Jul 22, 2018 5 min read

Now that the Supreme Court, in Trump v. Hawaii, has upheld Mr. Trump’s travel ban, we can see a textbook case of government-by-whim, lurch, dog whistle and paranoia, all created and fueled by his inflamed delusions. What is his evidence of the great national security threat from the world of Islam, although he prefers the term “Muslims” in order to personalize and make it “us versus them?”

From the seven countries on his enemies list, not a single individual has ever committed an act of terror against an American. Bret Stephens, a conservative New York Times op-ed writer, compiled a list of the 14 most significant terrorist attacks of the last quarter century, and not a single one would have been prevented by Trump’s latest proclamation.

One of his best-known delusions was that he saw a group of Muslims across the river in New Jersey cheering while watching the 9/11 attack. This is the clearest evidence of his irrationality: Saudi Arabia is not on his list of forbidden travelers, although it was the home base of 15 of the hijackers! It’s the home base of Wahhabism, the strictest and most conservative branch of Islam. It’s also the billion-dollar source of an international network supporting mosques, book publication and madrasas (schools) where the curriculum is mostly study of the Koran.

On an official trip to Riyadh, Trump was most impressed by being treated like royalty, feasting on the flattery and attention his insecure ego so deeply craves (with maybe a business deal along the way). So when it suits his purpose, whether to incite fear to mobilize his tribal followers or as an excuse for a personal power grab, Trump doesn’t like (some) Muslims. In his scrambled brain, that’s enough to create a new reality as if by magic.

On the other hand, it’s no delusion that Russians are intent on real mischief for our republic, but Trump, with his fatal attraction to Vladimir Putin, doesn’t actively acknowledge such inconvenient truths or take counter-actions. Students/scholars of authoritarian movements all remark that a big lie repeated long enough, often enough, will lead some people to believe it. A favorable pre-condition is that other institutions are undermined, such as the press, the judiciary (alleged bias), the permanent civil service (a “deep state”), the whole governing system seen as “rigged.” Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, in their “How Democracies Die,” make it clear that internal dry rot is much more serious than attack from outside.

One would expect individuals and institutions to rise in defense of the norms and practices of traditional American government, but Ben Franklin grasped the possibility that “the people shall become so corrupted as to need despotic government.”

While not corrupt in the usual sense, it’s nevertheless scary when five Supreme Court justices accept Trump’s “judgment” without evidentiary support of a serious national security threat to justify the travel ban. Lacking such evidence, the judgment is utterly arbitrary, and the court is complicit in granting a demagogue free rein to go his way. Could Trump, for reasons unseen by the non-Trumpists among us, decide that men who wear turbans are a security threat since they’re most likely Sikhs, “other?”

Roughly six decades ago, Sen. Joe McCarthy was proclaiming, with equal certitude, that the State Department was infested with Communists – which many people at the time believed. The Republican Party is no more, now deformed into the Party of Trump. They function merely as Trump’s enablers. Mitch McConnell, in particular, violates numerous norms and rules of “comity” to run the Senate as the enforcer of Trump’s agenda.

This group rests in its fetal position, allowing Trump to rise higher and higher and destroy the very meaning of a “conservative” movement, never uttering a word of opposition to his attack on the free press or other core values.

The Senate did actually pass a motion 97-2 in support of NATO, but the motion was authored by Democratic Sen. Jack Reed of Rhode Island.

Nary a Republican would dare whisper such implicit opposition to Trump for fear of being excommunicated by His Unholiness Pope Donald. Republicans were at least honest enough to admit that tax “reform” was mainly a program for the care and feeding of the donor class.

Frank Rich in New York Magazine calls them “Vichy Republicans” to highlight their being a group of collaborators and participants in the dry rot. Irony of ironies, for many Americans to get a lesson in what it means to be American, they can turn to an emigrant.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote a blistering dissent in the Trump v. Hawaii case, excerpts of which should be required reading. She’s not one of the Mexican “invaders,” but as a second generation Puerto Rican, she qualifies as a bona fide Latina – which is almost as bad as being a Muslim.

Bill McDonald is a resident of Washington.