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TO LISTEN GO TO
https://alternativevisions.podbean.com/e/alternative-visions-trump-s-political-legacies/
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SHOW ANNOUNCEMENT
As a follow up addendum to a prior week’s show on ‘Trump’s Toxic Economic Legacies’, today’s Alternative Visions show discusses Trump’s Political Legacies.
At the top of the legacy list is the deep change in political consciousness among all sectors of US society that Trump’s regime—and in particular his last year in office—has generated. Political elites in Washington have been deeply shaken by the events leading up to and during January 6. They now realize the threat to limited US Democracy (and their own safety) is serious and not limited to the mob that attacked the Capitol that day. Key institutions like the police and even military are infected with right wing radical beliefs & intentions. Another fundamental shift in consciousness is among right wing radical movements. They now see January 6 as a ‘success’ to be repeated elsewhere later. Still another fundamental shift in consciousness is by John Q. Public, who now realizes US Democracy has not only always been fragile, but that the Electoral College is evident as basically anti-democratic, and that even the college can be thwarted and overturned by tactics. These changes in consciousness will be enduring.
Apart from this widespread consciousness shift, Trump’s second political legacy is the radical takeover of the Republican party under Trump and the forthcoming fight over who will run that party—traditional elites or Trump forces. A split in its structure is likely before 2024.
The third political legacy is the evident deep failure of government and institutions in addressing the US Triple Crisis: Covid, Economic, Political. It will be a challenge for Biden and traditional elites to restore the normal functioning of government soon.
Trump’s fourth political legacy is that US global hegemony and alliances are in a shambles. Former allies will never return to status quo ante pre-Trump again and will cautiously pursue independent relations with China and other countries.
Finally, the fifth political legacy, is Trump’s legitimization and organizing of the radical right forces in America, in and out of Government. That genie will not soon return to its bottle.
I take strong issue with the claim that the response to Covid 19 was a Trump failure: on the contrary the needless death of hundreds of thousands of Americans, the lack of a coherent distribution plan, the refusal to broadcast testing, the missing tens of millions of doses of vaccine et al ad nauseam are a triumph for Trump and his guiding principle of Newt Gingrich to make gov’t [Ronald Reagan’s sneering pronunciation] utterly dysfunctional so Joe Six pack can rage after his set of nightly beers that the gov’t steals his hard earned money through taxes and he gets nothing but misery and death back.
It could be that both interpretations, yours and mine, are simultaneously correct. Depends on from the perspective of who’s interests. But good point.