Trump’s solution is not new. Even his campaign slogan is recycled. As such, we have been traveling down this road for some time. It has led us to the mouth of an abyss, standing at a parapet we could fling ourselves from, or we can make the communal decision to step back, and search for a new path. To finally recognize the results unfolding around us, and fundamentally reject it. To find a better way. We must reclaim our democracy, and bind our elected officials to the goal of mutual prosperity.

It is interesting that Trump’s most iconic phrase – “You’re Fired!” is one of the most powerful expressions of control in the business world. The phrase does a good job of summarizing what he offers to the American people, and what his idea of leadership entails. It is a message that business knows best, that some deserve no respite, and the quiet crowd of us are merely lucky benefactors along for the ride.

When some say a businessman could clean up Washington and run the country like a business, we should be very clear about what that means. Trump has made his intentions clear, so to his surrogates, so to his financial donors.

To control government, the apparatus of laws and enforcement which bind us in common

society, is a powerful thing. Not only do you enforce the laws, you create and change them. Molding society into your vision of the future. Strong men then use that system for plunder and personal wealth. They squeeze and seek profit from it. Personally.

Ask Putin. Ask Orban. Ask Xi. Ask Kim.

But our society, our experiment of liberal democracy, is based on the notion we can blend the systems of commerce and it's foil, representative government. A system that blends the rights of business enterprise with a system of collaborative reflection and compromise. It is in this forge our laws are made.

Is it a fair system, to argue that business interests should hold ultimate authority over our lives? That business interests should control both the system of enterprise, and also, the system of laws? Is that a system that coordinates and ameliorates opposing interest groups, or, is it simply the ultimate decider, where enforcing the interests of a few, trumps all?

Our experiment has produced the most remarkable civilization in history. But, it is a balancing act, one that has become periously unbalanced in the modern drift of 40 years. American prosperity and democracy, as we have learned, is a fragile thing. There is no guarantee that a rising tide will lift all boats. Without care and commitment, democracies can fail. They can sink, and doom us all. There are those among us who are willing to put a hole in the bottom, or at the very least, cast many of us over the side, for their own personal gain.

In his promise to Make America Great Again, to be the ultimate protector of women, to deport millions of legal immigrants, Trump promises only to demand loyalty and obedience, to convert our systems of government into a stepchild of business. For the weakest and most at risk among us, there would be no voice, no seat at the table. You would be fired.

We have seen strong men in the past, who promised liberation and prosperity through blind obedience. Where men survive only by loyalty oath, by keeping their eyes down, and fixing their mouths to the trough.

Instead of building up and reinforcing the institutions that created our age of prosperity, Trump has proposed mutual redemption through their dissolution. It is a peculiar mindset. To Make America Great Again, we must destroy the programs and systems that made us great in the past. As we have learned over the past 40 years, it is a fool’s solution.

Instead of Making America Great Again, this path has only succeeded in Making Marx Great Again. As we have made our government into a system that privileges the interests of the most powerful, to segregate and divide us, we have simply made Marx’s criticism, that capitalism is a system of exploitation, increasingly relevant.

Of course, Marx had a limited appreciation for the true power of representative government as a force for the common good. This led him to his conclusion. We must not make that same mistake – to forsake the only tool we have to make a civil society.

Trump’s solution is not new. Even his campaign slogan is recycled. As such, we have been traveling down this road for some time. It has led us to the mouth of an abyss, standing at a parapet we could fling ourselves from, or we can make the communal decision to step back, and search for a new path. To finally recognize the results unfolding around us, and fundamentally reject it. To find a better way.

We must reclaim our democracy, and bind our elected officials to the goal of mutual prosperity. 

I have only one hope, one dream, for this November. We the people must send a clear and unequivocal final message to Donal Trump– We must declare – “You’re Fired!” We must repeat it. Over and over again.

Only then, with attention and work, can we begin building a better world for all. This can only happen if we retain and burnish our vision of a liberal democracy – power to the people – with peace, justice, and liberty for all. 

Eric Hake