WORLDVIEW: Trump – Messiah, Donkey,, or Armageddon?

By Shlomo  Ben Ami

US President Donald Trump says he is “the chosen one” and many of his evangelical followers agree. But standing there, Bible in hand, in front of the historic St. John’s Episcopal Church in Washington, after police used riot shields and tear gas to clear the area of ​​peaceful protesters, Trump had more in common with the donkey of Jesus. than with a savior.

Far from liberating a fallen civilization, Trump is pushing a society to its tipping point, creating precisely the kind of chaos that many of his evangelical supporters believe will precede – and require – the arrival of a messiah.

Trump ran for president in 2016 with a promise to “Make America great again.” His November re-election campaign promises, with all the useless arrogance he’s used to, “Keep America great.”

Is it the same United States that is facing widespread protests over systemic racism and police brutality, where police officers who are supposed to keep the peace usually fuel violence? The United States where the police kill 2.5 times as many black men as white men?

Is Trump referring to the United States that is mired in the world’s worst Covid-19 outbreak, where the death rates of people of color are much higher than those of their white peers? The United States where approximately 44 million people do not have health insurance and another 38 million have inadequate coverage? The United States that, in the Trump presidency, has lost the respect of its friends, allies and partners, and has become an international laughingstock?

To be sure, America’s problems didn’t start with Trump. The US health care system has long been broken, inequality has been growing for decades, police brutality has always been part of American life, and systemic racism is rooted in the very foundations of the country. America’s claims to moral leadership were being questioned long before Trump entered the White House.

But if the United States was a powder keg of racism, inequality, and fractured politics, Trump lit the match – and then did not take charge of the fires it caused. “I take no responsibility,” he said when asked about the government’s slow response to the Covid-19 crisis.

Worse yet, Trump continued to add fuel to the fire. He played down the severity of the pandemic, encouraged anti-confinement protesters (mainly white and Republican), and touted unproven and potentially dangerous treatments.

When protests erupted nationwide after George Floyd’s police murder in Minneapolis, he threatened to deploy the military against the Americans, prompting four-star General John Allen to warn that such a move could mark the “Beginning of the end of the North American experiment.” And, with a clearly racist dog whistle, he repeated a phrase attributed to Walter Headley, the Miami police chief during the civil disorder that occurred there in 1967: “when the looting begins, the shooting begins.”

Trump’s behavior has been scandalous, but not surprising. He has exploited America’s deepest flaws since he entered the political scene, stoking political and cultural polarization to appease his followers, including his major component of white supremacists. Meanwhile, he maintained control of the Republican Party with a conventional combination of tax cuts and deregulation that overwhelmingly benefits the wealthiest Americans and the big corporations. And, for four consecutive years, his administration has diverted public money from the social safety net and education to the military. America’s defense budget today is the highest since World War II, with the exception of a handful of years at the height of the war in Iraq.

Why one might wonder, and rightly so, is Trump arming the United States to the teeth? After all, it has abdicated the global leadership of the United States and has allowed China to fill the gap without firing a single shot. Not only has it abandoned diplomatic standards, but it has also dismissed and betrayed allies, and it has intimidated countries with sanctions and threats. It has also withdrawn from international agreements, including the Iranian nuclear agreement (officially, the Joint Comprehensive Action Plan) and the Paris climate agreement.

For Europeans – who disagreed with Trump in most of these decisions – the United States is no longer a source of strategic or moral leadership. You may not even be a partner in the transatlantic community. The recent snub of German Chancellor Angela Merkel at Trump’s invitation to a G7 summit shows how far relations have deteriorated. Only desperate cynics like Benjamin Netanyahu from Israel, evangelical liars like Jair Bolsonaro from Brazil, petulants like Boris Johnson from Great Britain and thugs like Rodrigo Duterte from the Philippines still enjoy Trump’s friendship.

There is only one way to repair the reputation of the United States, regain the confidence of the allies, and ensure that the United States can act as an effective counterweight to China: address the root causes of the cracks that Trump’s disastrous presidency has exposed and expanded. This is in line with the vision proposed in 2011 by two military strategists, Captain Wayne Porter and Colonel Mark Mykleby, using the pseudonym “Mr. AND”.

Porter and Mykleby argued that national security depends not only on the ability to respond to threats from foreign powers but also – and perhaps more importantly – on the “application of credible influence and force.” That influence, in turn, depends on the success of the United States in providing a “path to promise” for American citizens – and a model for the world.

That soft power requires the United States government to promote civil values, fuel competitiveness and innovation, protect the environment, invest in social services, healthcare, culture and education, and offer opportunities to younger generations. In other words, it should go in the opposite direction to Trump’s agenda.

Trump is the antithesis of the type of leader who, for Max Weber, should “have the right to put his hand on the wheel of history.” A large and growing percentage of Americans seem to recognize this: their approval rating has been declining for weeks. But a Trump victory in the November election remains a real possibility.

No one should be excited about what is at stake. Winning another four-year term could embolden Trump to act even more irresponsibly, including bordering on criminality, and make his toxic legacy end up being irreversible.

Ben Ami is  a former Israeli foreign minister, abdvice president of the Toledo International Center for Peace.