Suck It Up, Liberals. Trump Is Your President
Donald Trump is our President now, so we should stop arguing because there’s nothing we can do to change it. The best we can do now is stand behind him and hope that he protects us.
This is a sentiment I’ve seen going around social media. People suggest that, because Donald Trump has now taken the oath of office, the detractors need to suck it up and accept it. It’s a popular line by Trump supporters and those in the middle about him. It’s also completely wrong.
It is true that it is our President’s responsibility to execute the Office of the President of the United States. It is the president’s responsibility to defend the Constitution of the United States. In short, it is the President’s responsibility to protect America. It is not our responsibility to quietly stand back and let him do whatever he wants. We the people are meant to hold him to this oath.
The American government was founded on a principle of being of the people, by the people and for the people. If the people are not there to observe, criticize, protest, and demonstrate, they are forfeiting the power derived from them by the Constitution. By that, in fact, they are weakening the government of the United States. If less people make their voices heard, our government is weakened. If people stop participating in our democracy, our values are surrendered. If we dilute all the myriad political options into agree or disagree with one person, we lose the plurality that makes us unique.
I have voted in every election I have been eligible to vote in. I have criticized politicians’ decisions at every chance I’ve had. When Saddam Hussein or Osama Bin Laden were captured I was proud of my government. When Barrack Obama signed the National Defense Authorization Act of 2012, I was horrified by the level of expansion it permitted. Each of these times, I spoke about how I felt. I told my friends and family how I felt. I wrote about it. I did not sit by and watch things happen.
In four years, I would love to look back at how wrong I was about President Trump. I would love to sit there and say “Boy, I’m sure glad that Trump turned out to be a great president. I’m sure glad he represented America so well and made our nation a safer and more successful country. He really surprised me. Everything about his campaign made me think this would be a trainwreck.” Nothing would make me happier than feeling that at the end of any presidency. But that’s not going to happen. This hope doesn’t change the fact that I think Donald Trump is woefully incapable of making any positive change to the United States. I don’t even believe that he’s the fascist Russian puppet that many accuse him of being. He’s too foolish and petulant to support that level of intrigue. I just think he is completely inept as a democratically-elected leader. He likes to throw around weight that could destabilize world politics. Some think that’s a good thing, that Donald Trump is shaking up the system.
The system Donald Trump wants to shake up involves a world on the brink of unipolarity with Russia or China as the supreme world power. Currently, the world is balanced with Russia, China, America and the EU as roughly equal partners in global politics. They are held together by many trade agreements and treaties and international regimes that preserve a balance of power. But the EU is losing strength in response to Brexit, Russia is gaining strength as it goes unchallenged in central Asia, and China is gaining power as its market continues to grow.
America will not be made great by going easy on Vladimir Putin or weakening our trade relationships with southeast Asian countries who compete with Chinese labor for production. America will not be made great by homogenizing the voices within the nation or tweeting to distract from serious issues. More than anything, America will not be made great by people shutting up and taking whatever Donald Trump is willing to give them.
It is true, America has an opportunity to prove how great it is during this administration. It can endure a comically incompetent President. It can hold its ground as a world power. It can fight the odds to secure the freedoms of its citizens and promote global cooperation. But I’m pretty sure that it’s not going to do that because of Donald Trump. It can do that in spite of him. The greatest thing Americans can do during the next four years is protect our freedoms, make our voices heard, demand competency in government, and deny those who would infringe on those goals. That certainly won’t be accomplished by standing idly by waiting for Donald Trump to do it.