Donald Trump is Saving Our Democracy! Though taking on a whole other meaning today from this New York Magazine September 18, 2015 cover story, the indictment in N.Y. serves as a test of American democracy. The cover photo illustration by Bobby Doherty renders Trump as a founding father.
Is Donald Trump saving our Democracy?
You betcha!
That was the notion suggested in a cover story in New York Magazine in the fall of 2015.
The answer today may be a resounding yes, but for vastly different reasons than what Frank Rich the author of the piece suggested at the time.
Today as the disgraced former president skulks down to 100 Centre Street in New York City to be fingerprinted, processed, and appear in court for an arraignment after being indicted by a Manhattan grand jury, we are witnessing democracy in action.
The system works as the founders intended.
Equal treatment under the law is a basic tenant of our democratic ideals
The indictment is good for democracy in that it demonstrates that no one is above the law.
Not even former presidents.
New York Magazine September 18, 2015 Article by Frank Rich
When Frank Rich wrote a glowing piece in September 2015 entitled “The Importance of Donald Trump” for New York Magazine, the apprentice politician and boorish businessman was seen as a disruptor, but not a viable candidate for President.
“The best news about Trump is that he is wreaking this havoc on the status quo while having no chance of ascending to the presidency,” Rich wrote.
If only.
When Rich, the former op-ed writer for the New York Times, referred to Trump as “ a wrecking ball to the system,” he could not have foreseen it was democracy itself that Donald would try to take a wrecking ball to.
“Far from destroying our democracy, he’s exposing all its phoniness and corruption in ways as serious as he is not.” Trump, Rich posited “may be injecting American democracy with steroids.”
Toxic masculinity yes, steroids not so much.
There is indeed a lighter way to look at Trump’s rise and his impact on the country. Far from being an apocalyptic harbinger of the end times, it’s possible that his buffoonery poses no lasting danger. Quite the contrary: His unexpected monopoly of the center stage may well be the best thing to happen to our politics since the arrival of Barack Obama.”
He is, as many say, making a mockery of the entire political process with his bull-in-a-china-shop antics. But the mockery in this case may be overdue, highly warranted, and ultimately a spur to reform rather than the crime against civic order that has scandalized those who see him, in the words of the former George W. Bush speechwriter Michael Gerson, as “ dangerous to democracy.”
Trump has been a clear and present danger to democracy for years. Maybe the justice system will do what the cowardly Republicans tasked with his impeachment were unwilling to do.
Hold him accountable.
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Merry Arrestmas and Treasons Greetings
© Sally Edelstein and Envisioning The American Dream, 2023. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Sally Edelstein and Envisioning The American Dream with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.
Envisioning The American Dream 
Really? He thinks Democracy is someone who works for him.
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He is going to have a very rude awakening.
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Absolutely.
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If past is prologue, the worst is yet to come.
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He is nothing more than a bad con man.
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His only skill is being a grifter.
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That’s the word I was searching for thanks
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He did highlight the tragic consequences of the comprisable Electoral College element in the US Constitution that allows a candidate to win with millions fewer votes than the “losing” candidate. Democracy my fat butt!
Also, there was the joke and tragedy that it caused on January 6th of 2021 shows just how dangerous that compromise the Founding Fathers made to get the slave holder states to agree to the wording of the US Constitution.
In the 21st Century, that quirk gave us this grifter, adulterer, congenital liar, character, now indicted but yet to be convicted felon – I hope – man as US President when a woman with extensive exposure to the workings of government and experience as US Senator and US Secretary of State was denied that role.
The same US Constitutional quirk gave us George W. Bush and a 20-year war.
Time to amend a constitution to reflect the improvability of the document and bring it into the political realities of the 21st Century. I still cringe thinking this man thought nuclear bombs could be used on hurricanes and that Kim Jong-il wrote beautiful letters and that he loved him. Good Grief!
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Trump is a divider, not a uniter, thus, no more than a cancer in the colon of America.
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He is a malignant cancer who has done irreparable damage and like any cancer needs to be cut out.
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