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Kimball Shinkoskey
Woods Cross, Utah
President Trump's New Year's fireworks have brightened up the sky but also are burning down the earth like the recent Palisades fire lit up homes along the SoCal coastline. Trump's two favorite, but highly dangerous, New Year's gifts to the nation are illegal war-making and political bribery.
The least legitimate leaders across the globe typically run the most aggressive nations. Today those leaders include Vladimir Putin, Benjamin Netanyahu and Donald Trump. There is a reason for this causal relationship. The pathway to long-term power is easiest to tread during a time of war. People feel like they can't change horses (military commanders) in the middle of the stream. Trump is amping up America's wars at the turn of the New Year, and Putin and Netanyahu both refuse to give theirs up. Trump's Jan. 3 strike on Venezuela's capital is just prelude music for more to come.
This is precisely how Franklin D. Roosevelt parlayed World War II into a stunning four terms of elected office. In doing so, he overturned America's well understood absolute limit of two terms of presidential office, established when George Washington retired after his second term. People worried then about Washington's breathtakingly long eight years in office. Our Founders understood well that ancient democratic Rome only allowed their presidents, called "consuls," a one-year term of office before they were turned out to pasture. They could run again later but could not accumulate more than a handful of years in office, unless at great peril to the republic.
In addition to provoking and perpetuating war, another good way to ensconce oneself in long-term power is by bribery. In the space of a mere twelve months, President Trump has flung out numerous bribes designed to shore up absolute power beyond the mid-term elections, raise his popularity up out of the gutter, and possibly even ensure an illegal third term should he feel up to it.
He has bribed, or is in the process of bribing, or in the planning stage of bribing: soybean farmers for the loss of their business to Argentina due to tariffs; air traffic controllers, so they will keep flying around his middle class American base during government shutdowns; 1.4 million Americans in the military who, in exchange for $1,776 gifts, must now look the other way at illegal orders when so commanded; 22 million or so folks losing their Obamacare premium tax credits but soon to get cash for health savings accounts or maybe just for lining their pockets; $2,000 pre-election bribes to tens of millions of less wealthy Americans and reduced Social Security taxes on older Americans so they will remember their benefactor's face and party affiliation at mid-term election time; and, most recently, $1,000 "Trump account" bribes for newborn babies, who will be expected to remember MAGA when they cash-in this assistance for their college educations.
Bribery in the world of autocracy and monarchy is the historically tried and true method for "earning" the respect of the people. In return, all the Dear Leader asks is never ending flattery and obedience to his every command. This has always been the Mafia way in America, but it is now the MAGA way as well. The system of bribery also allows our chief exec to accept bribes (illegal "emoluments" according to the Constitution) from foreign kings like the king of Qatar and to bribe foreign potentates in the form of tariff exemptions when they do as they are told to do in international economic affairs.
All of the slowly scaled-up Western hemisphere war-making and the blossoming culture of bribery must take a toll on otherwise sentient and good-guy and good-gal Americans who serve as slaves in the Presidential cabinet. Have you noticed that Trump cabinet members have proven that folks from all walks of life can be corrupted absolutely and very quickly with bribes of government position, fame, and power? These folks come from the once-respectable professions and pursuits of law, business and banking, university teaching, the military, church-going . . . you get the idea.
Today, however, these folks seem to be incapable of smiling while carrying out their governmental duties or speaking to the press or to Congress. What shows on their faces instead is the weight of the dishonesty and cruelty of the administration they are a part of, and their embarrassment at carrying out their slavish roles in the government. For a life of luxury and safety, however, they will bear up under it all!