building strong, equally educated, and thriving communities that are heard by those around them is the only way to prevent crime, and is the best way to prevent excessive interaction with the police. Lastly, we must address the power gap left by the President and pour power back into our state governments to handle crises with proper and local resources, and with a federal government designed to support and aid where states fall short rather than encouraging more force.
Nothing can bring back the dead. The burned and broken can be rebuilt. The American Presidency as we know it has been torched from the inside by a man who simply could not govern his way out of a wet paper bag. A question from a female reporter is too much for him to handle, how the hell did we expect him to handle a real, honest to god crisis? The answer is we didn’t expect it. We need a leader from whom we can expect more than a tweet the morning after he ignored an unfolding national emergency. Donald Trump must resign or be removed from the Office of President. He is, put kindly, a human power vacuum operating a crisis machine. The question now becomes how much more will we tolerate before he is removed by force? Only after these things are done can we ever hope of rebuilding the American Presidency.