Donald Trump paints himself as an “outsider.” He says he’s going to change Washington. Yet if he wins, Republicans will likely have control of all three branches of government: executive, legislative, and judicial.
There will be no checks and balances.
Most people don’t realize just what’s at stake here. For this reason, I like to start at the beginning and talk about our country—and where it’s headed if Donald wins.
It helps to literally draw this out for folks.
One of the founding ideas of our country is that power should come from “We, the people.”
Remember, the American Revolution was fought as much against a monopoly—the British East India Company—as it was the British. The tea that we dumped in Boston Harbor wasn’t just any tea, it was British East India tea.
The British East India Company had become such a monopoly that it was able to influence the government of Great Britain. The Tea Act of 1773 was designed to undercut American tea merchants with British East India tea.
Because of our fight against the British East India Company and distrust of monopolies, we placed strict rules on corporations for 100 years after the Revolutionary War.
Some of the limits we established in our fledgling representative democracy were:
- Charters were granted for a limited time and would expire if not periodically renewed.
- Corporations could only engage in activities necessary to fulfill their charter.
- Corporations were often terminated if they exceeded their charter or caused public harm.
- Corporations could not make political or charitable contributions nor spend money to influence law making.
- Owners and managers were responsible for criminal acts committed on the job.
Corporations were required to serve the commonwealth. We chartered them for things like railroads that would serve the public good.
With the industrial revolution and subsequent shift to a manufacturing economy, corporate power grew and restrictions on corporations relaxed. This lead to what I’ll call the Charlie Wilson version of our country, where “What’s good for GM is good for our country.”
Wilson was testifying before a Senate committee about selling his shares of GM stock to avoid a conflict of interest with his position as defense secretary. He explained to the committee that he honestly hadn’t seen a problem “because for years I thought what was good for our country was good for General Motors, and vice versa.”
The 1960s and the rise of the middle class in America revitalized the interest in democracy. Corporations did not like the challenge to their power and decided to unite and push back. The corporate special interest movement was born when Lewis Powell wrote a proposal to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in 1971 suggesting that America’s largest businesses fight back against the social movements they saw as threatening their power.
One of the things that came out of the movement was the proposal that what we really needed wasn’t democracy, but smaller government.
At this point, we all know the philosophy: Corporations need to be “free,” markets regulate themselves, and there should be no restrictions or checks and balances on power.
This propaganda was used to get people to fight for monopolies instead of against them. If you hold these beliefs, corruption takes on a different meaning. Corruption, rather than meaning purchasing government, means any interference by government at all with the benevolent merchant class who are going to make things better for us all.
This is the “populism” of the tea party and libertarians. Where it’s headed looks like corporate rule. Corporations make the rules, and the only purpose of government is to enforce them.
This is what libertarian has come to mean in our country. People often object when I call this libertarian: “That isn’t what libertarianism means.” They’re right in the classical sense. But this is how most people in our country understand libertarianism. It’s what it has come to mean.
What it actually means to the upper class white men who tend to be libertarians is, “I’ve done fine and got mine. Leave me alone.”
How does this relate to our election?
After the financial collapse, we elected a president, Barack Obama, who actually fought to reverse these trends. Someone who believed in more democracy, in more checks and balances.
Was he completely successful?
Of course not. You can’t roll back decades of corporate special interest progress in eight years—especially not when the establishment fought like hell with all their elected representatives against it. But he made progress.
What helped this along was people standing up through protests like the Occupy Movement and the rise of people like Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders.
As a result, we have the most democratic platform in decades:
- Raise workers’ wages
- Help them share in record corporate profits
- Protect and expand social security
- Build a 21st century infrastructure
- Rein in Wall Street and fix our financial system
- End systemic racism
- Fix our immigration system
- Universal Healthcare
- Make debt-free college a reality
At the same time, however, we have someone who, if elected, could give Republicans complete control over all three branches of government: executive, legislative, and judicial.
Donald has no interest in checks and balances. He is running to fulfill the libertarian dream of “drowning government in a bathtub.” He is running not for president, but for CEO.
As Matthew Yglesias writes:
A Trump win would result in a sweeping transformation of American life. Millions would be forcibly removed from their homes and communities as new resources and a new mission invigorate the pace of deportations. Taxes would drop sharply for the richest Americans while rising for many middle-class families. Millions of low-income Americans would lose their health insurance, while America’s banks would enjoy the repeal of regulations enacted in the wake of the financial crisis. Environmental Protection Agency regulation of greenhouse gas emissions would end, likely collapsing global efforts to restrain emissions, greatly increasing the pace of warming.
A Trump win could end the push for democratic reforms for a long time. This is why I tell the story about our country using pictures, because I think many people have become caught up in the email minutiae.
Why do I believe this? Because I live in Ohio. And when Republicans won the statehouse in 2010, they gerrymandered the state so badly it will likely remain in Republican hands for 20 to 30 years. Possibly longer.
They’ve also done this in other places where they’ve risen to power such as Wisconsin, Michigan, and North Carolina. In Kansas, they’re fighting to eliminate the judiciary.
A Trump win threatens democracy and yet blah, blah, blah … something about emails.
What’s at stake in this election is what’s left of our democracy. If you want to see any kind of democratic reform continue in our country, vote wisely and keep fighting.
David Akadjian is the author of The Little Book of Revolution: A Distributive Strategy for Democracy (ebook now available).