TR EMERITUS

Trump is going for the jugular. His plan is to make America great again. But in just shy of his 100 days in leadership, wielding immense power, it seems like he is making America hate more than great.

Going against court orders, his deportation exercise done in the still of the night has turned xenophobia into hatred against foreigners or legal immigrants.

Despite court sanctions, the firing and rehiring of thousands of govt employees has turned despair into frustration. This has driven a wedge between his leadership and the tens and thousands of American people. Electoral hope has thus turned into animosity and hate.

Amongst many other divisive policies, what stood out most is the recent indiscriminate global tariffs. Like most, if not all, of his policies after inauguration, he drives in on a V8 four wheeler monster truck and crushes everything that stands in his way. It’s liken to mowing the lawn with a tomahawk blade, nothing is spared.

Last I heard, a federal lawsuit was commenced by the California governor, challenging “President Trump’s use of emergency powers to enact broad-sweeping tariffs that hurt states, consumers, and businesses.”

“President Trump’s unlawful tariffs are wreaking chaos on California families, businesses, and our economy — driving up prices and threatening jobs. We’re standing up for American families who can’t afford to let the chaos continue,” said Governor Gavin.

And now, the elite educational institutions are targeted, for not being teachable or pliable. Harvard, Columbia and Berkeley are facing the wrath of Trump for standing up against his policies.

His policies are “to end recruitment of international students “hostile to American values”” and to allow his administration to “impose “viewpoint diversity”, essentially ideological control, over faculty appointments.”

But the century-old institutions are fighting back. They are not budging, even when Trump threatened to cut their funding worth millions of dollars.

At some point, I believe he had exceeded his electoral mandate. He may have won the popular vote but he is fast becoming unpopular, even hated, for replacing the will of the people for the will of his own, one that is cemented by a potent mix of chutzpah, megalomania and ignorance.

The problem with autocrats like Trump is that he is, first and foremost, an over-the-top showman. He hoards the limelight and draws his raison d'etre from the applause of men and women. His ego hungrily feeds on them, and cannot imagine living without.

He thrives from one standing ovation to another, and his reality is far too off the ground to accept that he can be brought down by good sense and objective truths. His traits are typical of all autocrats we know.

He firmly believes that he is the messiah. He is the chosen one for such a time like this. He alone is right, and 77.3 million cannot be wrong. As far as he is concerned, and with the fawning of many that surround and elevate him, right and wrong comes down to on which line of the divide you stand.

If you are not for him, and his policies, and if you do not shower him with effusive messianic adoration, especially in public, you are standing on the wrong side of history in the making, or in his case, more like history unmaking.

Autocrats like Trump have come and go. History is littered with them. Revolutions have started and ended with them. Yet, regardless, they will still come and go, again and again. And when they do, we will just have to grit our teeth and endure its systemic glitches, embraced by the majority. For where else could one be clothed with legitimacy in a liberal democracy?

While power is given to us through the ballot box, at most times, such power is largely delusional because the voters are more like sheep who are easily manipulated by the charismatic staff held by the one who seductively promises hope and change, just like a used car salesman would assure the buyer that the car is as good as new, if not better than new.

Democracy is the hope the powerless clinch on to for a day so that the powerful can ride on it to do whatever they want and get the most out of it for the next four to five years. It’s like a blank cheque that the people sign, so that the leader can cash in and spend it for as long as his term lasts.

Alas, due to the flaws of human nature, which manifests itself most glaringly in the ennobled goals of one-man-one-vote, we can expect that a system’s glitch can either crash the system or the hopes of the people.

Michael Han