The Trump Legacy – Weaker, Dumber, Less Competitive, Less Safe and More Isolated

 

The Trump Legacy – Weaker, Dumber, Less Competitive, Less Safe and More Isolated

"For too long, this administration has presented itself as the only defender of Christianity while it engages in merely symbolic gestures like posting Bible verses or publicizing worship services in the White House. Frederick Douglass described this type of performance: 'Religion simply as a form of worship, an empty ceremony, and not a vital principle, requiring active benevolence, justice, love and good will towards man.' I fail to see how you can shout glory to God one minute and laugh about the harsh conditions of Alligator Alcatraz the next… Mr. Trump uses money and power to keep people in line… If politicians, countries, businesses or even institutions of higher education go against his wishes, they will pay a financial penalty. Mr. Trump believes in making deals rooted in self-interest. Christians have the resources to resist this tactic because we are taught to model our behavior on Christ, who looked to the interests of others, not himself." 

 Esau McCaulley — a theology professor at Wheaton College in Illinois, July 11th OpEd in the NY Times

We now have the largest immigration police force – well beyond Trump’s private ICE Police, including the IRS, DEA, FBI, DOJ those state police now dedicated to immigration enforcement and detention – currently backed by an infinitely expandable cadre of federal military forces and active-duty Marines. They have openly tracked individuals based on racial criteria, and as courts have found this reprehensibly unconstitutional, are appealing this screening technique up the federal appellate ladder. I’ve blogged about their “secret police” tactics and the judicial responses.

For those of us in California, where crime rates, including violent crime are down, we are constantly battling Republican efforts to decriminalize and decontrol an increased use of guns. California has not been invaded by criminals, and the outbreaks of violence these days can mostly be traced to rather brutal immigration enforcement, knowing that ICE appears to be the best trained provocateurs of violence in recent California memory. For those in other states, not occupied by military-backed ICE agents, they just assume we were ultra-violent in the first place.

As Trump attacks our most prestigious research universities – long the attractant of the best and the brightest from around the world (of which many foreign grads elected to remain here) – he decimates our leadership in STEM research, sending that excellence to other nations, from China to France. As Christopher Mims, writing for the July 11th Wall Street Journal, explains: “Since the end of World War II, federal funding has helped U.S. companies dominate the cutting edge of computing, space exploration and medicine, delivering an economic tailwind for the nation. It made the country a dream destination for aspiring researchers, engineers and entrepreneurs from around the world… Now that’s changing—quickly.

“A March 2025 survey by the journal Nature of more than 1,600 scientists in the U.S. found that three-quarters have considered leaving the country. Respondents specifically cited the Trump administration’s hostility to scientific research and those who practice it… At the Nobel laureate meeting in late June that Arnold was attending when we corresponded, representatives distributed pamphlets touting a program designed to attract researchers to Germany. The flier highlighted the country’s ‘international and welcoming’ climate for both science and business.

“There are similar programs in Canada, the U.K. and China. Nikos Papandreou, a European Union parliamentarian representing Greece, recently told me that while his governing body typically moves slowly, some members are now trying to figure out how to quickly set up and fund a program to attract U.S. researchers, so that Europe can benefit from a potential ‘brain gain.’”

Fabricated charges of “antisemstism” and attacks against the most accurate descriptive terms for American culture – diversity, equality and inclusion – have pushed our once top-of-the-line post-secondary educational system toward second or even third-rate status. That great force towards job creation and upward mobility is now to be stomped on and purged out of our system. Moreover, the loss of research experts gives competitor nations a path to exceed American progress.

As Donald Trump has pledged a new, invigorated military – a force that can contain China’s expansionist aspirations – he has fired most of his top qualified generals and admirals, installed the least qualified Defense Secretary in our history, a former junior officer and Fox News host, an idealogue who has been careless with national security, willing to make major policy decisions without presidential approval… and submitted a budget that focuses on the same old/same old “bigger is better” military ethos.

Our miraculous bombing of Iran’s nuclear sites, with decades-old B-2 bombers, was not an “obliteration” of Tehran’s nuclear capacity (albeit a significant weakening), but according to Israeli intelligence, we left behind a major stash of enriched fissionable material, a number of specialized processing centrifuges and the knowledge of how to use them. Drones (unmanned on the land, sea and air) represent the state of warfare today, and those able to launch swarms of inexpensive drones tend to be able to sustain successful attacks against even the greatest military powers on Earth. As we force NATO nations to hit 5% of GDP to merit our support, we are at 3.5%

TACO Trump’s tariff wars, his economically misplaced belief that trade deficits should define our economic relationship with the rest of the world, have alienated our allies (who got some of the worst tariff proposals) and pushed many of them into new trade treaties with China. He’s pushed the BRIC economies into joining together to isolate the United States further and to develop workarounds to our essential trading systems that have, to date, kept the dollar as the main reserve currency.

Trump’s hold on MAGA voters seems to be based on the worship of a cult leader, without much focus on underlying issues. His and his administration’s litany of lies and fabrications have substituted for underlying facts for some time. Yet the administration’s struggles with the missing “Epstein files” has eroded some of that support. Trump’s mainstay legacy of harsh and rapid purging of the undocumented, his perceived major strength will all voters, seems to be reversing. “Americans' views on immigration took a massive positive swing this year amid President Donald Trump's ongoing crackdown, according to new Gallup polling.

“The share of Americans who thought immigration should decrease – 55% – reached a 5-year high point in 2024. This year, it has dropped to 30%, and positive views of immigration have hit a record high of 79%, according to poll results released July 11. The poll surveyed 1,402 Americans between June 2 and 26… But this year, even among Republicans, views on immigration have grown significantly rosier – 64% of Republicans now believe immigration is a good thing, a 25-point jump from June of 2024. The fraction of Republicans who think immigration should decrease has fallen from 88% to 48% in that time span.” USA Today, July 12th.

And this is before the economic horrors that lower income voters (disproportionately Trump supporters) will face in Medicaid, SNAP cuts plus the massive deficit increase from the resulting gift of lower taxes for the rich, are calculated. Could these finally be “issues” that pull a significant cult-based support of Trump our of that MAGA mindset? Time will tell.

I’m Peter Dekom, and perhaps a cold dose of reality will pull this nation back from the cliff edge that threatens to push us into a full-fledged freefall into dark autocracy.