So far the answer has been no, and the midterm elections make it far less likely. Yet Trump’s rising frustrations could push him over the edge psychologically, with potentially harrowing consequences for American democracy and the world. None of Trump’s extremist policy ideas has received public support. The public opposed last year’s Republican-backed corporate tax cut, Trump’s effort to repeal the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare), his proposed border wall with Mexico, the decision to withdraw from the Iran nuclear agreement, and the imposition of tariff increases on China, Europe, and others. Trump has tried to implement his radical agenda using three approaches.Īt the same time, contrary to Trump’s relentless promotion of fossil fuels (coal, oil, and gas), the public favors investments in renewable energy and remaining in the Paris climate agreement. The first has been to rely on the Republican majorities in the two houses of Congress to pass legislation in the face of strong popular opposition. That approach succeeded once, with the 2017 corporate tax cut, because big Republican donors insisted on the measure, but it failed with Trump’s attempt to repeal Obamacare, as three Republican senators balked.
Jefferey Sachs warns of the dangers emerging from the Trump presidency because of his extreme temperament and the now certain opposition from the Democratic House following the mid-term elections. “uch,” he says, “will depend on the performance of America’s constitutional order.” These dangers and the democratic response seem likely to be realized in some form, and certainly we must hope that congressional controls prevail. A strong opposition to Trump’s ‘America-first’ agenda is vital, but I am not persuaded that we can trust the strength of the US Constitution to steer us through Trump’s onslaught on reason and evidence-based debate Others, particularly Francis Fukuyama, in his 2014 Foreign Affairs article and book, have recognized that the US system’s inherent distrust of the executive branch of government gives rise to major risks of disharmony and conflict. More recently, like Sachs, he has urged a return to constitutionalism and the rule of law as answers to the threat of identity politics posed by Trump and his ilk. Neither Sachs nor Fukuyama, however, provide convincing arguments that the US Constitution provides an adequate defence against the Trumpian assault on evidence, sound policy, and the established US-directed liberal world order. We also need to make sure that we stay vigilant about how Chinese American communities are protected from people who may try to find a target for their pandemic-induced fear and frustration.Ĭitizens and leaders of the United States and Canada are at their best when they are hopeful not hateful - and when they strive to use a language of respect not recrimination.Īnd THAT is something that both Bryan Adams and President Trump should strive to have in common.The problems now being faced primarily, but not exclusively, in the US are ideological, relatively recent in origin, and transmitted through mechanisms that were not and could not have been foreseen by the founding fathers. High quality example sentences with shows no signs of letting up in context from reliable sources - Ludwig is the linguistic search engine that helps you to write better in English. Try to see the inner world of the one causing the disturbance. We need to learn from the anti-Muslim backlash following 9/11 and make proactive steps to call-out all forms of anti-Asian racism (and of course racism generally). Donald Trump recruited voters with the highest levels of animosity toward African Americans.
Sadly, the United States has a tragic history of tolerating racism in all its forms, but the memory of government-sanctioned racism against Japanese Americans feels like an all too recent memory as another population of Asian Americans begins to feel uneasy. And in the U.S., where the past several months have already seen a startling increase of hate-related incidents directed towards Asian and Chinese Americans, the consequences can be very real. When leaders, whether elected officials or performers, start to more casually express a subtle form of racism, it opens the door for more. Together, Adams and Trump delivered a one-two punch of racial hostility that, in Adams’ famous lyrics, cut like a knife.
And in the case of President Trump pressing an Asian American reporter to go ‘ask China’ the question, it is hard to mask the racially-tinged innuendo that was made by the most powerful leader in the world. Question the coronavirus originated in China, the racist generalization of Chinese as “greedy bastards” only propagates stereotypes and animosity towards individuals of Chinese origin.
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