The Underminer

I haven’t seen the new Incredibles film yet, but at the end of the first film, we get a preview of a new villain, the Underminer, who emerges from underground declaring “I am always beneath you, but nothing is beneath me.” What a perfect symbol for the current U.S. president, who not only is presiding over a pandemic of repugnant and ill-informed policies, but is actively undermining core values, principles, and institutions that have made our country great. To prove this (in honor of the Fourth of July), let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

• His personal business interests remain a massive ongoing conflict of interest. His charade of putting his personal business into a blind trust run by his sons is about as blind as a surprise present wrapped in cellophane with the purchase receipt taped on the outside. His taxpayer-funded summits at Mar-a-Lago and his other properties line his own pockets while providing ongoing product placement opportunities. And what foreign dignitary courting favor doesn’t stay at the Trump Hotel in DC? It’s an emoluments extravaganza, and an in-our-faces flouting of basic business ethics.
• Petty corruption is rampant, as we’ve seen a steady parade of his cabinet secretaries taking personal trips at government expense, often in first class, spending lavish amounts on office furnishings, and using government employees as their personal servants.
• He (and his press secretary) have a reckless disregard for truth and facts. Politicians have always engaged in spin, but this president has taken it to a whole new level. We are in Orwellian “newspeak” territory when a president can outright lie to the American people so casually, openly, callously, and egregiously, even so far as to claim not to have said things that anyone can see he said just by scrolling back in his Twitter feed. His very relationship to reality is demonstrably pathological.
• He has alienated allies so solidly longstanding that such alienation was inconceivable before this administration. Who could have imagined we would pick a fight with Canada? Or question our commitment to NATO? And to what end? He has gained us nothing while damaging the very core alliances that we need to help keep the world secure. Suddenly those who would never have questioned the alignment of our interests with theirs are raising those questions, and that can only be to our detriment.
• He has not only given regard to odious dictators but openly expressed admiration and envy of dictatorial powers. When President Xi Jinping became president for life in China, he said we should try that here. In appraising Kim Jong-un as a “strong head of his country”, he was envious of how deferential the North Koreans are to their “dear leader”. “When he speaks, they sit up at attention!”
• He dishonors treaties with wanton disregard. He cynically and disingenuously claimed a “national security” exemption in “justifying” his steel tariffs – against Canada and Europe. He essentially abrogated the Iran Treaty by falsely certifying that Iran was not in compliance. He pulled out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, often threatens to renegotiate NAFTA, and now is indicating he wants to pull out of the World Trade Organization. Whatever one thinks of the pros and cons of particular deals, it shouldn’t be hard to understand that making a practice of reneging on treaties undermines our national integrity and devalues our ability to make treaties in the future, if other nations cannot take us at our word, or cannot rely on treaties to be any more enduring that the administration that made them. I guess integrity wasn’t covered in The Art of the Deal.
• He has no discernable core values, principles, or even strategic goals. Nobody can speak for or rely upon what he wants, because it changes daily or hourly with whoever last got his ear and played to his ego. The presidency is transformed into a personality cult rather than an administration, and one even has to feel a little bit sorry for the Republican Congressional leadership who dance and tip-toe around him like an abused and battered spouse desperately trying to guess from which direction the next smile or strike will come.
• He has given comfort and encouragement to the most vile expressions of racism and nativism. White nationalists, once marginalized by decent society, are now coming out like cockroaches when the lights go out. They speak and march openly, as this president sees “very fine people on both sides”.
• He has stoked baseless fears that immigration is dangerous to our country and harmful to our economy, working actively to repress all immigration, legal or otherwise, and turn away those seeking asylum. He has employed the most vicious and inhumane tactics, such as jailing asylum-seekers and separating children from their parents, in attempts to discourage them.
• To some agencies, he has appointed leaders bent against the very charters of the agencies they lead. The head of the EPA opposes regulation to protect the environment. The head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau doesn’t want the government protecting consumers. The Secretary of Education is an opponent of public education.
• To other agencies, he has appointed leaders who are incompetent and unqualified. The Secretary of Energy had no idea what the Department of Energy did when he was appointed to it, and the Department of Housing and Urban Development is lead by a man who has no experience whatsoever in housing, urban development, or running a large organization. Competence and expertise mean nothing in this administration (which is hardly surprising, since the president himself has no competence or relevant experience for his own job).
• Through a combination of sheer maladministration and malice to government itself, he has hollowed out the agencies of the federal government. Career civil servants, many who served faithfully through numerous administrations both Democratic and Republican, have resigned in droves if they haven’t been sacked out of paranoid fears of “the deep state”. (Those are the real witch hunts.)
• When any governmental organization or institution challenges him, he takes to Twitter to malign their overall integrity. When the FBI investigates him, he declares the FBI is corrupt. When a federal judge restrains his action, he declares the judge partisan. When members of Congress oppose him, he hurls personal insults and accusations. When newspapers report accurately on his malfeasance, it is all “fake news”. His mudslinging not only degrades the reputation of his own office, but it slowly corrodes general faith in public institutions.

The stone walls of a castle are strong and durable, but can be brought down when the ground beneath them is weakened and the mortar of their foundations is corroded by undermining. Under the administration of this Underminer-in-Chief, I fear for the future of our republic.