There are lots of reasons why the country now suffers the administration of a Donald Trump Presidency. The GOP has spent decades feeding their base shit while convincing them it was Chocolate naively unaware that laid them open to someone skilled in predatory bullshit stealing the party away from the grey beards. The Russians, as early as the primaries, interfered, either because they believed they possessed leverage over the candidate or that his levels of incompetence presented sufficient danger to our nation. And a population aging and leery of a demographic change that frightened them, ignored the danger sign plainly evident in his candidacy, voted for a person lacking in morals, intelligence, or any sense of duty beyond his own personal enrichment.
However there is another reason that I think does not get enough oxygen in a crisis fueled news cycle, lax enforcement and prosecution of white-collar crimes.
I think it is intuitively obvious to the most casual observer that it is likely that for decades Trump, his circle of cronies, his family, and his businesses have engaged in all manner of financial crimes and misbehavior. Now, under the piercing glare of the national press, political opposition, and the unique investigations of a special counsel, these illegalities are coming to light. Unprepared for this probing Trump, his associates, and his shaky empires appears to the crumbling before us in real time. How could a man so deep in so many shady deals even think of presenting himself as a candidate for President? Should that threat of that very public spotlight have scared him off in a display of self-preservation?
It didn’t because he has never faced a serious legal threat over these sorts of misdeeds. The lack of earlier investigations and prosecutions, not only of Trump himself but other in his social class, has in my opinion clad him in an imaginary suit of armor. No one ever touched him before why should anyone touch him now? This delusion was undoubtedly compounded by his lack of even a rudimentary understanding of the limitations on the power of the Presidency, that the Justice Department would not function as a branch of his own rotten personal business.
If we, the government of the United States, had taken such crimes seriously, not just Trump’s but the entire sector’s, then we would have been saved from the embarrassment upon the world stage.
