Considering the sheer lunacy of Donald Trump’s recent actions, it’s difficult to find an agenda within his never-ending chaos. But if I had to choose a motto, it would simply be “Keep ‘em scared, sick and ignorant.” There’s a harsher word beginning with the letter “S” but I’m trying to restrain myself here.
Keep ‘em scared:
As we all know, Trump’s political career began with his racist stereotyping of Mexican immigrants as “rapists and murderers” which is a more appropriate description of Jeffrey Epstein and his friends, including Trump. Since then, his targeting of Hispanic immigrants has been so vicious as to disgrace our nation before the world. During the rare occasions where an immigrant kills an American citizen (they commit less murders annually than ICE), Fox News goes into hysteria mode making it sound as if millions of these blood-thirsty fiends are about to cut our throats.
Living here in New Mexico which has a predominantly Hispanic population (and settled by the Spanish decades before the “Mayflower”), I’m not terrified of brown-skinned people as are most of the conservative residents of Franklin County. There’s a lot of new housing construction going on in the oldest state capital of North America and nearly all the workers are of Hispanic ethnicity. We recently had renovations done on our home and, likewise, the carpenters, plumbers, electricians and painters were Hispanic. Most of our excellent hospital nurses are Hispanic as well. Whether they had come to America legally or not, I could care less. They own businesses, raise families, pay taxes and work harder to realize the American Dream than those who insult them. And anyone who voted for a corrupt felon as president is disqualified from whining about “illegals.” If you really want to round up criminals, start with the Trump crime family currently enriching themselves at our expense.
Keep ‘em sick:
In MAGA-World, Dr. Anthony Fauci is Public Enemy #1. His crime was enforcing drastic measures during the Covid-19 crisis which killed over a million Americans. While President Trump was urging us to drink bleach, Fauci was mandating wearing masks, social distancing and vaccines; steps taken globally with little or no complaint. But Trump’s crybaby nation had a fit to the point of threatening to kidnap and murder state governors for trying to save their lives. I kept a weekly diary from March 2020 to September 2022 which updated the Covid cases and deaths as they rose on a continuous basis. It began, “March 10, 2020: U.S.A. cases at 808. Only a handful of deaths at a northwest nursing home” and ended with “September 11, 2022: U.S.A. at 95,000,000 cases with 1,050,000 deaths.”
Fauci was replaced by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., whom his own cousin, Caroline described as an opportunistic predator. Dr. Fauci was a physician-scientist and immunologist who served as the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases from 1984 to 2022. By contrast, RFK Jr. is a conspiracy-theorist without a shred of medical training who admitted to carrying dead wild animals in his car and, as a former drug addict, once snorted cocaine off toilet seats. Naturally, Trump chose him to be in charge of your family’s health. Thanks to his anti-vaccine psychosis, measles has made a comeback in parts of the United States, spread mainly by the unvaccinated.
Keep ‘em ignorant:
In October 1957, the Soviet Union launched Sputnik, the first satellite into space. Once the Cold War hysteria subsided, however, there was a resurgence of interest in science and scientific education in America. Being smart was considered cool and the United States led the world in space exploration, Nobel Prize science winners and institutions of higher education.
But if someone from 1960 traveled to the present and viewed videos created by an American president defecating on protesters, portraying Black people as apes, pretending to be Jesus and insulting the Pope, they would wonder if some horrible future plague had rotted the brains of the American public. While a mentally unstable four-year old might find Trump amusing, we grown-ups do not. One wonders if MAGA actually believes his endless crude banality or knows it’s idiotic but adores him anyway. Either way, they value deliberate ignorance as a badge of honor and an excuse to justify his abysmal behavior.
When a population is rendered scared, sick and ignorant, it’s easier for authoritarians to manipulate them with lies and control with fear. Fortunately, more and more Americans are choosing to become, once again, tolerant, conscious and intelligent.
Daniel A. Brown lived in Franklin County for 44 years and has written a monthly My Turn column for over two decades. He lives outside of Santa Fe, New Mexico with his wife, Lisa and dog, Cody.