Given all the justified paranoia about what the incoming Trump administration might do, I thought it might help to look ahead a little, either to his demise, one way or another, or to the end of his term in office. Not that we shouldn’t be vigilant, and ready to counteract his deranged decisions in between now and then, we absolutely should, with whatever it takes to do so.
Unfortunately, our tendency may be to become paralyzed by the barrage of idiocies and dangerous moves that are not only potentially lethal to American democracy, but which can endanger a safe world order. At home the vigilance is also necessary because Trump appears to be planning to turn the U.S. into a dictatorship with him as the “unto-death” head. That will be difficult to reverse especially since his party currently shows no backbone for trying to stop him. Worse, we run the danger of having to invoke civil war to reverse an accomplished fact if we don’t forestall it.
However, all that myopic focus on the next few days, weeks and months, important though that focus is, ignores the fact that we only have to survive Trump for, maybe, two years, until the next congressional elections, or a maximum of four years until he is out of office.
I happen to think that there are enough sensible republicans, even though that seems to be an oxymoron at the moment, to stop at least some of the excesses he will attempt to inflict on this country, but I can certainly be wrong. Crying over spilt milk (him winning and carrying out his proposed program) never did anyone any good, so planning for the “post-Trump” era is as essential as building the defenses against him while he is still in office.
I must admit that my major concern is in the area of foreign policy. Most of the stupidities he is likely to perpetrate domestically can be reversed, except perhaps dictatorship. Bad/myopic/self-interest decisions on foreign policy will be much more difficult to retrieve – how do you take back what Trump has allowed Russia to take in Ukraine and maybe Poland, and China to take in Taiwan and the South China Sea, without starting World War III and maybe World War IV.
However, despite that concern, and what we must do now to prevent such catastrophes, we must focus on a post-Trump America and start putting in place what we want that to look like. Be warned, that may very well mean a revision of the Constitution to set in place what we want for the future….and what we don’t want to allow in the future – namely, another Trump.
I have written before on the absolute necessity of holding a Constitutional Convention to revisit the document that was written over 250 years ago. It is a miracle that anything in that document, apart from the basic tenets, is relevant this many years later, and slavish adherence to the actual wording is nothing short of lunacy.
I have to admit that the very idea of establishing a constitutional convention under the current circumstances could also qualify as idiotic, lunacy and, at best, pie-in-the-sky. However, as we all know, every disaster contains the seeds of potential growth and reform. We should be planning for that goal, starting now, but we need visionaries who can think beyond next week, let alone beyond the next election cycle or the next generation.
Maybe we should start with the schools and universities. The rest of us are almost certainly a lost cause. Assuming we will still have a Department of Education or, maybe, it’s better if we don’t, until we have some idea of what we want for America’s future.
How about a nationwide competition in all schools and universities, for all students not faculty, to write a constitution for their future conceptions of the America they want to live in and the one they want their children and grandchildren to live? If nothing else, it would focus their attention on their futures.
