Transition Chaos

by Vijaya Chandrasoma

Donald Trump has yet to concede that the Biden/Harris ticket has won the presidency by an overwhelming majority, of both the popular vote and the Electoral College. He alleges that the election has been stolen from him by the Democrats, with ridiculous statements about widespread voter irregularities. Election authorities throughout the nation have confirmed that no cases of voter fraud have been found. Trump chooses by his aberrant behavior to delegitimize not just the incoming Biden administration, but democracy itself. He is acting like a revenant, a corpse revived from death to haunt the living.

Sadly, only a handful of Republicans has advised him of the inevitability of his defeat and the need for a graceful departure.

The worst-kept secret in the world is that Trump is a terrible loser, but he does have the right to question the results of the election until it is formally certified by the Electoral College in December. However, as a Lame Duck president, Trump, instead of co-operating towards a smooth transfer of power, is engaging in the unthinkable. He is planning to burn everything behind him as he leaves the White House. His refusal to facilitate a smooth transfer of power endangers the security of the nation. It would be a great relief if he leaves/is dragged out of the Oval Office, screaming and kicking like the petty little man he is, without starting Civil War II or World War III.

Trump has already refused to release the funds necessary for the transition. He has fired Defense Secretary, Mark Esper and three senior officials in the Department of Defense. He is threatening to get rid of CIA director, Gina Haspel and FBI director, Christopher Wray, for the “crime” of not indicting President Obama, Vice President Biden and Hillary Clinton for spying on his campaign in 2016, a delusion dismissed by the FBI and the Department of Justice as having no merit whatsoever. He has filled these key security positions with party hacks who will obey his orders without question.

The security leadership vacuum so caused may encourage adversaries to take aggressive action to further their national interests with impunity and without threat of American retribution. Russia could continue to make illegal incursions into sovereign nations which were part of the old Soviet empire; China could take control of islands in the South China Sea contested by their neighbors. He has also threatened to release classified information which would jeopardize covert CIA operations in countries inimical to the interests of the United States.

Trump refuses to release the Presidential Daily Briefings, a dossier put together by the leading security agencies designed to keep the president au fait with the global security situation. Traditionally, the President-elect has access to these briefings during the transition, so that he would be able to hit the ground running from the day of his inauguration.

All the while, the pandemic is raging, with the projection that 300,000 American lives will be lost by end-January, if the present administration continues to take no steps towards its mitigation. Trump has callously remained silent about this tragedy, which shows no sign of respite.

Biden has stated his intention of relying on a science-based strategy to combat the virus. To this end, he has already appointed an Advisory Board of distinguished physicians and epidemiologists, headed by Dr. Vivek Murthy, US Surgeon General during the Obama administration. Trump’s challenges to the legality of the election during the interregnum means that this Board will be given teeth to their policies only after January 20, 2021.

There is a sliver of light at the end of the Covid tunnel. Pfizer has announced they are on course to produce a working vaccine with over 90% efficacy against Covid19 by the end of the year, which could be released to the American public by end April. By which time, if preventive actions like masks, social distancing and avoidance of crowds are not taken, the nation would have suffered over a half million deaths.

Secretary of State Bill Pompeo, who visited Sri Lanka last week and gave much gratuitous advice to us on democracy and human rights, was asked, at a recent press briefing, about the charade of denial by Trump of the legality of the election and his refusal to facilitate the smooth transfer of power. He stated, against all evidence, that Trump had won the election, and said, smirking, that there will be a “smooth transition to Trump’s second term”. A frivolous statement made by the nation’s chief diplomat, who is supposed to “show the face of the country” to the world at large. He certainly has done that, and the face is as ugly as that of any banana republic. The United States has forfeited the right to sanctimoniously rail against countries committing indiscretions, even atrocities, in the name of democracy, guilty as it has been of those very crimes.

The leaders of many countries have already spoken to President-elect Biden, congratulating him on his election. These congratulatory telephone calls have come from Trudeau, Boris Johnson, Macron, Angela Merkel, and Pope Francis, among many others. There is also a stack of congratulatory messages from other countries, including Sri Lanka, which the State Department has not released, on instructions of the White House.

Among nations to have implied reservations about the legality of the election of President-elect Biden have predictably been Russia, China and North Korea, whose leaders may be distressed that the United States has reversed its four-year slide on the slippery slope towards authoritarianism.

Trump has this uncanny ability to gaslight himself, to convince himself that he is doing a wonderful job, when all evidence is to the contrary. He lives in an alternative fantasyland, in which he can do no wrong. But his great gift, one shared by many successful cult leaders and dictators of the past, is that he is able to so gaslight a vast section of his countrymen, as evinced by the 71 million Americans who voted for his re-election. He enjoys the kind of success enjoyed by Hitler, who persuaded a majority of the German people that Jews presented a clear danger to the prosperity of their country, that his obscene Final Solution was not only rational but essential for their own survival. Hitler himself believed this, and he was able to get the Germans to go to war to preserve these inhuman beliefs. Just as Trump has brought to the surface the white Americans’ innate fears of a black and brown invasion and the erosion of white privilege. He may incite his white supremacist cult, armed with military style weapons, to widespread violence during the interregnum.

Trump suffered an overwhelming defeat in this election. He lost by the exact majority of 306 Electoral College votes that he had won in 2016, which Trump had described as a landslide. The popular majority for Biden was 77 to 72 million votes, a margin never before achieved by any past president. Amazingly, after four years of calamitous leadership which has seen 245,000 Americans killed so far by his homicidal incompetence in the management of the pandemic, an economy reduced to devastation with unemployment and homelessness faced by millions, Trump still managed to garner the highest number of votes ever won by a Republican candidate. The votes so accumulated by Trump, according to exit polls, included 57% of white Americans, a sad commentary on the racial hostility that still inflicts the nation.

President-elect Joe Biden has been remarkably calm in the face of Trump’s continuing assault on the legitimacy of his election. When asked to comment on Trump’s attitude towards the election and the transition, he smiled ruefully and said, “I just think it’s an embarrassment, quite frankly. The only thing that – how can I say this tactfully – I think it will not help the president’s legacy”. With extraordinary tact and restraint, Biden showed his decency by remaining silent on Trump’s post-election antics which are in perfect conformity with the legacy he will leave, a legacy of lies, deception, fraud, misogyny and treason.

It has been a tradition, since the 1930s, to celebrate and honor the legacy of previous presidents with a presidential library built in his home state. The only realistic memorial to the most tragic and dangerous period in the history of the United States would be the construction of a center for the rehabilitation of raving lunatics with dangerously pathological personality disorders. In Palm Beach, Florida.

In conclusion, I am reproducing below the speech of Oliver Cromwell when he dismissed the Rump (you can’t make this stuff up) Parliament in 1653. I wish I had the gift of eloquence that expresses my feelings of contempt towards Trump and his gang of sniveling enablers so perfectly:

“It is high time for me to put an end to your sitting in this place, which you have dishonored by your contempt of all virtue, and defiled by your practice of every vice.

“Ye are a factious crew, and enemies to all good government. Ye are a pack of mercenary wretches, and would like Esau sell your country for a mess of pottage, and like Judas betray your God for a few pieces of money.

“Is there a single virtue now remaining amongst you? Is there one vice you do not possess? Ye have no more religion than my horse. Gold is your God. Which of you have not bartered your conscience for bribes? Is there a man amongst you that has the least care for the good of the Commonwealth?

“Ye sordid prostitutes, have you not defiled this sacred place, and turned the Lord’s temple into a den of thieves, by your immoral principles and wicked practices?

“Ye are grown intolerably odious to the whole nation. You were deputed here by the people to get grievances redressed, are yourselves become the greatest grievance.

“Your country therefore calls upon me to cleanse this Augean stable, by putting a final period to your iniquitous proceedings in this House; and which, by God’s help, and the strength He has given me, I am now come to do.

“I command ye therefore, upon the peril of your lives, to depart immediately out of this place. Go, get you out! Make haste! Ye venal slaves be gone! Take away that shining bauble there, and lock up the doors.

IN THE NAME OF GOD, GO!”