Dear Editor:
Are we sliding into an authoritarian state? A few considerations.
Since coming to office, President Trump has raged against his political opponents, most often in denigrating terms. He excoriates the judiciary when it challenges his presumed authority. He calls the media an "enemy of the people." He skirts Congress and uses executive orders to make draconian policy changes, notably those focused on immigrants and refugees.
Holocaust scholar Helene Sinnreich writes that earmarks of authoritarianism are "a rise to power which is nationalist in nature, with calls to restore the nation to greatness or making reference to a mythic great past; racist or anti-foreign rhetoric; violence or the threat of violence; attacks on the free press and the promulgation of propaganda; marches or rallies to reinforce group cohesion; quashing of political opponents and democratic institutions after rising to power; and stripping away civil liberties. There is often an assumption made by existing elites that the radical leader will normalize once in power, but this normalization does not happen."
Far from "draining the swamp," as Trump bragged, his appointments include those most deeply entrenched in some of the largest, moneyed interests on the globe, including Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, chairman/chief executive of ExxonMobil; Commerce Secretary, billionaire Wilbur Ross, aka-the "king of bankruptcy," who sits on at least seven corporate boards; and Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin, a 17-year Goldman-Sachs veteran and financial hedger who gambles with other people's money.
Trump appoints people who detest the government agencies they are to head and steward. For example, Tom Price, Secretary of HHS who single-mindedly seeks to abolish the ACA; Secretary of education Betsy DeVos, with estimated worth over $5 billion, works against public education, of Amway family fortune, and sister to founder of the dastard Blackwater organization. Let's not leave out EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt, who as Oklahoma AG, sued the agency 14 times, challenges Clean Power Plan rules, and is a climate change denier.
Trump's form and substance of governance does not speak to the common good, or serving the least of these, it does not speak, in any known sense of the word, of democracy, and it does not speak to protection and care for the planet and all that is in it. It does speak to the aims of the rich, powerful, careless, environmental destroyers, and those would-be masters of the universe - the authoritarians.
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