TL;DR: supporting trump means that you have to abandon the concept of separation of powers as designed and written into the US constitution. the power that trump supporters want trump to have has many parallels to leaders around the world that are dictators, authoritarians, monarchs, or fascists.
i hear this a lot from the right:
we elected trump to be president, but when congress in general, and the democrats in particular, and the majority of the news media, are doing nothing but obstructing him. imagine how much more he can accomplish if we just got out of his way and let him do the job we elected him to do. we had this one great opportunity to elect a successful businessman to be president, so that he could bring innovative and cost-effective strategies to government to make it run better. this opportunity is squandered when the legislature and judiciary, not to mention the media, all keep getting in his way. this is just evidence that they all hate him more than they love america.
like... wow...
i know, right?
here's the thing though. for about half the country, these ideas are true to them.
there are millions of americans who have allowed themselves to become so delusional, that they actually believe this. of course this attitude divides rather than works to unite. but more than that, it shows an extreme lack of understanding of what america is, and why the constitution is written the way it is, and our government is designed the way it is.
so let's take those ideas above, and let them play out to see where we end up:
1. when you want a legislature to rubber stamp what the chief executive (ie, president) wants...
2. when you want federal judges, especially supreme court justices, who “lean your way”, rather than those who are impartial...
3. when you wish america and the media would just let the man fix the country “like we elected him to do”...
it sure sounds to me like you want the same system russia, china, north korea, saudi arabia, and several african dictatorships have.
...and not to mention, for a while there, venezuela!
(i
bring up venezuela, because that seems to be the flavor of the month
for those on the right to back up their idea that socialism is bad...
that any country who implements socialist programs will eventually become venezuela.)
all said with a straight face. no understanding of what checks-and-balances are, and why they exist, both the other branches and levels of government, and our independent media, no, just a desire to give trump (or obama, or bush, or any one person, for that matter), The Reins.
so...
are you sure about that?
are you really sure a government completely aligned behind one person's agenda is what we want?
in other words, when trump supporters say they "love america", but also have these kinds of ideas, i'm confused about what they mean by that.
these are today's conservatives, and today's GOP. the same people who called obama a dictator and wanna-be king are all for everyone getting out of trump's way. the same people who were perfectly fine with mcconnell declaring publicly that the official stance of the GOP in 2009 was obstruction, are all about pointing out democrat obstruction.
here's what they really mean:
they're ok with dictators as long as it's on their side.
they're ok with obstruction as long as they're the ones obstructing.
and if those are the new positions of the GOP, that's actually fine. a party can adopt whatever platform they want and let the voters decide, but to pretend that you believe obstruction per se is wrong, or that america should not be led by a dictator, just another bag of lies.
