Editorial by Troy Torres, Kandit News & Views

I liked two candidates in 2016: Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders. Two polar opposite men of ideology with one important thing in common: Their willingness to disrupt the establishment with their appeal to end the American oligarchy. Both pounded away about their disdain for Washington D.C., its bureaucracy, its now entrenched and inherent corruption, and its system of rewards for the wealthy at the expense of the unheard.

Mr. Sanders lost his primary to Hillary Clinton, who lost the general election to Trump 45. In the four years that followed, what we didn’t get was an end of or even a real dent made into the entrenched oligarchy. The bureaucracy didn’t change. Corruption remained. Trump apologists blame Congress, the pandemic, and the forty-fifth president’s failure at reelection as reasons the agenda he promised could not be fulfilled. History will be a better judge of that.

Official portrait of President Donald J. Trump, Friday, October 6, 2017. (Official White House photo by Shealah Craighead)

Mr. Trump changed the way America’s voters viewed the power they have over the government, harnessing the despair of those who felt unheard and looked down upon and transforming that growing struggle along with growing poverty into peacetime nationalism arguably never seen before. He offered Americans an option the Democrats have been unable to provide: a strongman who could be strong for them.

And for better or for worse, voters responded to him without regard for the traditional American virtue of commitment to the rule of law. Whether Mr. Trump will change government according to the law of the land appears secondary to voters who simply want the sweeping changes he promises… legal, justified, process-driven, or not. Perhaps the American public is just so tired of traditional government BS, that even time-honored traditions steeped in the very fabric of the republic appear expendable and even anathema to the new idea of America voters ushered in this past November.

Trump 47 embodies this new idea just as much as Franklin Delano Roosevelt embodies the America most of us, our parents, and our grandparents knew. This new idea is eight years in the making. It was propelled by a very understandable despondency to old America and contempt for its institutions that voters blame for the widening gap between rich and poor, opportunists and doormats. But it also has ushered in a dangerous affront to human and civil rights, confidence in the criminal justice system, and moral guardrails against growing anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, gay bashing, gender construct inequality, and the mistreatment of non-violent refugees and asylum seekers.

As the Trump 47 umbrella grew beyond those seeking a no-holds-barred approach to economic salvation and immigration and crime control, pronouncements like those that promoted Haitian hatred, the Puerto Rican “pile of garbage,” and the disgusting “your body, my choice” trend among young boys is becoming normalized.

That scares us.

We hope our fear is wrong, and the ugliness we all saw and heard dissipates into post-election oblivion.

We are hopeful, but no where near convinced as of now, that Mr. Trump will inspire a better economy of either higher wages, lower prices, or both. We are hopeful about the new president’s promise to cut taxes for the poor and the middle class, though we disagree he should cut taxes on the rich and continue corporate welfare given out by both parties. We are hopeful we and leading economists are wrong about the effect his tariffs plans will have on the poor and the middle class. We are hopeful the President-elect will end the genocide in Palestine while restoring the Two-State Solution he opposed as Trump 45. We are hopeful Mr. Trump will confront Putin’s aggression and clear imperial designs on Europe by first preventing the colonization of Ukraine. We are hopeful that the strongman our country elected will use that strength against China’s Xi to thwart the Chinese Communist Party’s planned 2027 assault on Taiwan and the Philippines via the South China Sea that will assuredly send the Pacific into war. We are hopeful Mr. Trump will deport violent foreigners, and grant amnesty for the undocumented who have established their lives and families in the United States. We are hopeful the American military is able to withstand hegemonic threats from China and Russia. And we are hopeful the voices of the peoples of the CNMI and Guam will resonate louder under a Trump White House than any other administration since the turn of the 20th Century.

We are fearful that mass deportations of millions of undocumented will tear apart families and shut down farms, construction services, and manufacturing to the point that our cost of living will skyrocket.

We are fearful for young women who live in states and territories that implement dangerous laws like the so-called fetal heartbeat act that have been proven to lead to the deaths of both mothers and their babies.

We are fearful that the impending tariffs disproportionately will drive up the costs of almost everything we consume in the Mariana Islands, and that includes the already high cost of electricity.

We are fearful that steps will be taken to douse the light journalists shine on corruption and cronyism simply because those in power do not agree with them.

We are fearful of the continuing distrust in legacy media that has the resources to fight against assaults on the Freedom of the Press so that small news organizations and independent journalists can labor on throughout the country.

We are fearful that people who already are bullied and at higher risk of suicidal ideation will be arrested for doing nothing but using the restroom where they feel safest without ever causing any harm to another person, while the justice system looks the other way on people who assault transgenders in the restrooms they are forced to use.

We are fearful for people living with pre-existing medical conditions like cancer, HIV, mental health disorders, developmental disabilities, diabetes, lupus, and heart disease will be burdened even further by a government that pulls funding and policies that have helped them to stay alive and to be more autonomous.

We are fearful that history will be rewritten to fit a fact-replacing narrative.

Most importantly, we are fearful of descent into authoritarianism, merciless disregard for the weak and the downtrodden, and emerging racism, sexism, and homophobia.

The president’s job is not to change what is in our hearts, but his bully pulpit can be used for good or for bad. During the election, Mr. Trump and his surrogates often stirred our fears to turn people against groups and by stereotypes. “We need a common enemy to unite us,” Condoleeza Rice once said. Regrettably, it was the weakest and the rights-deprived who became the common enemy that united nearly half the voters and the majority of the Electoral College. And this isn’t to say that the Democrats didn’t employ this same ‘divide and conquer’ strategy.

The election brought out the worst in people ON BOTH SIDES. Both Trump and Harris supporters are guilty of nasty conduct, free speech that abandoned morality and ethics, and condescension and contempt for the other side.

It would seem that Christians of all major denominations for one reason or another predominantly chose Mr. Trump and the Republicans. The irony in my view is that the new America we have elected is far less rooted in Christianity than in American nationalism that calls for the most unChristian activity: disregard for the weak, judgment against the different, casting out of the refugee and asylum seeker, ecological devastation in favor of financial gain, avarice, and division. Our collective humanity as Americans is at stake.

But who’s to say that Mr. Trump isn’t simply a genius marketer? That he just said and did these things during the election because he knew it would gain him votes? That how he will govern will be far different than how he and his surrogates campaigned? Our greatest hope is that we were simply wrong about him. That we based our judgments of him on what he said in order to get elected rather than what he actually will do.

These hopes and fears will govern how we react to Trump 47 and the nation we will become. We pray for President Trump and his success in doing what is right, truthful, and good for the country and the world. We want him to succeed. God bless the President-elect of the United States. God bless America. And God bless the Constitution of our great country.

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