The following is the opinion and analysis of the writer:
Terry Bracy
America was never a natural union. Our country stretches almost 3,000 miles through seven identifiable regions and cultures. From the time of westward expansion, our Presidents’ most difficult and critical task has been to forge unity in the diversity that has always made America truly great. When the battle over slavery nearly broke our democracy apart, Abraham Lincoln emerged from middle America to save it. Twenty-seven Presidents since Honest Abe have in their own ways promoted national unity.
Then came Donald Trump.
Last Saturday, our 47th President declared war on Chicago, literally. Portraying himself as a general and referring to the Vietnam War movie Apocalypse Now, he declared a “Chipocalypse now” in which he threatened to sic his newly imagined Department of War on an American city. By any legal standard, that is a crime called treason. Trump’s whole career has been defined by anger and resentment, which has fueled his rise to power. His willingness to ignore the rule of law aided by a supine Supreme Court is leaving the democracy he was narrowly elected to lead in tatters.
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President Trump is a maestro of the media, but with most polls having his approval in the thirties and choruses of boos following him everywhere he goes, his “flood the zone” strategy is getting ever more extreme. Invade Chicago! Now that will get some headlines and keep the nosy media away from the Epstein scandal for a while. If that isn’t enough, perhaps an unauthorized war with Venezuela will do the trick. These actions are calculated to evade and divide and stir up enough chaos to justify employing the military to quell it.
When Trump sticks to fighting urban crime and foreign drug traffickers, he may find barely enough public support to allow for this massive overreach. But when it comes to public health, the cracks are beginning to show, and America is seeing the first signs of seceding since the Civil War. Four of America’s wealthiest and most inventive states – California, Hawaii, Oregon, and Washington – have formed a separate alliance to provide medical care for their citizens. The formation of this alliance is the first organized effort to reject federal mandates issued by Trump and his agent, Robert F Kennedy, Jr., who is being allowed to match his own hunches on appropriate medical treatment against decades of scientific discoveries that have saved millions of lives. That is a risk many Americans will not take.
As the saying goes, a broken clock is right twice a day. No doubt Secretary Kennedy has made some good calls, including his effort to remove preservatives from our food and his critique of Big Pharma’s political muscle. But his war on vaccines and his dependence on fringe physicians to guide America’s most important health decisions disqualify him for the job he has won solely because of his name.
Most all the others wearing the fabled Kennedy moniker have questioned RFK, Jr’s mental stability and called for his resignation.
Public health is one of several issues that could severely divide the United States.
Unauthorized war and the failure of the Trump government to return to the states tax resources they are due are two others.
Trump has by now made a habit of halting federal grants previously approved to fund large projects such as windmill farms.
With little justification. With the help of aides like Russell Vought and Stephen Miller, he has turned the national treasury into his personal piggy bank. As these outrages multiply, opposition will become intense and set the red and blue states against each other.
By failing to live by the law, Trump is writing the script for opponents. If he doesn’t live by the law, why should we, they will reason. And they have vast resources.
California, alone, is the fourth-largest economy in the world and the home of the emerging world of artificial intelligence. In recent polling, two-thirds of the state’s residents oppose Trump’s presidency. With masked immigration agents invading its streets, it does not take much imagination to picture an all-out insurgency taking place and spreading like wildfire in the states Trump has targeted for suppression.
America’s 47th President is playing with fire. It’s time to listen to the great poet W.B. Yeats in The Second Coming: “Things fall apart; the center cannot hold; mere anarchy is loosed upon the world.”
The author wishes to express his deep sorrow at the murder of Charlie Kirk.
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Terry Bracy has served as a political adviser, campaign manager, congressional aide, sub-Cabinet official, board member and as an adviser to presidents.
