Trump: America's Last President? (Response to 9/14's Class Discussion)

It's always interesting when fascism comes up in class. Whether it's a vocab word in English or used to describe time periods, the word is thrown around a lot, and a lot of times, misused.

And today it was used to describe Trump's presidency. This, in turn, led to a long and in-depth discussion on the presidency and fascism. One of the more shocking comments made was, "some people think Trump is going to be the last president".

We started breaking that down in class, starting with the fact that a lot of people bring up fascism or pull the fascist card when something isn't, in fact, fascist. We also talked about how this could lead to a "boy who cried wolf" situation, which could potentially be harmful. 

But what we didn't talk about in much depth was that some people actually think Trump is going to be America's last president.

Let's dissect that. In order for Trump to be the last American president, total chaos and/or anarchy would essentially have to have consumed the U.S., whether this be by way of nuclear war, natural disasters, of just complete revolution among citizens. And we're a very long way from any of those happening to the degree that democracy in America collapses. Not to mention, the president himself doesn't have the power to wreak enough havoc to collapse our democracy, thanks to checks and balances, among many other systems in place.

I don't want it to sound like I'm backing President Trump up, but he is not "destroying democracy" like some people argue. He isn't perfect, but he isn't destroying democracy either. And all political opinions aside, he only has two years and four months left in office, which is not long, in the grand scheme of things.

Don't get me wrong, America has a lot of problems. Collapsing into anarchy, however, is not one of them, at least in the near future. Let's take some time to appreciate that we live in a country that isn't particularly war-torn of poverty-ridden. 2016-2020 will not go down in history as "Fascist America". And most importantly, President #45 will not be America's demise.

By Lily Wobbe

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