Kimball Shinkoskey

Woods Cross

Donald Trump’s governing style is seductive and exciting to MAGA folks precisely because it is so outrageous and new. No President has ever governed like this before. Trump doesn’t debate, he belittles. Trump doesn’t plan, he reacts. Trump doesn’t concede, he denies.

The former president is not reliable, he is unpredictable. He doesn’t work in tandem, only alone. The presumptive nominee knows no written Constitution, no balance of power, no legislative process. Trump’s right hand is the law. Power is centered in himself, not the people or their representatives. Trump’s law-making process consists in his getting out of bed, deciding what he is going to impose on the people today and playing a round of golf while barking out tweets and executive orders. The Republican party standard-bearer doesn’t ever need to be right, he just needs to be forceful.

This is the governing style of a rapacious autocracy. This is something very different from the America of the past 250 years, and that is why it is so fascinating to so many. However, for the previous 750 years of Anglo-Saxon civilization in England before 1776, this governing style was very popular and was known as monarchy.

This playbook was acted out by the likes of capricious King John in the early days of monarchy in the British Isles, and later by the likes of Henry VIII who took on not only many wives, but the Pope and all other comers, too. British monarchs ran the country like a personal household where the nation’s citizens were treated like children.

It is this new form of reality that is so amusing to Americans. Trump is the anti-American, the anti-tradition, the anti-history, the anti-science, the anti-gravity. For generations now, Americans have been backing away from the stable reality of their forebearers and their system of family and local representative government. Trump wants to challenge, or reverse or belittle that history.

Before Trump and before MAGA America, change was very slow. Change had to follow rules. For example, “Obamacare” was first proposed some 60 years earlier in the Truman administration right after World War II. Every Democratic president since Truman tried to implement some form of national health care program and failed, because the time was not yet right. In a democracy, a majority of the people must be on board with any new policy and with shouldering the cost for the legislation.

We have been distancing ourselves from our ancestors’ slow way of doing things ever since our soldiers returned home from Europe with all the laurels after World War II. Do you remember Obama becoming impatient with Congressional slowness in implementing immigration reform? He adopted the motto, “We can’t wait,” and eventually implemented DACA immigration reform on his own. Trump just took that impatient sentiment one step further. Trump’s motto is “I can’t wait.” There is no “we” in it at all.

Trump says that on day-one he will stop the war in Gaza. On day-one he will deal with Putin and derail the war in Ukraine. Trump might actually change Europe in a twinkling of an eye like he says. But at what cost? Trump might well concede ground not only in Ukraine, but in Poland, the Baltic states and the Balkan states. After all, one king must respect the need of another king to have land and resources and compliant citizens to toy with in his own sphere of influence. Trump might well just hand over Taiwan to Xi Jinping as well. What is Taiwan to him?

The future is exciting for those who support Trump. However, those Republicans who want America to move forward in measured justice, equality and domestic tranquility might want to pick a different party to associate with.