Donald Trump, and his administration of amoral lackeys and yes-men, will probably be remembered by history for the big things he got wrong, from upending global free trade, to rolling back environmental protections in favour of the oil and gas industry, to repudiating and reversing the immigration that helped make the country great in the first place, to the flagrant disdain for human rights and international norms, to the concentration of executive power to accommodate the whims and obsessions of one man at the expense of the congressional system that has served the country for two and a half centuries.
Of course, this list can be extended and expanded. What counts as egregious has undergone a stark re-definition during Trump's second term, so extensive and all-encompassing are the man's sins. Perhaps the single most important change he has wrought is the normalization of personal insults, crudity, lying and nepotism in the political sphere.
What might get lost in that larger history, though, are the smaller things that Trump brings to bear almost every single day. It seems like nothing is too small for his overbearing attention. In some ways, you have to admire the attention to detail and the sheer single-mindedness of the man, although we must still remember to stand back and look at the actual import of his attentions, lest we too become caught up in his personalty cult.
Most days, there is a social media posting (or 10!), a press release, or an executive order that just gets lost amid all the vileness and atrocity emanating from the White House in what now passes for the "normal" course of business in the USA.
Whether it is redistricting congressional boundaries for party political gain, or weaponizing the Justice Department to get back at perceived enemies, or the gratuitous extra-juducial killing of purported drug carriers, actions that would have been considered outrageous and politically unconscionable just a few short years ago are now coming thick and fast. Browbeating countries into disadvantageous trade and investment agreements, changing the names and briefs of entire government departments, co-opting public institutions for personal gains and aggrandisement, issuing pardons to convicted criminals on purely political grounds, embracing dictators shunned by the rest of the civilized world, blatant interference in the running of private-sector companies, the abandonment of any and all diversity initiatives, deliberately lying about vaccine and other healthcare claims ... there seems to be no end to the depths Trump is willing to plumb.
Is anyone actually keeping track of everything that needs to be reversed in order to bring America back to normality and international standards? Whoever follows Trump - and we have to believe that this too shall pass one day, and that a majority of Americans will eventually wake up from their delusions - whoever follows Trump will have the unenviable task of methodically undoing all the harms that have been perpetrated by the Trump administration. As things stand, it's hard to see that ever happening.
And we also have to hope that the demons of back-door fascism and extreme populism that Trump's actions have allowed to take hold, and become normalized, across the world also die with him. Otherwise, we are are in for one ugly 21st century.
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