Checks and balances do sometimes curb basic corruption, but the idea that they have been an impediment to sheer wickedness and evil requires a phantasmagoric rewriting of American political history.
Donald Trump being elected as the 45th President of the United States is one of the most monumental calamities in modern world history. The pretense that Trump — despite being the next Leader of the Free World and Commander-in-Chief of the world’s foremost military — is powerless due to “checks and balances” is wholly insufferable. To hold this absurdist position is to willfully ignore the lion’s share of the American historical record. Donald Trump’s presidency, whether people like it or not, has opened the gates of Hades. White supremacist ideology is ascendant worldwide, and a Donald Trump presidency will likely be some of the darkest years in world history.
The notion that checks and balances can fully constrain Trump’s bigotry is erroneous. When politicians run in democratic elections, they are usually constrained by the fact that they are trying to get as many people as possible to vote for them. During this period, Trump engaged in some of the most overtly xenophobic rhetoric in the modern history of American politics. He launched his campaign with xenophobia and it is the defining element of his political identity. This overtly hateful rhetoric led to over 60 million Americans choosing him to become the next president. If the electoral process could not constrain Trump’s rhetoric, what makes people think attaining the most powerful office in the land will? Even if it is the case that Trump’s rhetoric becomes more measured, it will only be because his actions will speak markedly louder than his words.
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