“You are fired!” America cried a lot before Donald Trump became president, when she was a candidate mother running for the job. The cry grew louder as Trump trampled on the Constitution, defied the rule of law, and violated norms sacred to America throughout its more than 250-year history. It took a global pandemic to show how disastrous the Trump administration that he had installed for three years was.
The brash renegade Trump attracted a following like any ostentatious daredevil does. Once in office on a technicality assisted by as yet unknown foreign powers, Trump used the vast powers of his office to draw conservatives into his orbit and keep them spinning with honed skills for a lifetime. Those skills came to an abrupt halt when the coronavirus pandemic hit and Trump’s slow response set the pace for the dissolution of Trump’s facade.
Trump’s main bragging and fabrication skills failed to spin the reality that people were dying and the economy was at a standstill. So was Trump himself, as the evidence showed that his methods were counterproductive in managing a crisis.
Trump’s coping toolbox doesn’t have a Swiss Army knife to unlock empathy. As a lifelong real estate swindler, Trump may be adept at reading potential gullible targets, but he proved woefully lacking when the serious American way of life and livelihood was at stake. If Trump were a reasonably rational human being, the pandemic, the ensuing economic crisis, and the racially motivated murder of George Floyd would have been tipping points in uniting human sentiment to jointly address the crisis. Trump chose his own old-fashioned divide-and-conquer path to win support. The tactic seriously backfired, and Trump’s response was to redouble the message.
By July 4, 2020 Trump had survived an embarrassing defeat in #Tulsa Oklahoma when supporters refused to attend his rally due to the reality of Covid threats. In South Dakota, Trump took his wan to sacred Native American lands to greet fans at a rally without Covid safeguards, with results yet to be determined. On Day Four itself, Trump renewed his allegiance to the memories of dead Confederate losers as he dodged the issue of a raging pandemic. The base can applaud Trump’s surrender, especially if he finds himself in the middle of a rally, as risky as it is to attend and the riskier the better for some. But beyond the noise and hype, most Americans are ready to tell Trump, “You’re fired.”
Donald Trump is a product of a young America in transition to a global world. Trump won the support of his base by promising to return the United States to a past glory. That nonexistent past glory is as dead as Trump’s facade after Covid wreaked havoc across America with the help of Donald Trump. In the age of social media, the country is split in two, with Trump-supporting conservatives and liberals splitting into their own camps. In truth, however, those two groups seem to be misidentified.
The two groups that have formed since the election of Donald Trump can be boiled down to their most basic components. Trump is loud, boastful and full of boastful claims with no evidence in reality. Those are the jingle-jangle gew-gaws that attract military-avoiding teens. The other group is the adult segment of the US population, the one that is able to see the discord between word and action. It is your vote that will count when the United States finally tells Trump with a pull of the media plug that “You’re fired.”
