Why I’ll Be Voting for Trump

America needs a wakeup call. Donald Trump’s triumphant rise in the Republican primaries, with millions of Americans voting for him and cheering at his rallies, shows how sick the country has become and underscores the urgency of a sobering cold shower.

The long-time leader of the free world, the self-appointed “Shining City on the Hill,” the world’s largest economy and its strongest military power, is going to hell fast.

In the constant effort for overreach, all its citizens have been able to muster so far in defense of the great democratic principles on which the American nation was built has been a buffoonish Occupy Wall Street movement and a longshot campaign by Bernie Sanders.

Indeed, if Hillary Clinton is elected in November, it will only fan the flames of resentment and hatred among the Republican base now supporting Trump.

For next four and possibly eight years, Washington would have the same gridlock as we have had – except nastier, sleazier, more aggressive and more openly xenophobic, homophobic, racist and misogynist.

A President Hillary Clinton will be able to do nothing to placate this overexcited rabble and the scoundrels they will send as their representatives to Congress from their gerrymandered districts.

Just look at Obama. The U.S. economy recovered strongly since the 2008 debacle – which had been brought about by a Republican president – and remains the only source of economic strength worldwide.

Employment grew, the budget deficit narrowed, the stock market flourished, Osama bin Laden was killed.

This was accomplished against unwavering opposition and obstruction from the Republicans at all levels. And yet, Republicans never tire of declaring that the past seven and a half years have been a “disaster” and that the President is “destroying America.” (See, for example, one of many unhinged rants with these phrases)

Republicans divided over Trump?

Some intellectuals in the Republican Party have been horrified by Trump. Leading neocon hawks Robert Kagan
and my former countryman Max Boot (whose warmongering I chronicled for The Globalist in August 2003) among others have declared Trump a monster and pledged to vote for Hillary if he is nominated.

They seem to be genuinely surprised that, after peddling their crypto-fascist militaristic propaganda for years, a veritable Duce, Mussolini-style, has emerged. Trump is only reaping the winds they had sowed.

The entire Republican Party establishment has had their collective faces rubbed into a pile of Trump. Trump is an orange toupee-wearing Horseman of the Apocalypse, the lone avenger and the agent of doom.

Indeed, Trump is openly promising to violate the U.S. Constitution – pledging, if elected, to sue journalists for libel if he doesn’t like their coverage, close mosques, discriminate based on creed and national origin, etc.

Yet, the party hasn’t yet expelled him. On the contrary, they have held nationwide debates with his participation since August 2015.

He is part of their primaries. And Paul Ryan, the Speaker of the House and the third man to lead the country in an emergency, has vowed to support him if Trump is his party’s presidential candidate.

During Obama’s tenure, perhaps because he is African-American, Republicans have started to talk about their country’s Commander-in-Chief with unprecedented disdain. (You can easily imagine how they are going to refer to a woman.)

Defeating Trumpism

America urgently needs to get its act together, and it needs President Trump to galvanize it into action. Counterintuitively, President Trump will be the best vaccine to inoculate Americans against the lure of Trumpism.

Trumpism is the kind of aggrieved political movement that thrives in opposition. It has no ideas and, when faced with the necessity to govern, it fails miserably.

To restore sanity, what Americans need is for their military to start refusing orders that smack of war crimes, CIA officers declining to engage in torture and Homeland Security agents telling the Trump Administration that they would not be rounding up illegal immigrants and breaking up families.

In fact, former CIA director Michael Hayden has already suggested that.

More broadly, America needs million-strong marches on Washington and a new coalition to safeguard its democracy and decency that would be reminiscent of the Civil Rights era and that would cut across the country’s regional, class and racial divides. Dictatorships are supported by bayonets, while democracies sometimes need pitchforks.

In other words, the way to lastingly defeat Trumpism is not to have the Republicans trudge out some tired and unpopular has-been like Mitt Romney or rally around a Trump-light candidate like Ted Cruz or Marco Rubio. It is, paradoxically enough, to get Trump into the White House.