Trump’s Creeping Tyranny

robertreich:

On
the evening of December 7, minutes after a local Indiana union leader, Chuck Jones, criticized Trump on CNN for falsely promising to keep
Carrier jobs in the U.S., Trump tweeted, “Chuck Jones, who is President
of United Steelworkers 1999, has done a terrible job representing
workers. No wonder companies flee country!”

Since that tweet went out, Chuck Jones has received death threats, according to CNN.

A
few days before, Boeing’s CEO Dennis Muilenberg was quoted in the
Chicago Tribune gently chiding Trump for being against trade. Muilenberg
noted that trade is essential to the U.S. economy, as reflected in the
“large and growing percentage of our business” coming from international
sales, including commercial jet orders from China.

Moments later,
Trump tweeted: “Boeing is building a brand new 747 Air Force One for
future presidents, but costs are out of control, more than $4 billion.
Cancel order!”

Boeing shares immediately took a hit. As
it turns out, Boeing doesn’t even have a $4 billion order to make Air
Force One planes.

Trump doesn’t take kindly to anyone criticizing
him – not journalists (whom he refers to as “dishonest,” “disgusting”
and “scum” when they take him on), not corporate executives, not
entertainers who satirize him, not local labor leaders, no one.

The
President-elect’s tendency to go after people who criticize him by
sending false and provocative statements to his 16 million twitter
followers not only imperils those people and their organizations.

It also poses a clear and present danger to our democracy.

Democracy depends on the freedom to criticize those in power without fear of retribution.

No
President or President-elect in history has ever before publicly condemned
individual citizens for criticizing him. That occurs in two-bit
dictatorships intent on stamping out dissent.

No President or
President-elect has ever before bypassed the media and spoken directly to large
numbers of his followers in order to disparage individual citizens who
criticize him. That occurred in the fascist rallies of the 1930s.

America
came closest to this in the 1950s when Senator Joseph McCarthy wrecked
the lives of thousands of American citizens whom he arbitrarily and
carelessly claimed were communists.

McCarthy’s reign of terror
ended when a single man asked him publicly, during the televised
hearings McCarthy was conducting, “have you no decency, sir?” In that
moment, Americans began to see McCarthy for the tyrant he was.

McCarthy’s
assistant was Roy Cohn, an attorney who perfected the art of character
assassination. Roy Cohn was also one of Donald J. Trump’s mentors.

Trump’s capricious
use of power to denigrate and even endanger his critics must end. He is
not yet our President. When he becomes so, and has far greater power,
our freedom and our democracy could be gravely jeopardized.  

We must join together to condemn these acts. Has Trump no decency?